I know quite a cross-section of people. Mostly in their forties and fifties. Some are considerably wealthy, owning large, expensive houses and cars and having luxury holidays. Most of these people run businesses but some are doctors, lawyers, dentists and sportspeople. All of the people in this category are married. Some have children, some don't. One couple are gay but have been in a committed relationship for many years. They are mostly fun, good conversationalists but overall quite conservative in their tastes and opinions. They do exciting things but it will likely be trekking in a wilderness type thing or climbing a difficult mountain, or opening a new business venture, and so on. Some are graduates, some are not. Their wives are all attractive to a greater or lesser degree. The slightly less attractive ones have either exceptional figures or exceptional social skills as hostesses. Their wives are nearly all graduates and have either maintained their own white collar career or were successful in it prior to getting married.
Another large section of people is the less successful people. I just realised that all of the men in this group are graduates from solid backgrounds. They seem to make bad choices in life. One got arrested for domestic violence and divorced following 18 months of marriage, one stalked an ex girlfriend and got arrested and lost his job for erratic behaviour at work, one was in a relationship with a non-working woman for many years who eventually left him because he refused to get married and he now spends his time using Tinder and trying to persuade most women he meets to sleep with him. This resulted in a "redeployment" and effective demotion at work. Another cheated on all his girlfriends, most of whom fell into the first group type of women, and married a woman he didn't know well from Vietnam who is now divorcing him for cheating, amongst other things. One was fired from 2 or 3 different jobs and lives off the income of his wife. Another was unemployed for years and now works for his wife's business and is also a cheat (his wife doesn't seem to care). Another has never married and never progressed in his career, and has had long term girlfriends from third world countries. His current relationship is a long distance one and he was unable to meet his girlfriend during Covid. His girlfriend doesn't want to move to the US and he doesn't want to move to Taiwan. A different one married a disabled woman with several children and has spent all of his savings on unsuccessful and unwise legal actions, although he has lost every single one of 'em. He is going to file for personal bankruptcy.
All of this group live in small, kind of shoddy apartments and don't have many friends. All have failed to achieve the same standard of living or employment success as their own parents, despite some of them receiving good financial assistance. All have liberal political persuasion and believe in higher taxes and make a lot of noise about helping out poorer people and the homeless and how much they hate rich people. None of them seem happy compared to the first group. They all appear to be dissatisfied in some way and are not cheerful conversationalists, but they all consider themselves superior to the first group and believe that their way of leading life is correct. They are often intolerant to opposing political views.
What I'm wondering is, whether wasting your time like this causes the relative lack of success. Are they just poor decision makers or does their tendency to cheat, or virtue signal actually cause their poor performance? Surely if they are liberal and believe in helping people, they would work harder and actually pay more tax? By comparison, the first group seem quite boring but they actually seem to have more fun. But are they really? Is it actually more fun to to do the things that the second group are doing with their lives compared to the first group? Do the second group ever consider what they are doing or why?
Maybe I just know an exceptionally strange bunch of people? The second group I all know through running, by the way.