Is there a specific income line above which I should strongly favor earning to give over other venues of altruism? I am personally within shouting distance of being a 1%er and wondering whether I should work harder at getting above that line.
As someone who is somewhere between Peter’s stance on what proportion of us should earn to give (EtG), (ratio of EtG:direct-work between 1:1 and 9:1) and 80,000 Hours (80k) position (ratio of 1:9), if you think you’re within shouting distance of being in the top 1% of American income earners, I concur with Tom you should definitely favour earning to give. You have a strong comparative advantage for EtG compared to most of us who consider it, and I expect others who are just as able but aren’t inclined towards high-earning fields, e.g., software or finance, have a comparative advantage to doing direct work relative to you. You have the sort of potential that would likely cause even 80k to recommend you pursue earning to give.
If you’re interested in improving civilisation’s prospects in the long-run, skills that would be useful might include forecasting, risk assessment, technology policy, and tech engineering including AI and synthetic biology. If you’re interested in also improving global development, being talented at design of crops, or vaccines, or various other things would be useful. If you’re a talented project manager of small projects, you could also lead philanthropic projects relating to any of the above.
If you have already undertaken some training to do one of those roles, it might be better to do direct philanthropic work in one of those roles, rather than earning funds in some other role to hire someone else who may be less effective.
I should probably have been more precise. I am single, and among single earners, I am at about the 98th percentile and have had job offers above the 99th percentile. However, I am somewhere around the 94th percentile of household incomes, where the 99th percentile is around $400,000.
I estimate that I could get a salary+bonus of roughly $250K with a few months of searching at the moment. And by estimate, I mean that I literally turned down a job for that amount of money.
I really should have just said that up front instead of being coy.
Good question. The answer would presumably depend on how much value you could create doing direct EA work, but it would be nice to have a rule-of-thumb.
Unless you concretely know you can make a bigger difference filling a talent gap, I’d encourage earning to give if you’re within shouting distance of being a 1%er.
Is there a specific income line above which I should strongly favor earning to give over other venues of altruism? I am personally within shouting distance of being a 1%er and wondering whether I should work harder at getting above that line.
As someone who is somewhere between Peter’s stance on what proportion of us should earn to give (EtG), (ratio of EtG:direct-work between 1:1 and 9:1) and 80,000 Hours (80k) position (ratio of 1:9), if you think you’re within shouting distance of being in the top 1% of American income earners, I concur with Tom you should definitely favour earning to give. You have a strong comparative advantage for EtG compared to most of us who consider it, and I expect others who are just as able but aren’t inclined towards high-earning fields, e.g., software or finance, have a comparative advantage to doing direct work relative to you. You have the sort of potential that would likely cause even 80k to recommend you pursue earning to give.
do you have skills that could make you extraordinarily directly useful?
Unknown. How would I tell?
If you’re interested in improving civilisation’s prospects in the long-run, skills that would be useful might include forecasting, risk assessment, technology policy, and tech engineering including AI and synthetic biology. If you’re interested in also improving global development, being talented at design of crops, or vaccines, or various other things would be useful. If you’re a talented project manager of small projects, you could also lead philanthropic projects relating to any of the above.
If you have already undertaken some training to do one of those roles, it might be better to do direct philanthropic work in one of those roles, rather than earning funds in some other role to hire someone else who may be less effective.
Given that the top 1% in the US have a household income of $400,000, I’d strongly favour earning to give. The most relevant post on this is Peter Hurford thinks that a large proportion of people should earn to give long term (the second most upvoted article here ever).
I am nowhere near $400,000.
I should probably have been more precise. I am single, and among single earners, I am at about the 98th percentile and have had job offers above the 99th percentile. However, I am somewhere around the 94th percentile of household incomes, where the 99th percentile is around $400,000.
Can you tell us roughly what income you’re looking at through ETG? :)
I don’t know what you mean by “through ETG”.
I estimate that I could get a salary+bonus of roughly $250K with a few months of searching at the moment. And by estimate, I mean that I literally turned down a job for that amount of money.
I really should have just said that up front instead of being coy.
Good question. The answer would presumably depend on how much value you could create doing direct EA work, but it would be nice to have a rule-of-thumb.
Unless you concretely know you can make a bigger difference filling a talent gap, I’d encourage earning to give if you’re within shouting distance of being a 1%er.