Charles G. Hill channels me, or I him:
You can see the pattern here: keep escalating the conditions until one of them applies. Stopping on the third question implies something not exactly poverty, but well short of wealth. How much would I have to have backstopping my current income to keep worries at an absolute minimum? (I have just defined “wealth,” at least according to my lights.) It would have to be enough to restore my current, um, lifestyle with no discernible compromises — twice. (Because after the first restoration, I’d be on edge about every little thing.) I am loath to declare a dollar amount, if only because some of what is lost is time, and I can’t buy that for any number of dollars.
► Determining the Envy Quotient
That said, the “current lifestyle” I would need to be able to restore, would not necessarily be the one I’m ... currently ... living. A house that holds heat in winter, and holds it out in summer, would be included—and there’s no telling what other luxuries I might require after something like that.
Then again, in my opinion the one thing surest to adhere to poverty is hating people who have things I don’t. So while I’m not rich, I’m also not poor and never have been—regardless of how broke I may have been from time to time.
My upbringing never made much of the Tenth Commandment as such, so I can’t say why I take it as seriously as I do.
