IN HIS BOOK The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel argues that “every decision people make with money is justified by taking the information they have at the moment and plugging it into their unique mental model of how the world works.” As an example, he attempts to generate a rationale for why the “lowest-income households in the U.S. on average spend $412 a year on lotto tickets, four times the amount of those in the highest income groups,” and comes up with this imagined monologue:
“We live paycheck-to-paycheck and saving seems out of reach. Our prospects for much higher wages seem out of reach. …We are paying for a dream, and you may not understand that because you are already living a dream. That’s why we buy more lottery tickets than you do.”
Housel here depicts circumstances in which long-term paths to upward mobility seem so thoroughly closed off by prohibitive costs and instability that the only source of hope comes from Hail Mary–style gambling.
This state of precarity for any portion of our population is troubling, but it becomes even more so as it proliferates. And a recent Wall Street Journal piece by the economist Kyla Scanlon suggests it is proliferating rapidly, as a significant percentage of young Americans have embraced prediction markets, such as Polymarket and Kalshi, in which they can wager on anything from the price of Bitcoin, to how much a certain movie will make on its opening weekend, to whether the US will confirm aliens exist by the end of the year.
Much the way Housel explains the lotto-ticket phenomenon, Scanlon attributes this wildly speculative betting to “financial nihilism,” which she defines as a mind-set in which “people stop believing that the underlying economy is working for them and turn to gambling or some other seemingly quick fix instead to try and find stability.”
In both cases, uncertainty and a lack of options limit people’s confidence to function even in the short term let alone consider notions such as finding their “purpose” or “calling.” For many who consider themselves in survival mode, “purpose” is an absurd, indulgent, woo-woo privilege—the stuff of incense burners and thumb-sucking podcasters discussing their latest retreat.
Except that purpose is not a luxury. Since at least the 1940s, psychologists such as Viktor Frankl have identified a strong correlation between meaning, purpose, and the ability to persevere through moments of adversity and instability. A 2022 study published by the National Institutes of Health has reinforced this theory, concluding that “purpose emerged as a positive predictor of both resilience and persistence.”
Unfortunately, purpose and meaning in the workplace appear to be growing scarce. A 2023 study conducted by Harvard revealed that only 6 percent of respondents found meaning in their work, with one participant stating, “No one I know throws their heart and soul into work anymore. Work is just a means to an end.”
Further, the study found that “over half of young adults (51%) reported that they don’t know what to do with their lives” and 58% “reported experiencing little or no ‘purpose or meaning’ in life in the previous month.”
From this vantage, it’s not surprising that there is so much talk of “burnout,” that the average job tenure in America has dropped 15 percent between 2014 and 2024, and that betting on how many tweets Elon Musk will send this week seems more feasible than, say, going back to school.
When work gets viewed simply as a “means to an end”—that is, when “to make money” becomes the only reason a person participates—there is not enough intrinsic motivation to sustain what was once thought of as a “career.” Instead, one’s career becomes a strategic process of hunting for windfalls and paths of least resistance. And, as with lotto tickets, these choices, which are based on instability, in turn create more instability.
Talk of “purpose” can come off as high-minded and precious, but if we’re looking to stop this vicious cycle of “financial nihilism,” as well as address increasing levels of distrust, volatility, and uncertainty, instilling younger Americans with a sense of purpose is what I’d bet on.
