

The correlation between wealth and Internet usage. - cwan
http://www.fastcompany.com/1704862/why-are-the-rich-so-good-at-the-internet

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DeusExMachina
Could not this be correlated to education instead of money? Assuming that
people with higher education get on average higher salaries (assumption on
which I don't have data), then higher educated people are more likely to know
and understand the broad services and benefits the internet brings.
Anecdotally I see this at home. My parents, which have really low education,
could not care less of the Internet. My brother with just high school degree
just uses a few things: some email, some job search and Facebook. Me and my
other brother, which have both master degrees, use the Internet a lot.

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wisty
Another possibility - most high-paying jobs require home internet.

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_delirium
The original report has a bit of additional information:
[http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Better-off-
households/Re...](http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Better-off-
households/Report.aspx?view=all)

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scrrr
Or perhaps: More income = more work = less time = more incentive to do things
online to save time.

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electromagnetic
Paying bills and online banking have ~25% difference between the lowest and
highest income. These are time-saving but you're essentially paying off money
you already spent.

The bigger disproportion is in _spending_ money online; 30% for buying
products and ~35% for travel reservations. I bet buying products has a bigger
disproportion if the price approaches the $1000 mark.

The lowest difference is in research ~20%. This narrower difference is likely
because people are saving time, but also trying to save money. People in the
lower income are likely using a greater proportion of store fliers as they're
not intending on spending money online.

Anecdotally I've noticed people with lower incomes tend to be more distrustful
of using credit/debit cards online.

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notahacker
People with higher incomes also tend to have better access to credit cards and
are have more disposable income to make purchases in the first place
(especially when it comes to things like booking flights). They also probably
have fewer qualms about buying the $500 TV without physically picking it up
and carrying it out of the store because they're not awaiting delivery of
something that represents most of that month's disposable income. The
[possibly inaccurate] perception that internet transactions are inherently
riskier than offline ones is much more of a concern if you can't afford the
loss, and higher paid people are on average savvier about avoiding scams in
the first place.

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fleitz
I'm usually the guy saying the causation is really correlation, but it could
be in this case that increased internet use is the cause of the wealth,
perhaps it is a causal link. I do appreciate the scientific integrity of the
article by starting off with correlation, and not jumping immediately to
causation.

The internet is a fantastic way to find new opportunities, those that spend
more time on it have access to more and better opportunities. I could go knock
on a hundred doors around my town, or I could post on craigslist, or on
twitter, etc. A hundred postings on forums is far better marketing than 100
cold calls.

And anyway, how do you A/B test a cold call on the phone?

For example when I was looking for a job, I could pretty much guarantee a call
a week from a head hunter if my resume was visible on Monster. It gets to the
point where you don't even bother replying to job ads, you just change a
setting on monster and wait for the calls to start. And yes, there are far
better ways of marketing yourself than having a resume on monster.

Just today I've gotten two warm leads for iPhone apps from a two line posting
on CL.

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zach
So I guess now we're going to be treated to, "If you use the internet so much,
why aren't you rich?"

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ilkhd2
What about scientists? - they are not the richest category of population (<
75k a person; usually 40-50k), but I am sure they use Internet a lot more
often than let's say businessmen.

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smanek
Scientists aren't rich, but the ones I've worked with (quite a few) all made
considerably more than 75K.

Other than postdocs (which is a temporary state), when do scientists make
under 75K? Any tenure track prof at a decent/big university or private
industry PhD researcher makes than that, no?

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_delirium
PhD researchers yes, but there are a bunch of more "working-class" science
jobs, like lab technician, which are commonly filled by people with science
bachelor's degrees, and don't usually pay more than $75k. For example, a
geologist or hydrologist who works for the Bureau of Land Management, or a
chemist who works for DuPont, will typically start around $40-50k.

