I once had a 50 mile one way commute.  Moving was too expensive at the time - as in where I lived my house was valued at about 1/3 the lowest priced house in the town where I worked.  Sucks.  During one ice storm, it took us 6 hours to drive that 50 miles.  Most of it spent waiting for the sanding trucks - as they sanded and sanded and sanded.....

As for to work or not --- do what you damn well please.  I'd be happy to do your job for you and work for a pittance.  I'm sure you can find someone equally desperate nearby.  On the other hand, if you have visions of being bored out of your gourd - go do some work.

find some one reliable who won't take advantage of you, and you can afford it, why not pull back a bit and telecommute for a while and see how you like it.

People pretend this is not so, but the money cycle is necessary. When some numb nuts buys a ferrari, there's money going to the technicians, designers, painters, parts manufacturers, tyre people, service people and all the rest.

Money tends not to sit around. It gets spent and in this spending it drives multiple layers of the economy. So long as you're not using child slave labour, do what you want. Spend your time thinking of fun ways to put your money into other people's pockets. 

Think of capitalism as a form of self perpetuating charity...

Well it is all mine (well actually I split the profits with 3 other co-owners) but it is all ours. I would expect it would cost me around 40-50k/year to hire someone to take my place with the physical labor and do the rest over the phone. So should I limit myself to that and continue working?  

Well from the evil right wing perspective I contributed far more to the company than anyone else when I wrote the check that started it and paid everyones salaries for 6 months before we got our first client without any guarantees on a return. 

I would say that my contribution was obscene as well, it is the largest check I have ever written in my life but that is besides the point. I am still confused as to what you think I ought to do. It seems like no matter what I do I will be criticized by the leftys. Without collecting my obscene profits from other businesses, I could never have imagined investing in starting this one up which means we wouldn't be having this conversation because it wouldn't exist. So now, I have two choices- work for no real gain for anyone other than my personal fulfillment or leave and let someone else work the job while I go off and probably invest in something new. I guess that in your opinion I should continue working my job at say the 40k salary and sell off everything else I own (maybe give the proceeds to charity or something) and never create another business again?

So if you hire someone, he gets a needed job, you are saved the effort, you make money, the left looks down on you.

If you do it yourself, nobody gets a needed job, you are stuck doing the physical work, you make money, and the left looks down on you. Is it more complicated than that?

I don't think the left cares so much about this decision actually as it cares about what happens to your "obscene profit."

It is appraising houses for property taxes which I am told go for many programs that are absolutely vital to society. Personally, I would rather see property taxes disappear but I lost that battle. I invested solely for the obscene profit and I kind of liked the idea of making money off the system that so many criticized me for trying to destroy when I was active in politics. So according to the left, my company makes a vital contribution to society. Personally, I think it is a complete waste for society and little would make me happier if this particular company was made irrelevant by the repeal of property taxes.  

What do you think capitalists do with money? I don't know anyone with serious money who puts their money in a mattress. I take my profits from one enterprise and start another one or I use it to purchase something I desire which as AE points out hires a lot of people but for the most part I don't consume much. That hasn't spared me the criticism of the left. Which is why I started thinking about what their opinion would be, because I honestly am not sure. On one hand I am constantly told it is exploitive to hire workers and make a profit on them, on the other I am told that us evil business people are responsible for the poor economy because we are not hiring. 

How best to understand the macro than to understand the micro? This is what confuses me most about the left in general. I am constantly told that I ought to do "whats best for society" and think about the "common good" but when it comes to the details of exactly WHAT I should do I rarely get a good answer. I think the error many on the left make is that they fail to recognize that macro economics is the sum total of micro economics. Every minor decision adds up to make the overall economy. I believe the most effective way to understand any economy is to understand the smallest decisions being made and why they are being made.  

For example, I recently asked on this site what I should pay my employees since I am always told that the common worker is exploited and not paid enough. I can go into great detail of exactly how I determine how much to pay a given employee. The left generally completely fails to tell me how I should determine payscale, but they often criticize what I am doing. Nor does anyone tell me exactly how to determine whether a profit is appropriate or obscene. I don't understand how they think that a company is going to come into existence at all if people like me don't take our obscene profits and gamble on new businesses.

Well you've gotta love it for the irony, at least.

I'm not naive enough to think that tax dollars are going to vital services in your country, that's fairly obviously not been true for some time. Strangely either wing of politics blames each other for this, right says that government is a special interest cash cow in and of itself, while the left argues back that it only got that way coerced (and enabled) by the power of monolithic capitalism. Either way, we're both screwed.

I would like to see property investment dead as much as you might like to see it untaxed. We're really polar on that issue, it seems cause I believe there is no ambiguity in whether profiting from an arbitrary claim over the fundament of reality is unethical, it just is. We didn't make the earth, seriously, it made us; the idea of owning it is shonky enough, let alone the gall to impose a premium on others for it. You can have your world where space itself is a deniable commodity, I personally cannot see how that will ever not be ultimately equal to taking lives.

I believe capitalists do various things with money. Some of those things are wholly offensive, like subverting policy of the people's government for singular ends or land investment for an "as purchased" market inflated return; some things stink just a little bit, like investing cynically in some high end grab at a pool of bureaucratic slush... (naming no names ) purely for the large return; some things are really quite good, like investing in new products and services, contributing to charitable interests and of course creating job opportunities for the up and coming.

I'd rather you did to be honest. When people don't consume, other people get laid off. It's not automatically better to consume less than others, especially when you have a far greater share of the means to do so. 

As a lefty, almost nothing pisses me off more than the markets' propensity to give the top 1% of earners less reason to spend. In the desire to attract middle class spending producers give basically a free living to the richest class. Money the top tier would otherwise spend on goods and services that the lower classes produce is removed from the economy in a cyclic fashion, leaving ever smaller amounts for the lower earners to cut each others lunch over. Same goes for politicians recieveing a salary package few can dream of in addition to all expenses paid living, it's a farce. There's nothing more a drain  on the good of society than money going by the truckload where it's never going to be reinvested into the community.

/rant

So, that aside, if you don't have personal needs and wants equal to your money I would have you find another way to get it out there moving us all along in some way. I can't in right conscience just stamp approval on low consumption, per se.

Well there's more than one way to skin the animal, is all I'm saying. So you had better make a choice that suits your personal goals, your happiness contributes to the good of society too. When you're pleased with your decision that's one more cheery fulfilled human on the planet and that does us all good. And either way you go it's a means to a positive outcome from the perspective of the left, if you're going to stay at the job and take in more cash then turn whatever you don't need to some good end, somewhat, equivalent of hiring an out of work joe. If you stay home and hire someone else it's all good you're offering up an opportunity he/she wouldn't otherwise have and their money is sure to go towards keeping someone else, also, in a productive position. 

So you see I do have an eye on the micro of the situation. It's just different to what you were expecting.

I would answer that by saying you should determine it thus:

1. Add up what it's gonna cost the employee to live healthily and maintain his/herself, professionally in the job.

2. Add to that a fair incentive for loyal service.

3. Add to that a bonus scheme contingent on performance.

1+2+3 is a realistic and fair salary for anyone.

As a rule of thumb, I'd say a profit is obscene if its beyond your imagination to do new stuff with it, and where it exists entirely as an end in itself. Especially the latter, regardless of the size.