Would you rather make $200k doing nothing or take a job that pays $500k

[traininthedistance]

I'd be willing to "do nothing [for pay]" for as little as $25k per year in 2015 dollars, and probably even for slightly less than that. You could raise the alternative payoff to $5 million and I wouldn't change my mind. (I'm assuming that taking the job for several years and then living off of savings defeats the point of the hypothetical.)

The freedom to do whatever I want with my time - art, volunteering, personal projects, travel, learning, meditation, etc. - rather than committing most of my natural life to drudgery would be worth quite a lot to me. Not knowing what you'd do without someone telling you what to do every day is the mark of a dullard.

My threshold might be something more like $35K, given NYC cost of living and my stupidly expensive student loans, but besides that exactly this.  "Doing nothing at work" is most emphatically not the same as "doing nothing" in total.

To say nothing of the fact that I wouldn't even know what to do with $200K a year, let alone $500K.

[traininthedistance]

I forgot to mention something important (facepalm)

If you chose option 1, you can't have a job. If you get a job (even if it's a menial one), then you don't qualify for the $200K a year anymore. Much like how if you chose option 2, you don't get you're $500K a year salary if you quit your job for something else. Not having a job is basically your job in option 1. Volunteering is ok though.

There are enough opportunities for volunteering, and enough good causes in need of manpower, that this obviously doesn't change my answer.

I assume that things like "being a househusband" and "taking care of elderly parents" are also kosher under Option 1.

I think people forget just how much there is to do outside of the confines of traditional employment- and how worthwhile and necessary that stuff is.