New Wealthy - Part 2 - The Downside

We left off with all of the good things this burgeoning new class of very wealthy are providing society. But there is a dark side, as with all things. Having great wealth does not mean one is happier. Less stressed about the basics, yes, but with most things there is always a downside, and with wealth there are plenty of down sides.

They may have quantity in their lives, but finding quality is not as easy. The psychological lift in treating ourselves with luxury once in a while is lost if your life is all luxury. Extravagant gifts are the expectation, and not a wonderful surprise. The rich, especially those that inherit their wealth, know that many people despise them. Relationships are always suspect. They resist talking about their dilemmas in public, assuming, maybe rightly so, that their problems are "high class problems," and therefore take a back seat to the problems of those less fortunate. Organizations such as "More Than Money" have emerged as a place to deal with psychological issues of the very wealthy. And psychological issues abound. Especially with children who spend most of their time with a revolving door of paid staff from nannies to household help. They tend to have higher incidences of drug and alcohol abuse, depression, and difficulty connecting to other people. Many hide their status while attending college, luxuriating in feeling "normal." They cannot use the lack of money for not feeling at peace or living their lives with honor and integrity.

Most worry as much about money as those at the low end. The extremely wealthy worry about losing their money. They worry about having enough money. In fact a study reveals they double whatever amount they currently are worth in order to feel secure. If they have $20 million then they feel they need $40 million to feel secure, if they have a billion dollars then they feel they need two billion dollars. They worry about how to invest their money, they worry about their children lacking motivation if they inherit large sums of the stuff. They worry about gold diggers and prenuptial agreements. They worry that husbands marrying their daughters will feel usurped as providers.

Someone suggested in my comments yesterday that they felt there would be eventual class warfare with this emerging class structure. I cannot disagree. We are seeing it in the Middle East as we speak. Major revolutions have been fought over this very thing. We have an hourglass shaped class structure with the very wealthy at the top, a shrinking middle-class, and an ever-widening lower and working class. As we see more and more of our country's wealth buying only luxury items, it will surely have an effect. Trickle down aspirations have the offshoot of making everyone else feel poor as we tend to gauge our happiness, in part, by how well we feel we are doing in comparison to others.

The ramifications are world-wide. This growing group of extremely wealthy individuals are from many different countries. They have many homes, in many places, and feel more a nation of their own making than nationalism to any one country. What that means for our future is anyone's guess.

The New Wealthy

We watched the movie "2012" last night and I was incensed that the arks held all the billionaires in the world that could buy their way to safety after the pole shift. My husband, on the other hand, thought it was okay because they were the ones that had to come up with the money to build the arks in the first place. I realized we have very different ways of looking at wealth in our home, and in our society. There are those that are happy for anyone that can "make it" and believe they deserve whatever their money can buy - after all they earned it - and there are those that see the world as being a place that should be more equitable, with tax structures set up to make sure that happens. It has divided our nation and other cultures.

So I set off to see just who these nouveau riche were exactly, and what I found out was rather surprising, and not at all what I expected.

I found my information from an article appearing in Atlantic Monthly (in April) regarding a new study from Boston College and from the book "Richistan" by Robert Frank. It would make this post too lengthy to write about all of my findings here, but I couldn't resist a few interesting facts:

The segment of richest Americans is growing and creating an hourglass shape to our society with the richest at the top, the penny-pinching middle class in the middle, and an expanding underclass. There is no doubt that the top 1% of our society now owns a disproportionate amount of the wealth. They are the ones that are buying so many luxury items that they are literally propping up our economy. But they are also giving away more money to charitable organizations than ever before. In fact from 1995 to 2005 it was double the amount given away. They tend to be people who have made their money themselves, it was not inherited. They like to think of themselves as just average people - with money, of course. But they worry about many of the same things we all do - the environment, education, whether or not their children will grow up to be decent human beings. Many are giving large portions of their wealth away, realizing that they cannot spend it while they are alive and not wanting their children to become creeps.

They have also changed the face of politics. They tend to be more liberal, and most are Democrats, having been educated in schools located in Boston, New York, Washington, Austin, Denver, and Seattle. Having grown up in the 1960's they also are more sensitive to the underclass and minorities. They want to swing politics in a direction that does not just add to their own wealth, as most of the rich have done in the past, in fact they have so much money that they are more concerned with future generations. They have spent millions to fight poverty, improve the environment, fix inner cities and cure disease. They see government as a tool for more aggressive social agendas, hoping to protect the advantages they had growing up.

Tomorrow I will talk about the cons with this group of uber-wealthy individuals, and how they are changing the world.

Misery of a Different Kind

(New York Times)

It seems families in Jakarta, Indonesia have problems this week. It is Ramadan, and household help including nannies, maids, and chauffeurs are all heading home, in mass, to their hometowns. This has left the wealthy to deal with their own problems. Many of these families use this time to travel, but some are actually checking into hotels as the stress of dealing with their own children, meals, and driving is more than they can manage. One mother said she thought it was good for her children when their maids left, as it forced her children to get their own glass of water, for instance. After all, they might live somewhere like the US, and won't have the help to which they are accustomed.

The household help, who make between $5 and $8 per week, probably count the hours until Ramadan, don't you think?

This is not a challenge most of us understand, I'm afraid.

When Enough is Perfect

(one of McAfee's five homes, Colorado)

I watched a Nightline episode last night on John McAfee, of anti-virus software and instant messaging fame, and it highlighted something I had been thinking about for several days. And that is the thought that enough is perfect, too much is stultifying. We lose something in ourselves when we have too much. We lose our creative desire to achieve. Why look for your unique purpose in life if you have whatever you want, without the struggle. McAfee made the comment that people always want, but what they need is very little.

In his case, he was just auctioning off the last of his five homes, antique cars and air-stream trailers, planes, toys, art, all of his belongings. He had lost around ninety million dollars in this economic downturn, having most of his holdings in luxury real estate and the stock market. Luxury real estate is down, in case you haven't noticed. In fact, his multi-million dollar estate in New Mexico was auctioned off for around $525,000. He said it was less than he had spent on landscaping for the place.

But he wasn't upset, in fact he was relieved. It was all gone, and he and his pick-up were heading to Central America to work on a venture having to do with natural medicines. Had he a spiritual awakening? Maybe. Or maybe, like many of us, he realized too much stuff is like a ball and chain. It needs to be managed, cared for, maintained, cleaned. If it involves people to do it for us, it requires managing people, which is like herding cats sometimes.

He will walk away with a "fistful of millions", so he won't be worrying about having enough food, or shelter, or anything else that really matters. And that is the crux of the thing, having enough is imperative. We need a home, enough food for our family and animals, clothes on our backs. But it doesn't have to be wildly expensive meals in restaurants, five houses, and designer labels. Too much just bogs and weighs us down, sapping our innate desire to find our purpose. Which may not have anything to do with money or things, but something else, something imperative to us, hidden, waiting to be needed.

Cleaning House in the World

I came across an article today that gives me hope that maybe things are going to change after the fallout going on in the world today. Forever, really, the rich have done exactly what they want to do. They evade taxes, steal from the working man, build their gilded worlds on the backs of everyone else. Our elected government has helped them do it with a tax system so complicated they find loopholes, lobbyists that have the inside scoop because they worked for the government once (usually just before taking big-paying jobs for the companies they were supposed to be regulating), banks that hide their money from the IRS. The list goes on and on, and becomes ever-more complicated, when we hear how these so-called pillars of the community crumble as their sand castle businesses and lifestyles get swept away in the tide of their own greed and malice. Each day we hear about another one - Stanford Financial - with their offices in Antigua was the latest. Now why, exactly, are our senators and congress people, including Pelosi, McCain, and others receiving funds from some guy who has his offices and headquarters in Antigua? Why not here in the USA? What was he trying to avoid? Taxes maybe, or our laws? All the while having dinner with our lawmakers, giving them money, playing the part of a wheeler-dealer. There is no doubt, our entire system is broken. Completely and utterly broken. We will need a complete overhaul of all of our institutions and checks and balances, because each and every one let us down. Which brings me back to the story I read today in the NYT.

UBS, under extreme duress has capitulated into giving the US names of its American depositors, and will pay a $780 million-dollar fine for all the taxes they helped these Americans avoid. And while the money sounds kind of piddly in this day and age of payouts in the billions, what is really newsworthy is that it is the end of the "Swiss bank account" where money can be shielded from the prying eyes of the IRS. An end to an era that dates from the middle ages. So if we can break open that piggy bank for the rich, maybe, just maybe, we can ream out our own system of catering to those who have avarice as their only motivation. But it will take holding our elected officials responsible for everything they do. There is no better time to put the spot light on all the cockroaches, of which Washington has plenty. But we also have to take responsibility ourselves for letting our society become so out of control. We too, have to change how we see things. We need to keep our eye on companies that want to have off-shore headquarters - require our regulators to make sure they are not using off-shore laws and accounts to cheat the American people. But we need to look at things from a global and environmental perspective. The world is finite and it's people are vulnerable. No longer can we just view things through the American perspective. We should invite new world views, new perspectives, new ideas, as we redefine our system of governing. Synergy may be an over used term, but it may be a good one for right now.