Social Media

Many of you may have noticed that I no longer have a blog roll with all of your blogs on my sidebar. It is something that I miss - it is so easy to keep up when you update your blog with a new post, and I have fallen behind by not having this convenience. However, this was an intentional move to protect my readers. When writers Trish and Rob MacGregor were hacked several months back, a few of their blogging friends were also hacked. It was nasty - they hacked their email accounts, ruined a computer, literally made their lives miserable.

I closed my blog - totally eliminated it, and started a new one which I kept personal until it was clear I was not a target. But I began to worry about my readers. If for some reason I attracted a bad element - I didn't want my readers to also be pulled into the mess. Lucky for me, that has not happened. But for many, social media is becoming intrusive and worrisome.

This article about a mother who found her children were being used in an unauthorized manner makes the case for being very careful about what information you give to social media sites, and especially if you link them. In this case a mother found her children being used on one site, without them ever signing on to that site, just from them being a friend on her Facebook, and leaving a message on her Wall.

This is scary. The idea that information can be swiped and used throughout the internet is of major concern.

So be aware that when you sign on to your blog, twitter, Facebook, etc., that everything you write is public domain - even your children.

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.

Facebook & Censoring

I don't have a Facebook account, so I'm asking all of you - do you censor Facebook connections? If so, how do you do it?

I keep reading, and listening to people, who are put out by having to "friend" someone that they don't really want to share their lives with, but have no idea how to do it in a nice way. They don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. In most cases it's young people who don't want the adults in their lives (or their parent's friends), to know what is going on in theirs. They want it to be about their social connections and not about family members knowing too much.

This would have been a problem for me in my younger years. It was much better that the adult members of my family only knew what was actually going on through gossip. Much safer. Had they known the truth, I'm sure they would have disowned me. In fact, I don't let most of my family members or social circle know about my blog, either. For the same reason. It wasn't that long ago that I was only known by my nom de plume "Lover of Life." It was a big step to add my name.

And, quite frankly, I really don't want to have blow by blow playbacks of what my children are up to. They don't tell me everything, which is just fine with me. (My father often said he didn't want to know what I was up to in my twenties. To the point of covering his ears and making "lalalalalalalala" noises, when I tried to over share.)

What is weird is when other people, out of the blue, tell me what my children are up to. I get kind of a creepy feeling. Kind of like - should they know what I don't? Even if I don't want to know it?

Which brings me back to Facebook. Is this an issue for you or your family members? And if so, how do you deal with it?