Friday, October 24, 2014

The Super-Rich Are as Miserable as the Rest of Us


Story at Fiscal Times here.

Let’s agree right off the bat that $25 million is a lot of money. 
The number of American households with a net worth of $25 million or more — excluding their home — reached a new record last year, according to a recent report by wealth management research provider Spectrem Group. 
Yet the same survey found that those wealthy Americans still have plenty of financial concerns. Actually, they sound fairly miserable…and that’s in a survey taken well before the stock market took a tumble last week. 
They may travel more, go to ballgames or concerts, or buy nice jewelry, but 70 percent of those surveyed said they get more satisfaction out of saving and investing their money than from spending it. 
More than half said they worry about the next generation wasting the money they inherit.  And almost a quarter (23 percent) said they worry “constantly” — constantly — about their financial situation.

Boy, sounds like if we ever would impose a Picketty Tax, many of these people would probably have to just go get a gun and blow their brains out... but then we who would be remaining would all be more "equal" in financial terms.


10 comments:

Ignacio said...

Maybe if they evolved and stopped thinking about status they would be fine. I'm almost sure you can trace all that 'misery' to caring too much about status.

W.Buffet should write that book after all, about how to live with X million a year.


having more money does not make you less primate apparently, the whole 'money' thing problem (wanting more and more) is ultimately about social status and appearance. An huge part of the population is obsessed with that crap, and our whole economic model revolves right now around that (including the obsession with 'social media').


All pretty ridiculous if you ask me, is like observing an huge group of chimpanzees (maybe 5,000 mill. out of the total population act like chimps). The peak of human evolution!


Matt Franko said...

IIRC in the Greek scirptures it is termed 'pleonexia' or 'more-having'... commonly translated as 'greed' but I think the original 'more-having' is more revealing...

imv these people are being disgraced...

rsp,

NeilW said...

What's more interesting is wanting to take money *off* people that have saved lots of it.

I can understand wanting to stop them using the money to buy influence and power, but just taking it off people out of spite. What's the point in doing that?

You don't alter their connections by doing that. You just make them want to hit back.

Peter Pan said...

Taxation out of spite? Where has this occurred?
Off with their troubled little heads! How's that for spiteful...

James said...

but just taking it off people out of spite. What's the point in doing that?

It comes from the same thought process of believing people should be forced to work against their will, if that's what the majority want.

Greg said...

"The Super Rich Are as Miserable as the Rest of Us"


Good!!

Misery loves company. But at least they are still way richer.

If that money can't buy them happiness then another 25 million won't either, so screw 'em.

Its impossible to satisfy people who wish to have almost complete control over their lives. Because in order to have complete control over YOUR OWN life you must also control OTHERS! There isn't any other way.

Clonal said...

I agree with Neil. Hoarding money is not an issue. The Government can always spend more money to compensate.

What is at issue is rent seeking, buying of influence, and a shifting of the control of real resources from the community at large to a small elite group.

However, I disagree with him on taxation. The taxation is not out of spite, but an effort to reduce their (the oligarchy's) control over real resources, prevent inter-generational transfer of that control and influence.

Tom Hickey said...

"Inequality" is not chiefly an economic issue as it appears to be on the surface. It is the same old social and political issue garbed in neoliberal capitalism/oligarchic capitalism.

The remedy is therefore not solely or even chiefly economic, but cultural and institutional. Society would have to be restructured to correct the fundamental issues which involve power and control, the consequences of which are reflected in social, political and economic asymmetries. These asymmetries lead to inefficiencies on one hand, and on the other outcomes that undermine system effectiveness. Eventually, this leads to instability, dysfunction and possible systemic collapse into overt conflict.

Soaking the rich is a sideshow when what is needed is progressive reform to level the playing field and reduce the level of social, political and economic asymmetry through cultural revision and institutional change. The priorities are seriously out of whack, and this due to a whole number of factors, making the task difficult to impossible.

The conservative view is to impose a structure that worked in the past on the unwarranted assumption that it would work again. but the context is completely different. and it is doubtful that the past could even be replicated now.

Radical solutions involve testing untried assumptions, which is a dangerous move that is usually only justified when other options have been exhausted or a shock is so drastic as to call for immediate change in the hope of adapting quickly enough.

Some middle course is still possible and that's what we need to be discussing instead of palliatives that only kick the can down the road.

Ignacio said...

Always "spend more money to compensate" is neither a realistic or a wise solution for many reasons.

Why should the government satisfy infinity savings desire of private sector? Is not like that money sites idle you know, it eventually creates all sort of bubbles, inefficiency and waste. The whole theory that you can later on drain through taxes is politically naive (just see what we are discussing here), and anyway by then you already have created the disaster.

Building up huge stocks of money may not be good in the long run, it just creates instability. Instead try to favour recycling of current stocks to create flows with the proper incentives (and taxing certain things is good for this), before increasing accommodation to the already uber-rich.

Tom Hickey said...

I agree with Ignacio in the wider perspective and with Neil in the narrower one.

As long as neoliberalism prevails, the only way to make life bearable for the the 99% is to accommodate hoarding by the 1%.

However, that system is unsustainable socially, politically and economically, and as Ignacio pointed out in another excellent comment, it is based on the rules of private property that developed gradually in the West since the Renaissance.

Inequality has always and everywhere been institutional and the different types of governance that result in asymmetrical class and power structure is based on institutional arrangements that can be changed. Improving the present situation involves hanging the institutional arrangements, in particular assumptions about the role of private property rights in society.

This is essentially where the issues lie in acquisitive societies in which acquisition (= distribution) is based on institutional arrangements having to do with property.