If you missed Timothy Noah’s excellent 10-part piece on growing income inequality in America, I would suggest making the time to enjoy it here. Informative, potentially infuriating, and absolutely worth setting aside a bit of time to read.
As an additional prelude to this post, you may want to read Dan Froomkin’s piece on how we may be headed for another financial disaster, with housing prices in the country plummeting yet again, even as we’re in the midst of a tenuous economic recovery.
Now, on with the show.
There’s a real rift growing between the have-a-lots and the have-nothings in this country, and for a variety of reasons. Income inequality, disproportionate distribution of wealth at the very tippy-top of the population, growing economic strife and struggle among 90% of the population, the complete and utter decimation of the middle class, etc.
And most people are primarily upset with the nonchalance exhibited by the wealthy or moderately wealthy towards the current economic standing of the many. That, in my estimation, is the thorn that really sticks in the side of people who are just trying to get by.
But before you run out and wrap one of your last remaining blankets around a stick and light it on fire for a makeshift torch, take a step back and try to understand the other side.
And by understand the other side, I mean “understand that the rich don’t understand you”.
It’s true. The rich don’t understand your troubles, your day-to-day stress level, or the worries that plague your days and deprive you of sleep each night.
How could they? They’ve likely never had concerns like yours. They probably haven’t ever spent a single moment wondering how they’re going to make the house payment (on their vacation cottage on the Vineyard), or whether their (third) car would be repossessed, or if they would be able to afford the electric bill (for their in-home sauna and grotto filtration system).
So they don’t understand. They can’t understand. Their existence lacks the kinds of character-building experiences that regular people deal with each and every single day.
And, to be fair, they have concerns of their own.
In fact, their concerns are hard work. The sorts of things that worry rich people take an awful lot of energy.
Mainly because they have to make them up first.
You see, the drama that populates the minds of the wealthy has to be manufactured. They have no real concerns, and so they must pick up their imaginations and create it themselves.
And that’s hard work, crafting your own drama. Much like the sweat and labor and craftsmanship that goes into their marble staircases and hand-built Mercedes-Benz AMG car engines and the hand-laid tiling in their new in-ground pool.
Rich people have it rough, man. Making up all the things that they worry about in between sips of 50-year-old scotch and bites of $330,000 white truffle is incredibly difficult. Particularly when you don’t have a little help from real, ordinary life concerns to give you a starting point.
The blank slate is a difficult place to work from, and rich people are stuck with it all the time. Like a lump of clay without form, they must make something from virtually nothing.
And so, like the underpaid and malnourished workers who mine their wives’ diamonds in the sweltering heat, they roll up their sleeves and get to work, concocting all sorts of concerns for themselves.
“These taxes are keeping me from upgrading the sound system on my yacht. How can I reduce what I pay my employees in order to save a little something for me?”
“Which superstar musical artist will I hire for several thousand dollars to play for about 7 minutes at my daughter’s thirteenth birthday party?”
“Where will I find a private charter jet to fly my wife and I 500 miles for a seafood dinner on the coast?”
“Waiter, wasn’t this dessert supposed to come with a layer of genuine gold on top?”
You see – who among us has the fortitude, the strength, the resolve to stand up and craft our own concerns like these? And how can we be so upset with the rich, understanding how much effort they must put in to craft their own drama, their own worries and doubts?
So, next time you’re consumed with some silly woe like “how will I afford to put brakes on this hunk of crap car so I can get to work and continue to earn just enough to buy food for my kids?” or “will I be able to finally make the house payment this month?” or “I sure hope the kids don’t grow for a few more days, because I don’t have any money left to buy them clothes right now”, think of how hard it must be for rich people. After all, your concerns and worries and stressors are just sitting right there, pre-made and ready to thwart your every attempt to live a comfortable life, get a good night’s sleep, or avoid an ulcer.
But rich people have to come up with their own. And that’s hard work.
