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Wealth Therapy Tackles Woes of the Rich
HughPickens.com writes: Jana Kasperkevic writes in The Guardian that it can be very stressful to be rich. "It's really isolating to have a lot of money. It can be scary – people's reaction to you," says Barbara Nusbaum, an expert in money psychology. "There is a fair amount of isolation if you are wealthy." According to Clay Cockrell, who provides therapy for rich, this means the rich tend to hang out with other rich Americans, not out of snobbery, but in order to be around those who understand them and their problems. One big problem is not knowing if your friends are friends with you or your money. "Someone else who is also a billionaire – they don't want anything from you! Never being able to trust your friendships with people of different means, I think that is difficult," says Cockrell. "As the gap has widened, they [the rich] have become more and more isolated."
Sci-fi author John Scalzi has published an entertaining take-down of the cluelessness in this article.
If the simplest solution is to donate all your wealth?
Let me find the world's smallest violin for you guys.
Most societies would be more than willing to help ease the terrible burden of an abundance of assets. Raising the taxes on high incomes and capital gains would help reverse the Reagan-era onwards trend of wealth redistribution towards the higher income and wealth segments of society. We now know that wealth did not start trickling downwards, and grownups need to step in to correct the mistakes.
-- That grumpy BSD guy - http://bsdly.blogspot.com/
... is hire someone to manage their wealth and disguise themselves and go live among normal people to "cure" themselves of their own self imposed exile. AKA go live like a normal person instead. Wealth is something you can leave behind at any moment, there's no law of nature saying you need to be around your own wealth. AKA think of it like going on vacation.
People on this planet are so stupid.
Another problem is that if you ever lose your wealth, you tend to lose your rich friends too. Other rich people might not be your friends because of the money, but because they're essentially just networking in order to get business opportunities. When you lose your wealth you become useless to them. I've personally noticed that the only real friends you have tend to be the ones you found in college. You might find a few from high school too.
So, other people have their own problems. I bet you still complain when you stub your toe even though there are people with no feet.
Giving away money isn't the solution, any more than chopping your foot off solves the foot issue. You can't buy yourself out of the feeling people are judging you.
This is true all over. How often do posters on this site kick back and have a beer after their friends come home from their job on the lawn service crew, or as an auto mechanic? Are most of your friends in technical positions? Do most of your friends have interests that align with your own? Same sort of thing.
People responding to this article act like they are fonts of egalitarianism when if you look at it they are probably just as judgmental (up and down, the responses being a case in point) as the purported billionaires in TFA.
Sci-fi author John Scalzi has published an entertaining take-down of the cluelessness in this article.
One thing Scalzi has missed in his screed is this:
Noblesse oblige is a French phrase literally meaning "nobility obliges". It is the concept that nobility extends beyond mere entitlements and requires the person with such status to fulfill social responsibilities, particularly in leadership roles.
And it's one of the things that's missing from a lot of the 1%ers. This society made it possible for them to be 1%ers. They have a debt to society. And like the Lanisters – who always pay their debts – so should they.
I think the rich don't want to be around the poor because of their preconceived notions about the poor. I am poor because I have a disability that destroyed my career and makes it nearly impossible to hold a job. While I sometimes stress about money, I am largely happy because I don't measure my self-worth by how many possessions I have or by the amount of money I have in my bank account. Positive relationships are more important. Doing something you love is more important. If the rich have trouble forming positive relationships or doing what they love because of how much money they have, then my suggestion would be to give it away.
If you go around driving a high end luxury car, Armani suits, gold Rolex watches, etc ... you're going to get attention.
Now, if you live your life like old school humble Protestants/Jews - live in a small house, wear Timex watches, at best a Brooks Brother's suit only when you need to, drive a Toyota, etc ... you don't have to worry.
And if you're really wealthy, biz causal and and a beat up anything. I actually met a very wealthy person and he was so low key I didn't know until I went to his place of business and one of his executives told me who he was - a guy who owned a $200 million concrete business.
Geeze!
Stealing from the poor is far more effort - you need to steal from loads of them.
Hey, it worked for the Waltons!
Many dogs, if given unlimited food, will eat themselves to death. Yes, really. These dogs have no restraint and will consume food until their stomachs cannot physically hold any more. The stomach may rupture, and if not treated quickly, that is fatal.
I think of most of the super rich as suffering from the same sort of problem, only with money instead of food. They will earn, steal, and horde wealth beyond all sense. Even if it causes great harm to many others, damages society, they can't stop themselves. An example is wage theft. We have many people working in the restaurant business, for extremely low pay. But it seems the low pay isn't low enough to suit some owners, who bully their workers into working a few extra hours off the clock, delay paychecks, miscalculate the pay in their favor, and other tricks. It might be somewhat understandable if the franchises were struggling, but often they are doing very well indeed, don't really need more money. Nor is the owner hurting for money. Why then do they do it? They don't have good reason. Reasons of the "trickle down" variety are wrong. It simply is not possible for one person to use vast wealth efficiently. They can blow thousands on luxury conveniences that save a few minutes here and there, but it is not good value.
Meanwhile, the cheated workers must spend even more time struggling to get by on extremely limited means. The old expression "time is money" is so true for the poor. A lot of expense can be eliminated by burning more time. Dishwasher broken? Wash dishes by hand! Water cut off? Lug your laundry to a laundromat, use paper plates and plastic spoons, and as for showers, well, can rent a cheap motel room or visit the Y, but not every day. Instead, keep the deodorants and perfumes handy, and wear a cap to hide your hair. Toilets can be flushed with buckets of rainwater. Car repossessed? Take public transport, or bike or walk. The poor are forced to work around all kinds of things that the middle class take for granted, and ingenious and actually better and healthier though some of the workarounds are, it all takes time. What might they be able to accomplish if they didn't have to spend so much time scrapping and scrounging for every penny?
We should keep constant watch on the rich, and rein them in. Instead, we practically worship them. That's not good for anyone. People think the rich are really special, leaders and doers who've been rewarded with great wealth for their hard work, think it's all merited. Think they're John Galt. Some are, no doubt. However, when such status is given to someone who doesn't merit it, the result is almost always bad. That's where we as a society have fallen down. We let these undeserving rich get away with murder. In all the fraud and cheating that resulted in the Great Recession, only Madoff ended up in prison. This Angelo Mozilo should have gone to jail, instead he was only banned from ever running a company again, and allowed to keep much of the wealth he had stolen, and live on in freedom. Sure, he was fined a record amount, a fact they like to play up to try to show how tough they are on rich criminals, but it didn't reduce him to poverty, far from it. Since then, a few more perps have been put away, but it took years to do it. Meanwhile, little people are routinely dragged through the mud over petty debts. Some consequences would be okay if the big people faced the same consequences, but they don't.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"