Yves here. While this site talks regularly about the 1% and the 0.1%, we don’t often give a more specific idea of who they are. A recent Bill Moyers show gave a vignette of the super-rich, not just the 0.1%, but the 0.01%, who as we know all too well are playing a vastly disproportionate role in reshaping politics and our society.
By Gaius Publius, a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, Americablog, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius, Tumblr and Facebook.A version of this piece first appeared at digby’s Hullabaloo. GP’s article archive is here
The video is important, not only because it’s well done and very watchable, but because it’s about something almost entirely invisible — the lives of the very very rich — and that invisibility has important political consequences. Most people don’t have any idea what the lives of the very very rich — the “billionaire class” as Bernie Sanders calls them — are actually like. Consider this chart, starting from the bottom:
The bottom line shows what people think is the ideal wealth distribution. But since they know the distribution is out of whack, they take their best guess at how out of whack things are, shown in the middle line. No one has a clue, it seems, that the top line is what’s really going on. In other words (rounding slightly):
- Ideal: Top 20% owns 30% of all American wealth.
- Best guess: Top 20% owns 60% of all American wealth.
- In reality: Top 20% owns 85% of all American wealth.
Now look at the top 1% and you see vast differences in the various strata, the layers. For example, this is from 2011 data (again slightly rounded):
- Average income of Top 0.01% — $23,800,000
- Average income of the rest of the Top 0.1% — $2,800,000
- Average income of the rest of the Top 1% — $1,020,000
- Average income of the rest of the Top 10% — $161,000
If you just looked at the top 1% as a whole, that huge gap between the 0.01% (the “1% of the 1%”) and everyone else really skews the averages. You have to look at the segments individually to see them properly.
To show that in another way, if there were only 100 total people in the Top 1%, the top one person in that group would take in almost $24 million per year. The next nine would average only $2.8 million. The remaining 90 people would average just $1 million each. That one person is a king.
The Wealth Disparity at the Top Belongs to Just a Few
Keep that income gap of nearly 10-to-1 between the Top 0.01% and the rest of the One-Percent in mind. Now let’s look at the population size. If there are 150 million individual (non-corporate) IRS returns filed each year (very close; see Table 2; pdf), there are 1.5 million in the 1%, and 15,000 in the 0.01%. Of these, roughly 500 are already billionaires by wealth.
Five hundred billionaires, 15,000 people averaging nearly $24,000,000 per year, and every group below them averages about than a tenth or less in earnings. Look at that list above, and notice the bottom bullet. Everyone from the top 2% through the top 10% earns less on average than $200,000 per year — 1/120th of our lucky 15,000.
Why point this out? Because people have no idea what life for the 15,000 is actually like, much less life for someone in the David Koch class. When we think of the wealthy, we imagine MacMansions blown big; we conjure pictures we’ve seen from wealthier neighborhoods, and we just … scale up a bit. We see monster Cadillac SUVs and say, “Ah, the very rich.” People who live like us, but with more stuff.
We know that this can’t be true, quite, but it can’t be off by too much, right? And then we go on with our lives.
One Reason We Don’t Have Revolutions
Our image of the very very rich — MacMansions, only scaled up; nice cars, only pricier; like us, but with more toys — is very very wrong. It’s also one reason we haven’t had a class revolt since the New Deal era. Chris Rock talked about it in the context of Ferguson:
[Q] For all the current conversation about income inequality, class is still sort of the elephant in the room.
[Rock] Oh, people don’t even know. If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets. If the average person could see the Virgin Airlines first-class lounge, they’d go, “What? What? This is food, and it’s free, and they … what? Massage? Are you kidding me?”
Except even he doesn’t scale up enough. These people never ride first class because they never fly commercial. He rides first class; they own airplanes. They don’t own homes, they own estates and multi-million-dollar condos in buildings like Moyers discusses — so many estates and condos in fact that not one of them is “home” in the normal sense. Now extend that — for most of these people, not one country is home either.
You and me, we live in a city. People like Chris Rock live in a city and get to travel a lot. Real Money lives in the world, everywhere, all of it. And most are loyal to none of it.
Bill Moyers Shows How “Real Money” Lives — In Their “Private Snow Globe”
Now the film. It’s about the lives of the very very rich, the places they buy to rarely live in, and how they’re transforming cities like New York. Enjoy.
From the transcript, a tease (italics mine):
BILL MOYERS: A private city in the sky for the rich — the very, very rich. As Goldberger wrote: “if you seek a symbol of income inequality, look no farther than 57th Street.”
PAUL GOLDBERGER: They’re mostly the international super-rich. It’s a whole category of people. Most people are living there part time and have other residences either in this region, or elsewhere in the US or elsewhere in the world, or all of the above. And they’re people who can afford to spend l0, 15, 20, 30 million dollars on an apartment. …
BILL MOYERS: The penthouse apartment is under contract for a reported $90 million. The hedge fund tycoon behind the deal told The New York Times he thought “it would be fun” to own “the Mona Lisa of apartments,” although he has no intention of living there. …
PAUL GOLDBERGER: There’s a prominent real estate appraiser in New York who referred to these buildings as safe deposit boxes in the sky. Places where people put cash and they rarely visit themselves.
BILL MOYERS: So think of them as plush Swiss banks, with maid service, for people who, as one critic wrote, “see the city as their private snow globe.” When this building, 432 Park Avenue, is finished next year, it will surpass even One57, climbing 150 feet taller than the Empire State Building before its spire.
No pharaoh ever dreamed on so grand a scale. Each tower is a feat of technological, economic and political engineering. Promoted to the very rich as the very best.
Note the amazing images; the text can’t do them justice. Note also the hubris, the mark of the billionaire class.
These people control most aspects of public life. Whether you live poorly or well, you work so they can be richer. You’re fired when they want you fired. You’re killed — in their wars; by their poisons; by their unaffordable health care system; by your poverty; by their police — when they want you to die.
Like fish in water, you live with their greed every day. You watch their propaganda (we call it “entertainment”). You vote for their candidates. Their touch and reach is everywhere, yet they’re invisible to us. The key to their destruction is to expose their lives to view.
I’ve talked about “collapse” — social, political, climatological — most recently on Virtually Speaking. When collapses come, they usually come fast. The last time we came close to collapse was the Great Depression. If we’re poised on the cusp of another, god help us … no one will have fun then, not us, not them. But if things do break apart, it won’t be for lack of patience on our side, but hubris on theirs. They will have forced it themselves … unless they’re stopped.
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I know others have put it but before I think this little calculator provides a good ongoing balance in the politics of envy.
http://www.globalrichlist.com/wealth
This calculator seems a great way of assessing to what extent we the readers of this are to some degree pots calling the kettle black. Certainly the results shocked me. This doesnt mean something doesnt need to be done about the lies and obfuscation of the ridiculously effluent (deliberate misspelling). Its just about keeping things in balance.
Punchline: The aristocrats!
Part Deux… ***The After Glow***… after the first ravenous act of debauchery… the high requires more victims to acquire… even a hint of the original.
P{art trois… orb auto asphyxiation… what else will satisfy…
Skippy…. sadly they did not get the memo… run away~~~~
http://www.47reviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/12.jpg
Worse. There were (quite a few) aristocrats who had nothing but a long list of (known) ancestors to their name with someone special somewhere at the start or so.
LOL! It doesn’t get more obscene than that!
Punchline II: “… as the dark shadow of plutocracy falls across all things…”
Lambert probably should have provided this link. His reference may be too US-centric:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aristocrats
Thanks ! The more I think I understand different cultures, the more I realise how clueless I remain… What you guys think Monty Python is all about has my head spinning.
A stream-of-consciousness comedic style, which blends and bends the mind to the closing credits.
Skippy… sorta like spike would stop mid skit and mumble “did I write that”.
He’s not the Messiah. He’s a very naughty boy.
Indubitably…. They are the ***Messiah’s*** of very naughty boys and gals… as I can attest.
In my case it was either Python on the black and white tube, perched on one of those metal skeleton carts, back in the tiled family area of the house w/ me sprawled on the floor – or – Don Rickles with the rest of the family in the shag carpeted sunken w/ comfy couch and big colour tube.
My belly laffs were akin to the ones noted in the link above, whilst the family’s were similar to humans watching naughty monkeys in a cage [mirror???]. Had to gag myself with my own hands or risk diminishing the Rickles experience for the others and the consequences that might wrought.
Mother said it was too 3 stooges for her tastes, both parents where well educated professionals w/ political conservative views and w/ progressive social attitudes.
Skippy… Climbing the North Face of the Uxbridge Road
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U0tDU37q2M
Cheers Clive and quite courage…
PS. Although for myself the “Hairdressers Expedition on Everest” explains our predicament to a T … to much bitching in the tent amongst other noted issues… TA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F2SJS6B1wQ
In the U.S. we usually didn’t realize the extent to which the Pythons were riffing on things that were happening in the UK. We didn’t know the background events so it just looked like absurdist humor.
Gilbert Gottfried Aristocrats joke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGVL_reIuJM&list=PL57CEE162D225514C&index=3
skippy…. when only the apogee will suffice….
A 75 story billionaire penis raping the park with its shadow.
Following Lambert’s reference, I have to tip my hat to that one. Crude and vulgar it is – yet it fits like a glove.
“The Aristocrats” is also an answer to the foolish meme that those who have issues with the distribution of wealth are envious or jealous of them. “Not if you paid me.”
I’m so glad that someone is finally taking this up. It’s not the 1%. It’s not necessary even the 0.1% (although that gets really borderline). It’s the 0.01%. They just run their “safety buffer” from 9% to 0.9% (top 10% to 1%), but it still gives them a plenty of cannon fodder.
The top 1% doesn’t even remotely give the idea of the wealth concentration – in fact, it massively skews the image. At the same time it promotes the “American dream” – getting into 1% is so much easier than getting into 0.01% (it takes 10 fold increase in income to get from 10th percentile to top percentile, but 24 times increase from top percentile to 0.01th percentile)
This would be true if it wasn’t more like the top 9% all sucking up to the 1% who they wish they were (and have a much better chance indeed of becoming, though still small) in class warfare against the 90%. Marxist class analysis has fallen out of fashion, but if you pay any attention it is easy to see how the ultra-rich and the merely wealthy form a bourgeois class that stands against the rest.
The opoop (one percent of one percent).
And . . . the opoopoop (one percent of one percent of one percent.
Useful acronyms?
Keep deception and lies far from me,
Give me neither poverty nor riches;
Feed me with the food that is my portion,
That I not be full and deny You and say, “Who is the Lord?”
Or that I not be in want and steal,
And profane the name of my God. Proverbs 30:8-9 New American Standard Bible (NASB) [emphasis added]
God bless Bill Moyers for the work he does.
Once they took the Concorde out of service, there was no longer much need for the .01% to fly commercial anymore. And of course that is why there are several SSBJ (supersonic business jet) proposals out there.
This is the policy of jealousy. Class Warfare is destructive. And that what this writer wants… Destruction/ revolution. Winston Churchill said it best… “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” Equal opportunity is the goal, not equal outcome.
Straw man. No one is talking about equal outcomes.
And you seem utterly clueless about the extent of welfare to the rich, starting with hedgies and private equity barons getting their labor income taxed at capital gains rates, to the level of support given to major banks, to the extent that they can’t properly be considered to be private companies, to Walmart having a large portion of employees rely on government handouts (food stamps, Medicaid) to survive, to all sorts of tax breaks given to court employers, to the point that that these new employers aren’t net contributors to the local economy. That’s only a starter list, by the way. I could go on at much greater length.
Oh, and how about the way CEO pay has skyrocketed? Even the pro business stalwart the Economist has just declared the idea of shareholder democracy (which BTW is an economic theory, not a legal requirement) to be a failed experiment. Its chief proponent Michael Jensen renounced it years ago. All it has done is hurt shareholders and facilitated extraction by the CEO and C suite.
The distribution of income is not the result of some magic meritocratic process (I’ve written long form on how meritocracy is unachievable but most people buy into the illusion because they have an emotional need to see the system as fair: http://www.auroraadvisors.com/articles/Fit.pdf. Income and wealth distribution are the result of policy. And the top wealthy have done a very good job of restructuring the system over the last 30 years so as to allow them to extract more. There is now less income mobility in the US than in medieval Europe. But you’ll come here and try to tell the serfs they have an attitude problem, as opposed to the system has been redesigned to extract more and more from them to the benefit of their supposed betters.
Well said! Absurd and ridiculous mega-fortunes don’t really even improve the lives of the squillionaires who hold them, beyond a certain limit. They are nothing more than a lot of zeroes on a computer screen.
The real menace to our world from these ridiculously huge fortunes is that squillionaires run out of nice things to buy, and begin to buy politicians, and think tanks, and invest in wars, etc.
Yves,
Out of my sincere respect for your time and the work you do, please see links below:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=troll
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trolling [definition 2]
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trolled [definition 1]
Whenever I hear somebody say equal opportunity, I think “There’s somebody who’s happy with a rigged game.” So I am more cynical than Yves.
“Class warfare is destructive.”
Indeed, the war of the uber-wealthy against the rest of us has been incredibly destructive…for the rest of us, anyway.
If you really think we’ve got anything anywhere near “equality of opportunity” now, you really need to go visit your proctologist, as I fear you maybe suffering from cranial-rectal inversion disorder….
How is equal opportunity possible when some people inherit hundreds of millions of dollars, and other people don’t even have enough to eat during childhood?
I agree that class warfare is destructive. But it’s always started by the rich, either by seizing more than their fair share of society’s resources, or by acting to prevent others from reducing the unfairness of society.
What one is born with has nothing to do with equal opportunity. G-d (or whatever you believe in or don’t) gives people at birth different attributes (gifted intelligence, physical skills- sports- musical talent, character/ moral strength, good looks- models, amongst many others, etc.). Happiness has little to do with money, especially at the extremes. We are not born equal and trying to correct that is akin to stealing and is rooted in envy. An argument can be made that forced income redistribution is a direct violation of the 10 commandments and is a violation of the equal protection clause in our constitution. Back on topic… Therefore, the issue is simply equal opportunity, of which there has never been more opportunity in the history of mankind than there is today. Maybe not for your generation, as you have to be able to adjust to the changing times. In the past there was an agricultural or industrial revolution amongst others and in today’s case the digital revolution. There are always displaced workers in each cycle and in each cycle aggregate standards of living increase. So you may not have noticed the good that is occurring because you weren’t paying attention. Your children eventually will, assuming you teach them good values and to be positive and resourceful. Opportunities only exists when acted upon. Most of man’s great accomplishments have occurred from positive view. Little of good comes from negativity and boy is it here in spades.
Churchill also fervently believed in good old fashioned, gloves off imperialism and gassing civilians from airplanes. So what’s your point?
Yeah, right. I’m “just jealous” of people who were born on home plate (and then some), and who then turn into avaricious greedy bastards who believe that they “work so hard” and “deserve” the gadzillions they acquired through inheritance, thievery, plunder, rapine, etc.
Yeah yeah: jealousy, that’s the ticket.
Re: policy of jealousy. I think you mean “envy.” But who would expect an apologist for the disgustingly wealthy like you, Jeff, to know English?
And of course, with perfect hubris, the rich assume they are envied.
No, rich folks. We’re just sick of paying your bills. If you would pull yourselves up by your bootstraps and just pay the freight for your luxuries instead of rigging the game to make sure the rest of us subsidize every g.d. aspect of your lives, you might be a little less rich, and also, just maybe, a little less hated.
Only capitalism also seems to be pretty good at the mass production of misery …
Except our system is closer to fascism than genuine free markets. There’s nothing free market about government subsidized banks.
Jeff, I find your remark offensive. You miss the point. Living as if no one else matters is antisocial. And using one’s wealth to buy politicians and shape public policy is tyranny. You think that your vaunted freedoms are what facilitated these riches. Freedom to defraud? Freedom to exploit? Freedom to hire thugs to club your striking workers? When it comes to real personal freedoms, like the freedom to ingest or inhale whatever I wish, or to marry whomever I please, these are libertarian ideals I wholly support. But freedom to make life worse for everyone else is NOT something I would support. Finally Jeff, it isn’t just posh apartments for their poodles we’re talking about here, its tax loopholes for carried interest, capital gains taxes at half of wage labor tax rates and rest of Yves’ laundry list of perks. Don’t you get it? I’m not envious of the rich for their wealth, I don’t wish to be rich. I am quite simply egalitarian to the core and simply wish to have the same power as Warren Buffet and Bill Gates.
Why quote Churchill when you can quote Buffet?
And yes, it’s extremely destructive, as you agree.
Adding, this was in response to Jeff.
“Through the tax code, there has been class warfare waged, and my class has won,” (Warren) Buffett told Business Wire CEO Cathy Baron Tamraz at a luncheon in honor of the company’s 50th anniversary. “It’s been a rout.”
Buahahahaha! Equal opportunity? You must be joking, there has never been equal opportunity among classes and it has decidedly grown much worse over the past few decades as funneling money and obtaining assets (of any kind, including people) has never been easier!!!
This brings me back to a lunch I had a few days ago with a multimillionaire in Chicago who was bragging about how he knew the founder of Jimmy Johns (Jimmy John Liautaud) and how great a business man ‘Jimmy’ was. The only relevant parts of the story that I remember are:
1. The founder’s FATHER had the idea behind Jimmy Johns – so far so that he wrote the menu that exists in that type font today
2. The son was a pot dealer/smoker who was kicked out of highschool some 6 times and flunked out of university. The father had to literally pay a school to give him a HS diploma
3. The son bankrupted the business 2 times before it took off. In other words, this guy got his dad (who owned a manufacturing firm and was, himself, a millionaire) to bail him out 2 times
See how, if you cut the fat out of the story you begin to see the vain of truth: that many of these super wealthy ‘entrepreneurs’ had not the idea nor the work ethic, but had the money and knew the *right people*. And as we all know, money IS KING.
Warren Buffet: same story. Son of a senator for god’s sake! Hearing any bells or whistles go off yet?
The imposition of the skyscrapers’ shadows can only be part of their demand on the city. I immediately thought of the base of the buildings — the only entrances and exits. Surely those areas for a block or two around would be densely guarded, under some sort of private law, opaque even to city, state and military officials. Surely neighbouring buildings would be affected, with demands for increased, expensive security at least on the faces of those buildings facing the monster towers. And the water and electrical supplies — their increased security would also be a burden on the taxes of the rest of New Yorkers.
But mostly, when I looked at those towers, I thought of the World Trade Centre towers. Perhaps that is why their wealthy owners don’t plan to spend much time actually living there.
Do you think this emotional need remains as strong even if ordinary people are faced with such stark evidence of systemic unfairness (as Moyers discusses), or will they continue to convince themselves that meritocracy indeed exists in order to maintain emotional security in the face of their own exploitation? Chris Rock seems to think that if faced directly with the enormous scale of inequality most people would be inclined to some sort of political action to correct it. I’m not so sure…
You raise an interesting question. I think that many people, if made fully aware of the enormous wealth held by a few, would start to examine with a critical eye the behavior of the squillionaires, most of whom are now able to spend most of their time out of the rabble’s sight.
The Queen of England is a rare example of an enormously wealthy individual who cannot escape public attention. Look at how much time and effort the British royals have to invest in maintaining a positive public image! If all squillionaires had to endure the same level of scrutiny as Betty Windsor the people would pretty soon be disgusted with them as human beings. That is what would motivate them to start stringing them up– not so much the obscene wealth per se, but the obvious moral unworthiness of those hoarding such obscene wealth.
What every 0.01 per-center needs for validation: Their very own Eagle’s Nest in this artificial sort of Berchtesgaden. And below, invisible from their lofty aeries, death is meted out for the crime of selling an untaxed cigarette.
Looks like there was a mis-read of the referenced chart. The $1.02M referenced as the average income of the rest of the 1% (excluding the 0.1%) is actually the average income of the entire top 1%. The actual number for the 0.1-1% range looks to be around $600K.
Thanks, David. I pondered that and decided that the colors were meaningful. That is, the color of the top corner square in the big block was the same as 90% (not 100%) of the squares in the smaller block. So I decided that the $1 million number represented only those. You could be right, or not. Either way, we’re dealing with low numbers relative to the really big earners.
But thanks for following the links and giving it this much thought. Interesting click-through, yes?
GP
“Now extend that — for most of these people, not one country is home either.”
Something that in my view is not nearly emphasized enough.
I remember how all the cool kids disparaged Pat Buchannan for his old fashioned economic nationalism, and how everything LABELED free trade (like “free enterprise” what it means in theory and what it means in realty is two different things) was better than motherhood, apple pie, and sliced bread.
Say you own a piece of land, and building a plutonium waste dump will render the area a toxic, zombie infested wasteland for a billion years…..well, if you don’t live there, not your problem.
We live in a world (at least in the USA) in which class mobility is more achievable then at any time in history.
As an example, one of the cofounders of the company whatsapp was an average class person from the Ukraine (not privileged). He moved to the USA and in approximately ten years became a billionaire as his startup was sold to Facebook for approximately $20 billion. This was never before possible in the entire history of mankind. He created something of value that scales the world in which each user is happy with the service provided at the cost paid. He earned this massive wealth that many here cannot comprehend. Many here literally want to steal his wealth/ property.
Knowledge has been the key to wealth and power throughout the history of mankind. Today, access to knowledge is attainable to more people at the lowest socioeconomic level than at any time in the history of the world. Anyone with Internet access has more information available to them in an instant than the president of the U.S. approximately 20 years ago. This is a major game changer when it comes to the aggregate future standards of living and is vastly ignored or underestimated.
Rather than create a poor or a lower middle class that is dependent on social welfare we should be focused on enabling them to get educated and do the hard work required to lift their lot forever.
Access to a college education is now free online, (excluding the degree). There are countless free TED videos by experts that are short and concise on almost any conceivable self help topic.
We live in a new world with new tools enabling those whom apply themselves to change their lives and those of their children forever.
This site and article in particular are both destructive (class warfare) and misguided (wrong solution). Never before has the proverb “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” carried more weight.
We have free speech so continue to attack my views and be hateful with your jealousy. I’d suggest you live in a country that is more aligned with your values than one in which enables and rewards those whom add to society by creating things of value that others desire.
I understand that some people value equality of outcome higher than equality of opportunity. Of course, I use the terms loosely as we live in an imperfect world which is getting better at an ever increasing pace. Yes, higher standards of living, safer- falling crime rates, longer and healthily lives, and more freedoms than at any other time in the history of mankind. When viewing history in the log scope of time one can see the radical improvements that have occurred.
I wish you all health and happiness regardless of your differing views and beliefs.
See the Economist; at best, class mobility is where it was a generation ago.
I have never understood the jealousy and hate tropes; I’m not jealous of the wealthy’s wealth, and I don’t hate them; I would never want to be one of the 0.01% because they seem to lead very unhappy, mistrustful lives, and their kids are often really messed up. My real problem with them is that they bought up the political system, and are making a hash of running the country and the world.
Adding, please don’t insult people by saying their political views are motivated by animus, and then go on to wish them health and happiness. It’s jarring, especially given that much wealth is generated by people’s ill health.
And much ill health is generated by the industrial activities and investments of the wealthy.
Class mobility is irrelevant to the indispensable lower class which holds up the ladder, the bottom layers of the pyramid which hold up the top, etc. If we will always have garbage, and will always want the garbage collected and taken away, then we will always want garbage collectors. That means we will want to make sure that some people are never able to class-mobilized out of those garbage collector jobs. So, since most of us work or will always work in one or another equivalent of garbage collection, and our social class richers will keep society arranged so that most of us will not mobilize out of our garbage collection slots unless/until some new human-sacrifice units are recruited into those slots when they open up as we leave them; the question arises . . . how well or badly would we like ourselves and all the other garbage-collectors-for-life to be paid and treated?
Indeed. Never before have so many been rendered downwardly mobile. Got middle class?
I love it! Me, the other day: “The way we spend money on the military would make a drunken pharaoh blush.” Do two points make a meme?
I’m on Welfare. And yet I live in a McMansion. I get this swank mother-in-law apartment for labor. As the caretaker for this 4,800 sq. ft. vacation rental, my life is a microcosm of neo-feudalism. Except I have less claim on the place than a serf would. If the place sells (it’s been on the market for c.5 years for $1.7M because a) it’s crap and b) it doesn’t pay for itself), there’s no guarantee the new owners will let me stay. And I’m damn sure they’d feel no noblesse oblige.
The owners made the mistake of building way too much house way too fast, then putting it on the market at the bottom. It truly deserves the epithet of McMansion. It’s what you would get if Walmart sold “custom” homes.
As a tradesman (house painter) with a deep seated belief in the dignity of work, houses like these make me sick. I was so looking forward to living somewhere where everything was done the best it could be. But it’s not built for the ages. It gives the impression of quality without actually having it. What a squandering of Mother Earth’s gifts.
I’m always told there isn’t enough money for pro-grade tools, or even to have the trees trimmed. One day a 20′ widow maker dropped onto the lawn where I had been mowing moments before. The solution? Don’t go under the trees when it’s windy.
And yet they’re on an 11-day ocean cruise right now. If that wasn’t enough, the owner has the gall to complain to me about how expensive email is on a cruise. Oh cry me a freaking river!
They own multiple houses (can’t call them homes). They’re not .01%, not even 10%, but they sure wannabe.
And then I read about people buying places they never intend to live. People with so many houses they don’t have a home. Combine that with what we spend on the military, and I can feel the well being being sucked right out of me.
When a deer wanders through the yard, it sucks a small amount of energy from the environment. I’d like to be able to visualize that, and then walk a superrich through the yard and see what happens. I imagine it’d be like watching a black hole go by.
But clearly their ways of thinking and doing are adaptive, given the givens. Horrible.
It’s the terrible truth. Somebody should do something about that. ;)
Re the quality of the house, I heard a contractor say that if he bid jobs for what they should cost (good materials, skilled workers) he’d never get one. He has to cut corners to get business at all. If the customers don’t care about quality even conscientious contractors can’t afford to.
And that’s a terrible truth, too. Can’t count the number of times I haven’t been allowed to do my best. I’ve often gotten in trouble because I just assumed people would want their homes to be as beautiful as possible, not to mention well protected against the elements. I’m a talented painter, but I suck on a production crew.
The thing about cutting corners is, you only get a couple per job. Beyond a certain point, it’s all cut, no corner.
There’s this thing that happens in a room when you’ve gotten everything just so. It doesn’t pop, it rings and glows like a giant, silent, luminescent bell. Beauty above me, beauty beside me, beauty below me. I love it.
A world that has no time for gloriously pointless beauty is hardly worth living in. Somebody oughta do something about that. ;)
My least favorite thing was being told, “make it cover in 1,” when the label says it takes 2 coats. Just going through the motions, not actually accomplishing anything.
Microcosm, meet macrocosm.
Like this guy, he just had to share his pride in his new purchase with the proles. Even hired PR consultants to coordinate the press release. And he got his dough how? “Vistex was founded in 1999 to meet a marketplace need for software solutions that utilize data-based sales and marketing programs to drive consumer behavior, control costs, and enhance corporate profitability.” I feel driven to barf.
Obscene you say, voxhumana. Quite right “OB SCENUM” = what is out of the public scene.
These people control most aspects of public life.
Yes Yves, here is important to show reality in order not to let false perception of reality go on. It is also important to understand why common people do accept not to react to uncivil possession of wealth tyrans.
1- In XXIth century, there is enough wealth to have a secure and happy world. But it is not. Many people are convinced that enough is not enough. It comes from old ages : you can eat something today because hunting was successful, but will you eat tomorrow ? Some, in little groups of ancesters found a pleasant answer for themselves : with a leader statute, they could become prior to others for access to ressources, vital conditions of survey even in bad times. So fear of death leads to different strategies, purely private (I keep all I can get for my own), purely social (I give all to community and the redistribution occurs), or a mix. As we are social beings, model 1 is tyrannical, model 2 communist, model 3 democratic, for the choice of authority and rules. Agriculture and technology don’t change the cards. Who rules ?
2- Here stand a key point : model 3 is not stable by definition, because of constant debate. It is the only one that provides a balance between individual freedom and social peace. As the complexity of societies increase, what is one of the most relevant fact of th past 50 years, and also as human demography raised, there is no more place to be isolated on earth and no more possibilty for a local authority alone to take wise decisions.
3- But old fashioned powers are territorialy limited. The Monroe doctrine is definitely out for all powers. The unsustainable growth of production-consumption model, added to the false contribution of artificial finance profits to GDPs in certain countries / underdevelopment in others, make the frail boats of democracies pitch dangerously.
4- The most obscene asocial citizens ever seen, who help the storm grow, are those that Gaius Publius or Thomas Piketty show as the 0,01% of human beings (and their followers in the 0,1%) owning as you write not only monetary wealth, but political decisions. They aren’t passive but active and employ directly the best graduates of high schools and universities. Authority, legitimacy and confidency in public institutions are about sinking.
5- USA and Europe can either comme to disasters or to institutional reforms. The second issue is only possible when getting rid off collusion and corruption between leader parties and top economical elites. Chances to success are thin to install real democratic States of rights, with the same law for silky, white and blue collars, but not nought.
6- Of course capitalism in that case would change of face. It is exactly against what the best brains are massively employed to, like mercenaries. If in competences and expression powers the advantage is their, in the other hand 95% of populations have a hard conflict of interest with them.
7- It is therefore so easy now for demagogues to use anger of large parts of populations, as carrying on structural democratical reforms request union of educated citizens with non corruptible experts of many fields, what is difficult to organize. When a modern “menchevik” revolution is what we need in some way, both fascism and communism fans will try to make it skid and take the commands. It is also what say the 0,01% to the politicians they make eligible : “without us, the chaos”. Like Saddam Hussein or Afez El Assad, to keep in place…
8- Another difficulty, but necessity, is to realize that we have to consider different levels of democratic powers and their cohesion even from individual points of view, in regard of different levels of citizenship. Not hard for federalists, but federalists aren’t majority. From the municipality to the entire planet (and even for spatial activities), we have to find out the correct competences for each level of power, then the correct representative institutions and relationships of each with the citizens.
9- Very very rich people have shown that being today earth citizens is possible, thanks to communications and transports networks (yes, they got their own planes, but not their own airports or flying rules). They did so in a purely archaic master and servant model, because they are asocial people in their heads. They only accept others under them, not equals. They take place in the cities, at Champs Elysées or 57th street, so we cannot consider them as antisocial, but simply very primitive, in no way models. It is enough to see how their abusive private wealth lacks to other citizens to understand the lie they profess : no, everyone cannot become rich. Everyone can become rich enough to have a quiet and confortable life only if inequalities are controlled.
9- Freedom, as Amartya Sen developped the concept, can be considered as positive and negative capabilities, and in fact, in the name of complete individual freedom, the poorest only get the negative part of it and the richest capitalize the positive one only. Is the common law valid when it allows different uses, leading to opposite results ? When one is just free to accept three part time jobs at great risks for his health, and the other can support 5% of the costs’ campaign of several candidates (whoever is the elected one, he will be thankable) ?
10- And what makes the richest even richer each day, from a quantitative point of view ? Speculation and treasury bonds, tax ruling, manipulated bargains…Has Wall Street to be outlaw ? Are term markets a pure mystification ? Have public and private accountabilities of wealth strong or fluid basis ? Finally is to be rich the sign of merit or the sign of uncivility ?
Anyone remember the movie Blade Runner (the movie actually does the book justice) or Metropolis for that matter. Only the rich can afford to live “off-surface” in large towers. Reality does tend to mirror fiction. Though, even stranger (more depressing), the poor are being forced to live underground (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/05/us-china-property-basement-idUSBREA040GD20140105).
Also, nice dehumanizing noun phrase by the Reuters people, “Rat-Race”. Jesus our world is bizarre.
The nice thing about having that post re-posted here as against leaving it on Digby’s Hubbalaboo is that we get to comment on it here, whereas no one gets to comment on it over at Hubbalaboo. No one gets to comment on anything else there, either. Nothing. Nothing at all.
The invisible tyrants.
This was previously not posted. I presume it was inadvertant. Otherwise, it’s sad that this site is one-sided and intectually dishonest.
Nakedcapitalism.com is presenting destructive class warfare primarily based on jealousy. We live in a world (at least in the USA) in which class mobility is more achievable then at any time in history.
As an example, one of the cofounders of the company whatsapp was an ordinary person from the Ukraine (not privileged). He moved to the USA and in approximately ten years became a billionaire as his startup was sold to Facebook for approximately $20 billion. This was never before possible in the entire history of mankind. He created something of value that scales the world in which each user is happy with the service provided at the cost paid. He earned this massive wealth that many here cannot comprehend. Many here literally want to steal his wealth/ property.
Knowledge has been the key to wealth and power throughout the history of mankind. Today, access to knowledge is attainable to more people at the lowest socioeconomic level than at any time in the history of the world. Anyone with Internet access has more information available to them in an instant than the president of the U.S. approximately 20 years ago. This is a major game changer when it comes to the aggregate future standards of living and is vastly ignored or underestimated.
Rather than create a poor or a lower middle class that is dependent on social welfare we should be focused on enabling them to become educated and do the hard work required to lift their lot forever.
Access to a college education is now free online, (excluding the degree). There are countless free TED videos by experts that are short and concise on almost any conceivable self help topic.
We live in a new world with new tools enabling those whom apply themselves to change their lives and those of their children forever.
This site and article in particular are both destructive (class warfare) and misguided (wrong solution). Never before has the proverb “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” carried more weight.
We have free speech so continue to attack my views and be hateful with your jealousy. I’d suggest you live in a country that is more aligned with your values than one in which enables and rewards those whom add to society by creating things of value that others desire.
I understand that some people value equality of outcome higher than equality of opportunity. Of course, I use the terms loosely as we live in an imperfect world which is getting better at an ever increasing pace. Yes, higher standards of living, a safer world – falling crime rates, longer and healthily lives, and more freedoms than at any other time in the history of mankind. When viewing history from the long view one can see the radical improvements that have occurred.
I wish you all health and happiness regardless of your differing views and beliefs.
“We live in a world (at least in the USA) in which class mobility is more achievable then at any time in history.”
What percentage of people are left behind? What percentage of people never have an opportunity to achieve mobility? These are the number that matter.
That was a very good video about New York. I watched it before and take note of how very few there. We have a lot of the same in California except not in big towers and there’s videos you can search on YouTube with the rich kids of the Chinese families who own big mansions here and but don’t live in them.
We come right back around to the “scoring of America” where the Killer Algoirthms say no the computer screens and that’s the end of your access to something. Scoring has occurred for a long time, but the difference today is data selling as this score and your data get sold all over the place and the rich don’t have to deal with this. It’s what keeps inequality at an accelerated pace in the US.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2014/06/data-selling-and-direct-correlation-to.html
Instead we get our credit card transactions sold to banks and to insurance companies who do their scoring and sell it too. Just the other day, TD Bank now going to use Acxiom as a credit card issuer. What’s the world coming too when the flawed data from Acxiom is calling the shots? Read all about Argus who also sells our data to the Consumer Financial Protection agency that’s supposed to help us. Useless Cordray at the helm of that group. Dodd Frank was good in creating it, but the leader has no data mechanics logic and does little for us.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2014/08/argus-analytics-produces-share-of.html
As I keep telling all we are under the Attack of the Killer Algorithms and I made a collection of videos and links that will bring you up to speed. Be sure and watch “The Warning” about derivatives and you’ll know exactly what Citi has been up to with the recent CROmnibus bill. Quants are taking over with mathematical equations everywhere, even in writing insurance policies and the Quant documentary there is well worth your time too.
Everyone keeps wanting to make this a politician’s problem which it is but see where the real control is, the math models and the code and the politicians are not digitally literate enough to understand either I’m afraid and get bought off. Again is the risk fiddlers that do the math and hear Paul Wilmott even tell you the top executives at banks don’t even understand the models, the quants are the business.
http://www.ducknet.net/attack-of-the-killer-algorithms/