Poor millionaires
August 5, 2007, 3:51 pm
Posted by Joseph A. Komonchak
Karl Barth wrote that a preacher ought to go into the pulpit with the Bible in one hand and the daily newspaper in the other. The editors of the New York Times obligingly provided preachers today with a front-page story that fit perfectly with today’s Gospel-parable about the rich fool. It seems that many millionaires out in Silicon Valley don’t feel rich with only two or three million dollars, or even ten million, but find themselves working sixty or eighty hours a week in order to earn more. Two priceless quotes: “A few million doesn’t go as far as it used to.” And: “You’re nobody here at $10 million.”
I thought the exact same thing when I got today’s Times in my driveway. The article makes me physically ill, and I can’t wait to read all the letters that come in next week. However, I think that some of the article does ring true, particularly the portion that describes the warped lens through which these “working-class” millionares view their lives.
Methinks they need their vision adjusted.
Forgot to mention this in my first post, but kudos to Fr. Komonchak for bringing this up.
Thank god for multi-millionaires.
Everyone knows that the “compensation package” is the main stimulus for effort and hard work. Capitalism would not work without it.
And it follows that someone earning $1 million a year must be working 10 times harder than someone making $100 thousand. Someone making $10 million is working 100 times harder and everyone knows that the average CEO works thousands of times harder than a busboy.
Someone should clue in these Silicon Valley poor that Wal-Mart is looking for grocery baggers in Mexico.
It;s funny, I somehow read “working-class” as “wanting class”.
No, these people are not particularly sympathetic, but that is the point: they are indisputably wealthy so it is clear that their dissatisfactions arise not from any absolute wants that they are unable to fulfill, rather, they are a case study on the effects of relative wealth on feelings of satisfaction and well-being. The effect of income inequality increases relative disparities, and thus not surprisingly, increases dysphoric thought patterns. If you read the NYT book review you will find a review of a book by a sociologist whose work ties those themes together. So that’s why it’s interesting.
I heard a good one in a homily this weekend. The priest said “There’s that old saying, ‘Money can’t buy happiness.’ But is that true? I think it will buy a kind of happiness. When you buy a new car, doesn’t that make you feel kind of happy? Or new shoes?”
On the other hand, by avoiding the rat race and not buying a parking space at your new luxury condo, you can save $225,000.
“(Parking) spaces are in such demand that there are waiting lists of buyers. Eight people are hoping for the chance to buy one of five private parking spaces for $225,000 in the basement of 246 West 17th Street, a 34-unit condo development scheduled for completion next January.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/us/12parking.html?ex=1186459200&en=61b8b73d24b6f200&ei=5070
“It seems that many millionaires out in Silicon Valley don’t feel rich with only two or three million dollars, or even ten million, but find themselves working sixty or eighty hours a week in order to earn more.”
Everyone here hopes to work for the next Google, Microsoft or Intel or they know someone who did.
The brass ring out here is when those 100,000 shares of founder”s stock that cost you say, 5 cents a share split five or six times and you end up selling your shares at what Google trades for now.
It’s the never ending gold rush mentality.
All of this is quite appropo for today’s gospel. God took the person involved while s/he was storing treasure here. I have known too many pastors and bishops who tried to outdo each other in buildings and churches. And even Mahoney seems to be topped. http://www.calcatholic.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?id=66e60ca5-8d46-4e6e-822d-f4dee81b6769
I am not a fan of cathedrals, beautiful or not.Whether they are filled or not. Too many of them are empty in Rome and in Spain.
Location, Location Location.
I told a visiting professor from Boston College (with just a little bit of exaggeration) that someone could by a whole housing development for the price of a nice house in Newton.
So come to South Bend and build your mansion on the cheap–but bring your private plane; the airport connections have been very unreliable lately.
Tangential riff that shows my age (in more ways than one), but wasn’t it the late Sen. Everett Dirksen who said, “A million here and a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money”?
I guess we’d have to inflate that quote from “millions” to “billions” to keep it current.
Cathy’s right about location. My house would be worth about five times more in the Silicon Valley. Why didn’t we build there? Oh, yeah, no snow and too much sun.
And Kathy, wasn’t it Rhett Butler who said, “Money can’t buy happiness, darling, but it can by the most remarkable substitutes”? Maybe that’s what your priest was thinking about.
He was like, “It feels good, doesn’t it, when you buy new shoes?”
Then he gave all kinds of practical advice about how to avoid becoming enslaved by these good feelings, notably by praying that God would bless the people I envy more and more.
Good advice, in a nation drunk on envy.
And then there’s that great scene in the film “Giant” in which James Dean is muttering about his poor lot in life, and Elizabeth Taylor says to him: “Money isn’t everything.” To which he replies: “Not when you’ve got it.”
Two from Citizen Kane:
(Bernstein to Thompson): Well, it’s no trick to make a lot of money… if all you want to do is make a lot of money.
***
(Kane): “You know, Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn’t been very rich, I might have been a really great man.”
To turn away for a moment from the comfortable examination of the many logs in other people’s eyes, I’d bet that a lot of people in Africa, Haiti, etc., might have exactly the same conversation if they contemplate Americans who are anxious to earn earn $50,000 rather than $40,000.
What I’d be interested in seeing is a history of the storage industry, that apparently sprang up in the 70s and 80s and is going gangbusters. Who would have thought of The Container Store before? Or all those storage units. The latest is a big box that you fill up on the curb and a big truck comes and picks it up and puts everything away in a place you never see, until you call and tell them you need it again.
Stuart is right; in the sense that I think $40,000 is some magic number for most families above which happiness doesn’t increase with income.
I saw a study somewhere.
But I don’t think it’s so much logs, in either case. I literally can’t imagine what I’d do with so much money. at that level. So it’s hard to figure out why they want more. You’d have the big, fabulous house, you’d have the big, fabulous car, the beautiful clothes, the etc.
On the other hand . . . what I’ve noticed in my own life –at a much lower income level than would satisfy the people from Silicon Valley — is that the temptation is not in having more things, it’s in having things that cost more. And things that cost more beget things that cost more. You splurge on a a Pottery Barn couch for your living room, and the previously acceptable JC Penny stuff starts to look unacceptable.
Cathleen said: You splurge on a a Pottery Barn couch for your living room, and the previously acceptable JC Penny stuff starts to look unacceptable.
Unagi says: If you want it to start looking acceptable again, all you have to do is go to the pound and get yourself a couple of cats.
I wish I had seen this prior to preparing my homily!
I love the story about people spending $3000 a night in a hotel do not want to visit the lobby and mingle with those who pay a mere $300 or $500 a night. In a society that respects money more than people the result is a lot more boring and empty rich people.
Unagidon: Toddlers will do it quicker. Especially if they’re learning to use scissors.
Or magic markers. A toddler with a Sharpie.
I’m convinced Sharpies are manufactured in Hell. They always fall into the wrong hands and do more damage than good.
Anyway, to lead this back to the original thread:
When I as buying baby clothes and gear before my son was born, I was appalled at how much the “good stuff” cost. I visited a couple of second-hand shops, and the deals were tremendous.
Also, the university has a surplus store where you can buy all sorts of stuff.
Those are my places of first resort when school clothes season starts up.
But, then, I’m the type of person who saves plastic bread wrappers, butter tubs and glass jars, though I draw the line at washing aluminum foil.
Oh, and those plastic gallon milk jugs: Cut the tops off leaving the handles and you’ve got a container with a million uses. They’re great in a sick room because you can throw ‘em away.
I sound like that Heloise person.