In recent years, members of the 1% have been singled out by protesters seeking to highlight the growing disparity between rich and poor. Now 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 the rich, this means the rich tend to hang out with other rich poeple, 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.”
Cockrell says that a common mistake that many of the his wealthy clients make is letting their money define them. “I don’t think it’s healthy to discount your problems. If you are part of the 1%, you still have problems and they are legitimate to you. Even when you say: ‘I don’t have to struggle for money’, there are other parts of your life. Money is not the only thing that defines you. Your problems are legitimate.” To avoid problems, some Americans have taken to keeping their wealth secret. “We talk about it as stealth wealth," says Jamie Traeger-Muney. "There are a lot of people that are hiding their wealth because they are concerned about negative judgment."
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Gaaark on Monday October 19 2015, @11:36AM
The rich hang out with the rich for the same reason geeks hang out with geeks: to be around people who understand them.
It's just that we're not dicks.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Touché) by gtomorrow on Monday October 19 2015, @11:41AM
Everything is relative. ;)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday October 19 2015, @01:42PM
Oh, god. Yes we are. Collectively, we're awful.
(Score: 1) by linkdude64 on Tuesday October 20 2015, @05:41AM
Please, speak for yourself.
(Score: 1, Troll) by ikanreed on Tuesday October 20 2015, @01:04PM
I clearly am you complete fucker.
(Score: 1) by linkdude64 on Tuesday October 20 2015, @10:07PM
Forgive me, I should have clarified that I meant it as XOR rather than OR; please speak *only* for yourself.
(Score: 1) by OrugTor on Monday October 19 2015, @04:31PM
It's not clear whether you are a rich person or a geek. Please clarify.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday October 20 2015, @09:13PM
"It's just that we're not All dicks." FTFY
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Wednesday October 21 2015, @11:34AM
Yes, i can see from some of the responses that some of us ARE dicks.
Sad.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 19 2015, @12:43PM
My wife is pretty good at hiding my wealth.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Monday October 19 2015, @01:00PM
“Someone else who is also a billionaire — they don’t want anything from you!"
They're deluding themselves. A great many of these people don't seem to understand the concept of "enough". A great many of these people tend to be sociopaths. I'd probably have a lot more trust in my poor bartender than my rich friends.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by M. Baranczak on Monday October 19 2015, @02:21PM
Exactly. Rich people are very good at acquiring money, that's why they're rich. Your poor friends might keep hassling you to borrow $500 to fix the car, but your rich friends will plot to screw your company for $5,000,000.
Being rich might cause problems, I do appreciate that. But being rich is a condition that's very easy to fix, so I can't work up too much sympathy. When the next French Revolution comes, don't come to me for help - I'll be too busy running my guillotine repair and sharpening business.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Jiro on Monday October 19 2015, @02:45PM
It is often true that people who have X have problems that would not otherwise exist. People with children can worry about their children doing poorly in school. People with hands can have diseases that affect the hands. People with cars can have car trouble. Do you tell people with car trouble that you have no sympathy because they could always get rid of their car? Being rich means you can have rich people's problems in the same way that having a car means you can have car problems. They don't turn into non-problems just because not everyone has money or a car.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday October 19 2015, @03:12PM
Getting rid of your "rich" returns you to normal, and makes someone else very happy.
Getting rid of your hands, cars or children is quite a logistical nightmare.
Not a great analogy
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @04:37PM
Indeed. Anyone who is having problems with being rich, just post your bank details here and I will get right on it. Hey, I just want to help!
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Monday October 19 2015, @05:06PM
Indeed, it is those that sell the tools of the currently active trade that manage to do the best, on average. Sometimes, the best investment is in guessing what the next big problem is, so that the tools can be made ahead of time in anticipation of people needing to fix it.
Still, you have to be careful! Guillotines don't behead people, people behead people. Then the mob comes to set fire to your shop, make sure they don't have a reason to test you out on your hardware!
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Monday October 19 2015, @05:45PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 19 2015, @08:16PM
This is a common illusion, and is itself an echo of Social Darwinist thinking. In sum, the rich are rich because they deserve it, and likewise the poor deserve what they get. I grew up with that understanding of the world, but after 20 years of living in NYC and rubbing elbows with many very rich people, I'd have to say that very few rich people are rich because they deserve it, because they've earned it.
They are good at rigging the system and having no compunction about doing it. For them, playing fair, playing by the rules, and "giving back" are PR slogans. Only suckers do that for real. And doing evil things only become evil if they get caught, and this is crucial, it costs them money and reputation too. Else, getting caught is a throw-away line at a cocktail party or a fortnight's gossipy whisper. But come the week after that everyone will be back in bed together for the next score.
If you can step back from the obvious outrage of it all and see it with the eyes of an impartial observer, it's not hard to see that the phenomenon the article is talking about is a self-destructive one for the rich as well as everyone else.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Monday October 19 2015, @09:26PM
"Deserving" is a subjective [differencebetween.net] metric. It is very hard to attribute who is deserving of wealth because it is truly in eye of beholder. Is a nice person more deserving than a dick? Is a nice person who inherited their wealth more deserving than a dick who worked for it?
While GP does sound like a Social Darwinist, you sound like the exact opposite. You come across as very jaded by your own anecdotal data. But I don't blame you personally. It is hard, if not impossible, to come up with objective reasons for wealth distribution. Thus far I have only come up with two, which kind of support Social Darwinism, but not by design, and they deal with wealth which is a long term concept (usually built over years or generations).
People cannot have more money than brains. This does kind of support the classic Social Darwinism. But it is slightly deeper than that. A person who has money given to him which he has not earned with talent or brains alone, may squander this wealth because he is foolish in managing it. This can of course be fixed by using a 3rd party to manage your wealth, but this also requires a level of intelligence or at very least prudence. And person who is very bright or talented may find himself with wealth, even if he is from meager background. Of course if you are stupid and poor you are SOL, but this is about explaining wealth distribution, not justifying it, that would be subjective.
People cannot have less money than greed. There is another reason why some people accumulate or hold on to money, the pure desire to have it. And in this context I use greed very broadly, but it is a word that really fits. I don't use it subjectively, it is neither good nor bad, and can be used to describe either situations. For example, if you walk 10 blocks to save $1, that is a kind of greed. You do not wish to part with your money. True this may be viewed positively, and like I said, I do not vilify the word nor the act. Likewise, you may only tip the waiter 10% because you do not think he deserves more of your money because of X, Y, Z. That too is a form of greed. It could be warranted, he could have had a shitty day and done a shitty job. Some people who are less greedy might think he had a shitty day, others might think he just did a shitty job to justify their greed.
These tiny tendencies to "not part with money" add up over course of a lifetime. True not everyone has the same level of greed throughout their life, so of course you can't just measure the persons overall level of greed as say being very generous at the end of your life may wipe out all wealth you generated through being greedy, but a person who is greedy has an easier time maintaining and increasing their level of wealth than someone who is not.
(Apologies if I have posted this before in another thread, at least I'm consistent in my thinking. Double apologies if this is too far in the realm of philosophy, which I too find offensive :)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by termigator on Tuesday October 20 2015, @01:55AM
You are redefining greed that boarders on doublespeak. Doing something to save money is not greed in its own right, it can be the management of limited resources. Not tipping a waiter could just be driven on not rewarding bad service, not a reflection of greed. It is hard to give credence to your perspective when you redefine a term that has a well defined meeting. You need to use something other than "greed".
As for the rich, generally most people have nothing against the concept of someone being rich. It is a matter of fairness. When there is an ever increasing minority rigging the system to accumulate more wealth unfairly, the majority gets upset. Humans are extremely sensitivity to fairness, where it appears to an evolutionary behavioral trait:
http://news.gsu.edu/2014/09/18/research-shows-human-sense-fairness-evolved-favor-long-term-cooperation/ [gsu.edu]
There are some with wealth that see this and try to correct, but the sociopathic rich have gotten efficient and defining the rules of the game, rules where they always win and everyone else loses.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Tuesday October 20 2015, @03:31AM
I don't know, I find the word fits pretty well, with the exception of the inordinate nature of it. (Anyway I advise you not to read on as I tend to blabber on and on, possibly reaching a point where I agree with you at the end).
The reason why I define greed in such a way is because some choice may seem reasonable but outcome can be the same as most literary interpretation of greed. Say I walk instead of taking a bus and save $1 a day. And another 300 people do the same on the same route. Now all of a sudden a bus line that was profitable is costing tons of money because there isn't enough riders (yes I know almost all public transport already losses money on each ride, but assume it was making money). Now some executive looks at a report and decides we should cut this line to save money, and few bus drivers lose their jobs and there are now some people stuck without a bus and are forced to walk or find alternate transportation. People get mad about the greedy company and greedy executive that cut the bus service, put people out of work, and force senior citizens to walk. Meanwhile not the 300 riders who elected to walk instead, changing the balance sheets are none the wiser. The bus drivers may even stage a little protest, you get a fluff piece in local media denouncing the greed, a whole dog and pony show. Then the people who started walking will read the paper and say "A ha, good thing I started walking, I would have a bus to ride anyway!" It is easy for people to ignore thousands of little events, instead focusing all their attention on the few bigger ones. It's just the way our brain filters things.
This is just a basic example, but it is exactly how the invisible hand of the market works. Ideally no wealth was squandered, and the people who pocketed the difference will spend it on something else, which will create demand for something, and the bus drivers who lost their jobs would get work doing whatever the hell else needs being done. Yes there are many exceptions to people losing work (like automation) which are not so straight forward, but in this example there is no exception to be made because that is not what is being discussed. So assuming these people spend the money elsewhere, nothing is really changed. But if they instead hold on to the money due to "greed," now we have a problem (This is actually where I personally feel the most guilt when I try to withhold spending money, since I know it can have adverse impact on demand).
In regards to the rest, accumulation of wealth cannot be deemed fair or unfair because of its subjective nature. It can only be perceived as either or. But consider this: if one person accumulates non stop while other do not, he will eventually have the bulk of wealth even if he does not employ anything you would deem nefarious. Since wealth allows for more efficient accumulation of wealth, capitalism 101, his efforts will just accelerate organically. So unless you have constant redistribution, eventually someone will start pointing the finger claiming it's not fair. That is because people do have strong reactions to what they perceive as unfair, like your article points out. So what started as a simple and "fair" way of gathering wealth, is now a big target. But it is a proper reaction even if it is for the wrong reasons.
Lets talk about equitable share, where you give up more than you have to to make things appear more fair. This is bologna to be honest. However they acquire money, stealing, hard work, bribery, selling orphans' organs.... doesn't matter because that is not what I see as the problem. The problem is when they have this stupid money, they never fuckin' spend it. They don't have to just give it away, but they could at least spend it. That is what is breaking the Capitalistic system. If they were not so efficient at holding onto their riches, there would be no problem. The capital simply evaporates from circulation, only making rounds in the Casinos down on Wallstreet. Which would be good enough mechanism for redistribution (despite the layers of bs and inefficiency) if any of those shitty companies that get access to the capital spent it in the U.S. The way things are now we would see more of the money if they were bidding on horse races on Mars.
Where was I... yes, you are right, it's all globalization's fault. Of course I can write another essay defending globalization because it will fix things in about a century and everything will go back to normal. Of course most people can't wait that long for a decent job.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday October 19 2015, @07:54PM
Right and that's a large part of why this became a problem again after the income tax rates in the US were dropped to absurd levels. When the income tax rate maxed out at 70-90% there wasn't much incentive to try to increase income. The money was better off invested for longer periods of time to avoid the excessive taxation.
Ultimately, the rich made more than enough money to justify the effort and the working classes benefited from the investment being made in R&D and such.
Allowing the rich to accumulate larger and larger portions of the pie and have the ability to evade the taxes that would have been paid is a huge problem. Not to mention the fact that half the people pay no income tax because they don't make enough money to owe it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 20 2015, @03:43AM
Just like the bartender - if you think he doesn't want your money try not paying for your drinks.
Even Jesus seemed more friendly with "sinful women" than rich guys. So beware of those "religious folk" hanging around Donald Trump and similar ;).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SanityCheck on Monday October 19 2015, @01:13PM
The poor only have one problem: "No money." They believe all their other problems could be solved with money... well it's probably true for all their immediate problems. But this type of existence does make everything one dimensional. People with money have lots of problems, because a lot of the issues that bubble to the surface in their lives cannot be solved financially. At the same time they must contend with people who have no money coming after their money. People of means really underestimate how good it is for them to live in a civilized society such as the U.S. where they do not have to spend their wealth for around the clock security because of kidnapping and other crimes targeting rich. How far would your $2 Million go if you had to spend $100K+ a year to make sure your family was at least slightly protected? Try living in South/Central America, Africa, or most of Asia with that much in your bank, you would be scared 24/7 and hiring goons to protect you, but never be sure if you can trust them.
However the biggest poverty is not one of money, it is one of mind.
Being not poor anymore (thank goodness), I can easily look at some of my friends (not all, I realize there are people who have legitimate shortfall of resources, but they tend to be much better at handling their current situation) to whom money is the most pressing concern and see that money is not really the problem, or the solution. And if they all of a sudden made double or triple what they make, they would still be in similar circumstances. But they cannot see that. Lamenting you are struggling with credit card debt sounds rather shallow to me when you are drinking a $5 cup of sugar-caffeine from Starbucks (other examples are too egregious to mention).
However, I do wonder if sometimes I have cause and effect switched. Maybe these people have come to make bad mistakes because of the nature of their situation, and to expect them to make good decisions is somewhat unfair. This does seem like a probable hypothesis. Still I pride myself on having overcome my own circumstances due to good decisions that I made despite being somewhat down-trodden. One day I just realized the person who is keeping me from succeeding is myself. I changed pretty much every view I had of the world 180 degrees, and worked hard as hell to get where I am. But maybe not everyone can come to that conclusion, nor figure out any of the steps they need to get onto the right path.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @02:06PM
This guy [wikipedia.org] figured it out.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Monday October 19 2015, @05:19PM
Except this article would point that the Love/Belonging is an issue that crops up again after you transcend that level. Unless you think these people do not care about being respect or have not reached the pinnacle yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @02:12PM
Spot on.
Maybe these people have come to make bad mistakes because of the nature of their situation, and to expect them to make good decisions is somewhat unfair.
Lets say you have 50k in debt. But very little income. You get 500 bucks. Now what do you do with that 500 dollars? Do you save it? Spend it on coffee or a TV? What? You do with it whatever makes you happiest. 500 bucks is not going to make much of a dent in your debt. But it can make you feel better for a very short time.
It is what I was thinking when I had 20k of credit card, 8k of car, and 120k of house debt, and about 800 bucks in savings. I got lucky. I got a bounce on the stock market with stock options and sold some assets which covered it all. I could have been 3x better. But now I am about 5x better off because of it.
However, you realize after a time money buys you jack diddly. It buys you short term niceness. Now I dont buy those little things anymore. They bring no joy. Only a overwhelming sense of 'why do I have so much junk'. Money in and of itself does nothing. You have to make it do something. I have also learned I have little imagination of what to do with it. People then joke 'give it to me'. But what are you going to do with it? Oh piss it away on silly junk with no way to turn it into an asset. Of which cars and vacations are usually bad assets. I have found very few people that understand that truth. Buy assets. Assets become wealth. But you have to have a plan to make those assets work for you.
Debt and fees are also the little stealer of money. Quadrupedaly so if you are living check to check. You dont have enough money in the bank? Because the bank charges you 10 bucks a month to keep 50 bucks in there or 35 when you bounce it (because you mis-remembered the date they take the 10 out). I noticed once I got past a particular amount of non debt all the 'fees' I had been paying, vanished. They were not a large sum every month. But they add up. I got rid of the 120 dollar cable package. Credit cards? Better be no fee or dont talk to me.
And if they all of a sudden made double or triple what they make, they would still be in similar circumstances
For some this is very true.
I recently visited the Biltmore estate. Amazing place. But quite obvious that even people with crazy money can over extend themselves. The whole story is they 'turned it into a tourist attraction because the city asked them to do so because of the depression'. But then later on it is 'needed help paying for the estate'. They bought a monster that quickly ate all of their cash and made an attraction out of it to pay for it. They forgot what they were doing to get that money. Selling things. Assets by themselves do not appreciate. You need to add value to them to do so. Do not confuse inflation with asset appreciation. They turned a asset into a business that by my back of the envelope is clearing 200mill a year gross. Net is a bit fuzzier because they are deliberately vague on their operations.
As a poor person you look at money as the world and if you only had more of it. As a rich person you look at time as the only precious commodity and use money to rent other peoples time. A 5 dollar meal and a 500 dollar meal past a particular point have virtually the same value to you.
If you met me you would not realize I have 800k in assets/money. Because I drive a 15 year old car and live in a 'ok' house, and my cloths are from sears. It just would not come up. I would just say 'oh I do ok'. Because everyone else seems to have a plan for my assets. That plan usually involves taking it from me. The tricky ones to watch out for are bankers. Suddenly I get calls about twice a month about how they can 'grow my money'. When I look into their plans. That growth of money is anemic and usually involves large sums of fees to be transferred to them. The dudes become much more slick in their presentations the more money you get. They usually seem quite shocked I can run an actuarial table and excel. Apparently most people dont do that.
(Score: 3, Touché) by BK on Monday October 19 2015, @02:41PM
Because you don't have to be near poor people when you shop at Sears. Or anyone at all actually...
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @07:54PM
Oh piss it away on silly junk with no way to turn it into an asset. Of which cars and vacations are usually bad assets.
Well duh, a vacation is not an "asset". It's an experience which in itself is valuable, plus the value of having downtime and relaxation.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday October 19 2015, @02:23PM
The available evidence suggests two things:
1. Rich people who become poor tend to make exactly the same decisions as poor people after an adjustment period. And that includes really incredibly short-sighted purchasing decisions.
2. Poor people who become rich tend to make exactly the same decisions as rich people provided they remain rich after their adjustment period. And that includes a healthy paranoia about everybody around them who isn't rich, because as many lottery winners and pro athletes can attest they are absolutely surrounded by people who want their hands on at least part of that money (imagine absolutely everybody in your family tree or who was in a class with you hitting you up for cash, and you'll get the idea).
The reason for this has a lot to do with how far ahead you can look: If you are really impoverished, you can really only plan ahead about 1 meal, because your brain is so focused on that it can't really think about anything else. If you are working-class, you are generally planning ahead until the next paycheck, so up to 2 weeks, because you know where your next meal is coming from but possibly not where next months' rent is coming from. If you are middle-class, you can start thinking quarterly or annually because you have enough of a financial cushion to consider making changes that a working-class person can't even begin to think about. If you're rich, you start thinking about 10-year yields and the like, because now your concern is not "Can I make it to the next decade with OK finances?" but "How rich will I be 10 years from now?".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Monday October 19 2015, @03:07PM
Well that is the general consensus. And it applies well to average* case. I think there is some research that states being poor lowers your IQ [theweek.com] which can kind of explain this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @04:00PM
IQ's usefulness and connection to intelligence is in question.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Monday October 19 2015, @05:01PM
That's true, but decline can point to a diminished mental capacity. Even if that capacity is only used to take stupid tests.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mr Big in the Pants on Monday October 19 2015, @06:51PM
What I find most insightful about your post is that you think "middle class" means not knowing if you can make rent.
If true, then your country is well and truly fucked...
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday October 19 2015, @06:57PM
I think you misread it: Working-class means not necessarily knowing how you're going to make rent (especially if there's an unexpected expense such as a traffic ticket). Middle-class means a 3-5 month outlook. Which is, I completely agree, not good, but a heck of a lot better off than the working class is.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Monday October 19 2015, @11:00PM
" If you are really impoverished, you can really only plan ahead about 1 meal, because your brain is so focused on that it can't really think about anything else. If you are working-class, you are generally planning ahead until the next paycheck, so up to 2 weeks, because you know where your next meal is coming from but possibly not where next months' rent is coming from"
I did not misread it but on rereading it I see you are confused with where you use the word middle class.
As a side not" the new term for people who are working but have trouble paying the bills etc are called the "working poor"
It neo-con wage slavery taken to its obvious end game whereby the working class are the optimal slaves that must pay for their own upkeep while having little to no power or self determination.
From what I can see the US is almost there...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mmcmonster on Monday October 19 2015, @03:02PM
We are all a product of our environment.
Those of us who are rich have to be both lucky as well as have a certain amount of business sense.
If you are born a cripple in rural Mississippi and your mother couldn't afford to send you to school, you're not going to be a top one-percenter 40 years down the line.
On the other hand, if your parents are both educated and wealthy and give you everything you want, you are more likely to blow a lot of money on frivolous things and end up with less than you got in your endowment.
The one thing most everyone can do, however, is live below their means. Save up for the future. It may not get you into the top 1%, but you will slowly build up a safety net for when things go bad. And if things never go bad, retire a little earlier.
And remember: You can never out-save a spender.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SanityCheck on Monday October 19 2015, @03:26PM
Yes I agree with the prudence with spending is everything. Now a days all you have to do is save $100 a month and put something into your 401K, and congratulations you are now the most financially responsible person you know. Of course to be able to do either you need a job, and that alone puts you well ahead. But being careful with your finances is exceedingly hard for people with jobs, because of marketing. Someone somewhere decided they were not happy making some money, wanted to make more money, so they came up with a way to trick people into sabotaging their futures to pad their bottom line. And if one guy did it, soon everyone does it, and he is back to square one looking for a way to squeeze more (while every gullible person goes into debt). So I guess that lowers the bar on being prudent with your finances.
But when everyone spends and not saves, our economy grows and expends to accept this new reality. Then when people spend beyond their means, the economy quickly grows to fill that void. And if all of a sudden there is a mass outbreak of common sense, and people start to pay down their debt, save, and not spend, we have a recession and people have to use their savings because it's not only raining, it's pouring. Oh what a crazy world we live in :)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @01:45PM
to be honest, if I were a psychoanal person, I would also do my best to convince rich people that they need my expensive advice.
really, it's like if you're rich everyone is out to get your money.
I'm so relieved I actually have to work to put food on the table.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Empyrean on Monday October 19 2015, @01:51PM
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 how much 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.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday October 19 2015, @03:32PM
It's more complicated than that.
Absolutely, giving away money if you have a lot of it is a great idea. And a lot of really rich people do indeed give out donations fairly regularly - which is why you'll find them on the major donor list of nearly all non-profit organizations. The problem is that there's always a question about whether those gifts are being squandered. While a lot of rich people are glad to help house the homeless or feed the hungry, they're less keen on using their wealth (which is sometimes hard-earned) to pay for somebody else's bar tab. And if those rich people give away their money too freely, then they won't be rich anymore.
But it's really hard to get the view of what the life of a rich person is like if you aren't one of them, for precisely the reason outlined in the summary: If you are not a rich person but are buddying up to a rich person, the rich person is going to have the ongoing question in their head about whether you're buddying up to them in order to hit them up for a large pile of cash. Because if you did, you would almost definitely not be the first person who tried that.
I have some inkling of the problems rich people face primarily because my family tree includes members of the American aristocracy (e.g. the debutantes in The Great Gatsby were based on real people in my great-grandmother's social circle growing up).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Monday October 19 2015, @05:17PM
Giving away your money goes against millions of years of evolution. It's like depriving yourself of resources that could benefit your line. But things like giving to your community, which indirectly can benefit you are less drastic to the psyche, and thus more common.
Regardless, that is not what the article is about. I'm sure poor people could have exact same article about how hard it is to have a friendship with rich people, or even people of regular means because they could feel others always think they are after their money, or that meetups happen at relatively expensive places the poor cannot afford so he or she cannot join them, or that they do not understand poor person's lack of financial security, so on and so forth. A person could see the constant airing of grievances about things they do not have issues with as whining instead of a stress-coping mechanism. The only people that poor people would feel comfortable with would probably be other poor people. So the isolation is not unique, and doesn't only apply to rich people. It just os happens this article is about rich people.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Monday October 19 2015, @05:07PM
At least not according to my accountant. He knows people, going back generations, who live apparently modest lives with only carefully hidden luxuries.
If you know people who've been to an elite university, you'll find that they knew people in the dorms and found out only by accident after many months that the people were from bazillionaire families.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday October 19 2015, @07:14PM
Well, cry me a river, why don't you.
If the money is causing you problems, why not give it away? It must be so difficult trying to get non-profits to accept millions of dollars in donations. Maybe stop avoiding taxes too?
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 19 2015, @08:19PM
Real wealth is not taxable.
(If you've spent your life accumulating the other kind, this statement will make no sense to you.)
Washington DC delenda est.