You fucking rich little TWERP. (Kinda weak rant)

[caphis]

This rant is not directed at anyone who earned money through hard work and a desire to get ahead. Oh, no...

This rant is directed at a friend of mine, who has proven himself to be a complete and utter fucking TWIT in under an hour tonight. This friend of mine lives 800 miles away, thankfully, or else I would've probably driven over and smacked him across the face a few times tonight.

So anyway, the conversation began when I was explaining to him about how I was applying for various loans to pay off the remaining $2200 in tuition I owe. He made some off the wall comment about "only $2200?" Indeed, only $2200. So I had to explain to him that my income right now is pretty much devoted to my car payment/insurance, credit cards, and cell phone bills. And living expenses. Right. He asks how much I owe on my car, and I tell him -- $12,000 is the balance.

His next comment is "$12,000? The stuff I wear, on a daily basis, is about $12,000."

Right, so, I stop what I'm doing at the moment and follow this interesting new lead. See, my friend is rather wealthy-- scratch that, extremely wealthy-- but I never paid much attention to it. He kept his money matters to himself, and I never really asked, though I knew that he was rather loaded. So I asked him how he could justify wearing $12,000 worth of clothing.

"My parents buy it for me." Fair enough, I guess. My friend is a college kid, like me, though he's a couple years ahead. So his parents buy him $12,000 outfits. I shrug it off and say something along the lines of "I could never wear something that cost $12,000, even as a gift." He asks why. So I explain that, being an impoverished college kid, and seeing most of my friends in the same situation, $12,000 for an outfit is such a waste. He says he agrees, and that his parents pretty much just force it upon him. I didn't ask further.

BUT. Then he says "yeah, it's such a waste, why do clothes have to cost so much?"

...asdfsghdfgjsg!!!! THEY DON'T, FUCKER. This is when it started going downhill. I told him they DIDN'T, and that my entire wardrobe alone probably doesn't equal 1/10 of that. I may have instigated a bit by saying how disgusting it was to hear about someone spending $12,000 on an outfit (celebrities aside).

"Oh, that's one of the cheaper ones."

WHAT THE FUCK? I'm working my ass off trying to make ends meet, and you're spending thousands of dollars like it's POCKET CHANGE? Don't give me that lousy "my parents make me!" crap. *I* wouldn't wear a goddamn $12,000 suit if it was a GIFT. It's a waste of money!

And I know he's absolutely fucking loaded. Seriously. We're talking multi-million dollars loaded here, in his family, at least. And I know he's gone and donated thousands to Childrens Hospitals before with his family, so I tried not to say much. He asked what I would do if I had money like that. I told him I'd first invest a sizable chunk for my future, and for my future family's future. Then, I'd start handing out money to various charities I support. (Yeah yeah, we all would, but if I had the kind of money THIS guy has, I REALLY would.) Sure, I'd buy some luxury items... a nice house, car(s), etc... but nothing to the point where I'd spend $12,000 on an outfit.

AND THEN he has the nerve to tell me that I don't know how hard it is to manage that kind of money. OBVIOUSLY you don't either, you ass, if what you're wearing costs more than everything I OWN. I voice dissention, but he tells me that I just don't know how it is.

You're right, I don't.

So then he does what he thinks is a nice gesture and says "I'll pay your $2200 for you if you want, no questions asked". I DIDN'T ASK YOU TO. I KNOW you could. I WOULDN'T FEEL RIGHT taking money from you. It would make me feel VERY bad. Especially knowing that it's chump change to you, and that if I ever did try to repay you, you would probably laugh and tell me to go buy something nice for myself. I declined. I said "thanks, but no thanks".

THEN!!!! I am told that "god, this is the last time I ever tell you about money... you snap at me, but I dont blame you, sitting there telling me that there comes a time when everyone needs to do things for themselves... lets see you live a day".

Fucker, the hardest decision you make every day is whether you want whipped cream on your mocha. I've "lived a day" since I could hold a job. I worked from the age of 15 until, oh, right now, doing whatever I could to make sure I could pay for myself. I've worked jobs you would probably pay someone twice as much to make sure you would never have to. And I think that I've actually got a pretty easy life compared to some people.

So take your money, build a multi-million dollar pier, and take a walk right off the fucking end of it. Or better yet, hire someone to carry you.

[Slacker]

Gotta love rich people with no concept of the world around them. One of my favorite people is a guy who goes to my church. I've never seen him in anything except jeans - and our church is fairly traditional, the only people in jeans on Sunday mornings are the teenagers, myself, and him. :D You'd never know by looking at him that he's loaded. His house is immense. I could probably park my house in his garage. But he's the most down to earth person I've ever met.

[Astroboy14]

If it helps, remember that every person on this Earth is living in his/her own private hell. Your friend has no money troubles, but rest assured that he has other troubles that in his mind are at least equal, if not greater, than your own. Witness the fact that he felt the need to rub his wealth in your face like that... surely he was aware, on some level, of how that would make you feel.

Some part of him thinks that he'll feel better about himself by making you feel small... that's just sad.

[Abbie Carmichael]

So then he does what he thinks is a nice gesture and says "I'll pay your $2200 for you if you want, no questions asked"... I declined. I said "thanks, but no thanks".

Are you nuts? Seriously ... are you?

2200 bucks is pocket change to him, and could save you lots of misery. He's your friend, albeit annoying, and you'd probably do the same for him if you were the rich one and he needed the money.

Why are you insisting on being a martyr?

[SaxFace]

This story kind of reminded me of my friend Howard.

His mother is a soap opera actress and his father a famous interior decorator and Howard lived alone in a gorgeous two bedroom apartment in midtown Manhattan.

Anyway, once Howard got into a playful wrestling match with my former roommate and said, "watch the pants, they're worth more than your life"!

Of course he was kidding but I think your friend is being very generous to offer to a gift to pay off your loans. I wouldn't accept it either, but it's a sign that he wants to help and is a pretty good friend.

[Sublight]

Probably because he's got at least a shred of self-respect and doesn't want to feel like someone's housepet.

[Cheesesteak]

I generally have a hard time turning down offered money, but the way this guys 'offer' came out was pretty damn condecending. I'd have said no, too.

Managing money is just as hard, if not harder, when you have little of it. The wealthy have more complex finances, but they don't have the problem of "can I afford this" coming up constantly.

And WTF does a $12,000 outfit look like anyway?

[yosemite]

I'd say that the guy was kind of clueless in how he talked about money (but it was a decent gesture of him to offer—though I don't blame you for refusing his offer). However, his abundance of money has nothing to do with you and is none of your business. How he spends his money, and what he spends it on, is none of your business. You can have private opinions on it, sure, but bottom line, it's none of your concern.

Best that you don't discuss it with him again. He doesn't get where you're coming from, you don't understand where he's coming from (hell, I don't either) and that's that. If he's a decent friend otherwise, then just keep the conversation away from money from now on and forget about this incident.

[Silentgoldfish]

And WTF does a $12,000 outfit look like anyway?

Just like a $20 one, but with a different tag on the inside.

[Nutty Bunny]

And WTF does a $12,000 outfit look like anyway?

If he were a woman, I'd say it looks like a little backless number with intricate beading and a famous name on the tag.

But I can't imagine any man paying that kind of money for (what I imagine is) a suit. Yikes!

BTW, I wouldn't have accepted the money, either. I don't want to feel indebted to anyone and it's not about playing the martyr. Money and friendship do NOT go hand in hand.

[Neurotik]

I would have taken the money. The one thing I've learned in my life is never turn down free money. I used to pull the whole self-reliance thing and never accept charity, even when I was having some serious money problems, but finally I had to swallow my pride and ask my parents for help a couple of years back.

If I had just taken their offer when they first made it, things wouldn't have been nearly so bad.

Granted, this isn't the same thing as your folks offering to help out and I'm sure the offer was condescending, but getting out of a couple of thousand dollars of debt is getting out of a couple of thousand dollars of debt, y'know? It's not like he threw the money on the floor and made you grovel.

[monstro]

I wouldn't have taken the money either. It's one thing to owe a faceless lending institution. It's quite another to feel obligated to a friend...one you just had an argument with.

Also, he sort of threw the offer at your face as if to say, "If this will make you shut up, here!" You never asked for his help, and his offer of "help" seemed like it was based on guilt.

He was a jerk for belittling your financial situation. It goaded you into belittling his. Hopefully now the two of you will avoid money-related conversations. You live in totally different worlds, and you're never going to understand what the other is going through.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

I guess I think of obligations differently: I'm obligated to someone not to the extent it helps me, but to the extent it puts them out.

In other words, if this guy is a superrich mofo, then I might be able to satisfy my obligation to him by baking him one of my killer cheesecakes. Hell, my spending four hours in the kitchen might actually involve MORE effort than his getting $2200 together. Assuming I'm right about that, then once he got his killer cheesecake, we'd be even steven.

And hell yes I'd have taken the money. He sounds clueless to me, as if maybe he really has no idea what an emotional issue money can be for people, but he doesn't sound particularly mean about it. I don't blame him for deciding not to talk about money with you again: I'm not sure what he could've said about his own financial situation that WOULDN'T have pissed you off.

Daniel
hardly rich

[belladonna]

I guess I think of obligations differently: I'm obligated to someone not to the extent it helps me, but to the extent it puts them out.

That's just how I was thinking about it too. And some offers carry no obligations at all. When I have extra stuff--food, clothes, books, etc.--I pass them along to my friends and family. If I buy a pizza for me and a temporarily broke friend to eat I'd never expect to be paid back. Relative to our positions in life I'd imagine that the $20 for the pizza puts way more of a dent in my budget than the $2200 would for this guy. I'd have taken the money, thanked him profusely, and then given him a nice gift or treat as a thank you.

Frankly, it seems like you're just dripping with hostility towards this guy. Why are you even friends if everything about him makes you so angry and resentful?

[caphis]

In just about any other situation, I probably would've said "awesome, send me a check". The way he presented his offer in this situation was indeed, 1) condescending, 2) more of a "I'll give you this if you shut up" kind of thing, and 3) I feel confident that he tried to sound just a LITTLE like those 2.

I don't think he's a horrible person, I just think he has a horrible way of dealing with money. Had I taken him up at that time, and had he sent me the money I need, then I'm about 99% sure that at some point in the future, he would say something along the lines of "you can't argue with me, I helped pay your way through college". I don't want that kind of responsibility hanging over my head, much like when people were talking about ponying up $5 for other members' subscriptions here. And this is 440 times that amount.

Anyway, that's why I didn't accept the offer then. This morning, I woke up to a message he left overnight that was along the lines of "I was a jerk last night, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to have either of us blow up over something so petty. But, being a friend in a bad situation, if you do need some help, I'll do what I can for you."

I'm not sure what to do about that now. Taking money from him would have the pro of getting me out of the hole I'm in right now, but I'm sure I can otherwise find an outside source to help, even if I have to pay them back a couple years from now at 3-4% interest. On the other hand, taking money from him would almost reinforce his idea that he can frivolously hand out money as if it's candy. If he wants to do that, I can think of much better recipients than myself. Plus I'd still have the guilt about taking his money, and I'd feel.. weird.

It's not about being a martyr, it's just that I don't know if I would feel comfortable. In any case, I invited him up to spend a few days here, so I'll decide then if I'd feel comfortable doing that.

But chrissakes.. I know he's not the only 'rich person' to ever have this attitude, and it peeves me that a lot of them have it and then never change it.

[ENugent]

I'm not sure what to do about that now. Taking money from him would have the pro of getting me out of the hole I'm in right now, but I'm sure I can otherwise find an outside source to help, even if I have to pay them back a couple years from now at 3-4% interest. On the other hand, taking money from him would almost reinforce his idea that he can frivolously hand out money as if it's candy. If he wants to do that, I can think of much better recipients than myself. Plus I'd still have the guilt about taking his money, and I'd feel.. weird.

Why don't you ask if he'll lend you the money, instead of giving it to you?

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

In just about any other situation, I probably would've said "awesome, send me a check". The way he presented his offer in this situation was indeed, 1) condescending, 2) more of a "I'll give you this if you shut up" kind of thing, and 3) I feel confident that he tried to sound just a LITTLE like those 2.

You're probably right. From his perspective, he was just having an honest marvel at how different y'all's financial situations are. Being a clueless rich guy, he probably thought it was an innocent conversation, along the lines of, "You drink four cups of coffee a month? Jesus, I drink four cups of coffee before i go to work in the morning!" Something harmless to chat about, in other words.

Then you started getting really angry at him, and being clueless, he didn't see what there was to get angry about (note that in his apology, he refers to it as "petty" -- he STILL honestly doesn't get it). Had you gotten angry about the coffee, he might've said, "Dude, I'll GIVE you one of my cups of coffee from tomorrow morning if that's what you need." He was annoyed at your freaking out at him over something he considers petty, and was trying to show you that it was petty, that it wasn't worth getting worked up over.

From your description, he sounds terribly clueless, but not mean.

My unsolicited advice? Call him back and apologize for yelling at him about the cost of his clothing. Tell him thanks for the offer of tuition, but money is deeply tied up in emotions for you, and you'd feel extremely obligated to him if he gave that donation to you. You've decided that you want to work through the debt on your own, even though it's a real struggle for you. As for him, you'd like him to do a couple things. First, recognize that money IS a struggle for you, and try not to make comments about it that come across as belittling (like his thoughtless suit comment did). Second, if he wanted to give that $2200 to some poor schmuck who really can't afford school, ideally as an anonymous donation, that'd be cool.

I'm guessing that he really wasn't trying to disrespect you; at the same time, of course you felt slighted by his off-the-cuff comment about how much his clothes cost. If you can get him to recognize why that bothered you, that might be ideal. The flip side of that is no more telling him that his suits are a waste of money.

Daniel

[Liberal]

I guess I just don't understand why you begrudge him his wealth. I mean, I guess you'll say you don't, but you sound like you do. It's almost like you're just now hearing about rich people wearing expensive clothes. They also drive cars that cost what some people's houses cost, and they live in houses that cost as much as some national budgets. The fact that he offered you $2,200 to help you out tells me that he cares a lot about you.

By the same token, your life-style would be the envy of whole populations. If they found out that you wear more in a day than they earn in a year, how would you feel if they suddenly pegged you as some evil vermin? Then, when you offer to help out, they fly off the handle and go tell the whole village that you're a rich little twerp? Or is it somehow different when we substitute you for him?

[artemis]

I don't think he's a horrible person, I just think he has a horrible way of dealing with money....

On the other hand, taking money from him would almost reinforce his idea that he can frivolously hand out money as if it's candy....

I know he's not the only 'rich person' to ever have this attitude, and it peeves me that a lot of them have it and then never change it.

Uh, caphis, if your friend is wearing $12,000 suits, he CAN hand out a few thousand bucks as if it's candy, because it IS to him. It means about as much to him as a dime means to you. It's just pocket change, nothing more. Are you being frivolous when you toss some spare change to a street person?

If you don't want to take the money because you're afraid he'll hold it against you later, or because it makes you feel weird, that's fine. But before you berate your friend for his attitude about money, remember that to most of the world's population your own attitude is no different. I'll bet a quarter doesn't mean much to you - but to the large percentage of the world's population who live on a few hundred dollars a year, 25 cents is a LOT of money.

"Rich" is a matter of perspective.

[NicePete]

It sounds as if your friend is honestly ignorant about the value of money, the price of ordinary goods and the difficulty of earning an honest buck. This is your opportunity to educate him in an open, good-natured way.

From your description, it appears that he thinks everybody walks around in $12,000 clothing and cannot conceive why that seems hideously expensive to the rest of us. Try laying out your budget to him. Explain how much you earn an hour, how much rent, food, insurance, utilities et al cost. Explain that you have no other source of income. If done correctly it might genuinely enlighten him.

[Cheesesteak]

"Rich" is a matter of perspective.And his friend has none. He deserves a pitting because anyone that far removed from the real world deserves to be pitted. He doesn't understand that young college students don't just have $2,200 or $12,000 dollars lying around, that is completely and utterly idiotic. Not to mention that when the person on the phone is obviously trying to work through his finances in these amounts, it's crass to imply that they are piddling chump change.

I'm not rich by any means, but I make a good living and have money in the bank. If someone is mentioning that they are having trouble making ends meet and paying their monthly bills, I don't mention that I spent thousands or even hundreds on things. I just keep my mouth shut, offer constructive financial advice, if appropriate, and respect my friend.

[grayhairedmomma]

His next comment is "$12,000? The stuff I wear, on a daily basis, is about $12,000."

Right, so, I stop what I'm doing at the moment and follow this interesting new lead. See, my friend is rather wealthy-- scratch that, extremely wealthy-- but I never paid much attention to it. He kept his money matters to himself, and I never really asked, though I knew that he was rather loaded. So I asked him how he could justify wearing $12,000 worth of clothing.

I took this to mean his daily wardrobe costs about $12,000, not just one outfit.

[Aldebaran]

BUT. Then he says "yeah, it's such a waste, why do clothes have to cost so much?"

I don't see why you got mad about this answer. He only tried to look at the issue from your point of view with making some guessing about clothing prices and trying to see your point about it. I really doubt he actually knows what anything in his wardrobes costs.
When he later offered to help you out, you were still much too angry to look at that offer with the needed perspective. You also don't explain why you think he would bring that issue up again, ever. I mean: do you recall when, where, why you payed something you don't even notice paying for someone else, and bring it up at every given occasion? Why would you?
I really don't see why you are so angry with him.

And what others brought up about people in several other nations, that you must imagine how they look at your lifestyle - which means for them the summum of luxury and wealth - is absolutely something you should consider to regain your perspective.

Salaam. A

[caphis]

I took some advice from this thread and called up my friend. Not only did I invite him up, but I did explain to him that our perception of money was a little different, and I apologized for treating him as if he was supposed to feel the same way I do.

He let me know early on that most of the people that he spends his free time with are in a similar financial situation as he is, which leads me to believe that he doesn't really understand that someone could possibly not just have thousands of dollars lying around. I asked if he wanted to hear about my perspective, he said sure, so I laid out for him my budget, how much I'm paid, where it goes, and things like that. He didn't know what a FAFSA was, nor that the government even offered money to students.

I told him where I shopped, what I wore, the things I ate, my leisure activities... those kinds of things. Things he pretty much already knew, but never really thought about. It surprised him that I lived on, in a few weeks, what he goes through in a few hours. He said that he always thought that people with the financial situation I have WERE the "poor people," and I think that I'm doing pretty well compared to some other college kids. My family is a mid-to-upper class family in the area, and we bring in under 100k for a family of 5.

I also told him that people DO live in the streets around here, and it's not just some TV thing. I told him about my friends from school who had been wearing the same clothes (not every day, that is) since early high school. Needless to say, I think I got through to him, and I think the problem all along was that he's never actually been EXPOSED to someone who isn't carrying 10 platinum cards and thousands in cash.

I did invite him to visit, he accepted, having never been here. I hope that when he comes, he'll gain a greater appreciation for the non-millionaires. He also apologized when he realized how smug he sounded when he offered to pay my tuition out of his pocket, and told me that the offer was still up if I was interested. I told him we'd talk about it when he gets here.

So, I suppose this isn't quite as flameworthy as before, if at all. It's incredible what a short talk with someone can do to change some of their outlooks. Hopefully he'll take it to heart.

And no, Libertarian, I don't begrudge him his wealth. I just found it downright disgusting for someone to spend $12,000 on an outfit (NOT even a suit, he clarified this for me; his suits cost a bit more), whether or not it was hard earned money. Sure, he has the right to spend it on whatever he wants, but I also have the right to disagree with frivolity.

[robertliguori]

He also apologized when he realized how smug he sounded when he offered to pay my tuition out of his pocket, and told me that the offer was still up if I was interested. I told him we'd talk about it when he gets here.


I'm glad this has a happy ending. Also, I would take the money, if I were in your situation. If you truly feel that you can't accept it without major issues (issues more important than $2200), you can always give it back later.

[OtakuLoki]

Why are you insisting on being a martyr?

I may be doing the OP's friend a disservice here, but I firmly believe that there is nothing that's completely free. Taking that money would transform the friendship, I think. If the OP's friend then asks for any kind of 'reasonable' favor in the future, the OP will likely feel obligated because of this gesture. This kind of thing is easily, and sometimes unconsciously, transformed to a kind of feudal relationship. My freedom of action is worth way more than $2200.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

That sounds like a great outcome!

I do remember meeting someone like this when I was 14. TJ, from Connecticut, "The richest state in the Union!" he always reminded us, when we did Outward Bound together. He was probably the most despised member of our 10-person group -- well, aside from the guy who threatened to murder a girl in the group, that is. Several members of the group were teenagers from really poor backgrounds, and he was so astonishingly clueless that we all hated him. Poor guy.

I once asked him what he thought the poverty level was for a family of four. He thought about it for a minute, then guessed, "$80,000 a year?"

Nope -- it was somewhere around $9,000 at that point. He didn't believe me: he really thought that if your household income was less than $80,000, you were living in poverty. This was in 1988, I believe.

It's possible that you're about to bring your friend in for a major epiphany, caphis; let's hope he's able to learn something!

Daniel

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

I may be doing the OP's friend a disservice here, but I firmly believe that there is nothing that's completely free. Taking that money would transform the friendship, I think. If the OP's friend then asks for any kind of 'reasonable' favor in the future, the OP will likely feel obligated because of this gesture.

This is why I would strongly suggest only taking the money if you can repay the favor very quickly. And make sure that it's understood that you're repaying it completely--if that's not understood, it could get very sticky.

Ask the friend what he'd like that you can provide. For myself, it'd probably have to be something baked or cooked, because that's about the only craft thing I'm really good at, but if you're a good artist, or if you're a good carpenter, or if you're a programmer or website designer, there's all sorts of things you could do as an equal favor to the friend.

Daniel

[Medea's Child]

Ask him if he'd be willing to do it as a very low interest/interest free loan, since accepting a gift of that size makes you uncomfortable.

Then, ask him if he'd be willing to play Sponsor-A-College-Student for a Doper in, say, Pittsburgh...(kidding...I'm not quite that shameless about begging for cash. Well, not when I'm not hungry.)

[Liberal]

And no, Libertarian, I don't begrudge him his wealth. I just found it downright disgusting for someone to spend $12,000 on an outfit (NOT even a suit, he clarified this for me; his suits cost a bit more), whether or not it was hard earned money. Sure, he has the right to spend it on whatever he wants, but I also have the right to disagree with frivolity.You idiot. You presumptuous little turd. Frivolity? At least his frivolity is merely material. You remind me of the guy who begs forgiveness for a $1,000 debt and then when granted it, goes out to collect all the $5 debts everyone owes him. Downright disgusting? That's how you appear in your $100 thousand income home to people who deserve, but do not have, the luxuries you enjoy. You haven't learned anything from this. If, in fact, any of it is true.

[caphis]

You idiot. You presumptuous little turd. Frivolity? At least his frivolity is merely material. You remind me of the guy who begs forgiveness for a $1,000 debt and then when granted it, goes out to collect all the $5 debts everyone owes him. Downright disgusting? That's how you appear in your $100 thousand income home to people who deserve, but do not have, the luxuries you enjoy. You haven't learned anything from this. If, in fact, any of it is true.

You're quick to jump to the offense, but thankfully, I've got more control of my tongue.

If you'd please explain how you came to the conclusion that I remind you of that guy, I'd appreciate it. I think it's clear that I'm not the kind to even ASK for forgiveness for a $1,000 debt, let alone actively collect from others. If anything, there are dozens of people to whom I've loaned money in the past when they were in tight spots, and I have yet to ask for it back. Oh, wise one, tell me the error of my ways.

If any impoverished soul wants to tell me that I look downright disgusting because I, personally, don't live off of $100k (in fact, I made it clear that my family probably COULD front money for me to live comfortably for the next 4 years), then so be it. I'm not saying that I don't have luxuries, or even that he should not be entitled to luxuries. I'm saying that careless spending of money disgusts me because I can see better ways to help others with the same money. Sure, I binge every now and then and see an $8 movie or I may have nice things. But I work my ass off. And if I had such money to blow on shit (are you saying that $12,000 for an outfit is justifiable?), I wouldn't be buying anymore "luxury" items than I have now. I'd instead give that $12,000 to 12 people who were actually impoverished and hope it helps them out.

What the fuck do you want me to learn? I KNOW I have it good, right now. I told you in several posts that I DO feel like I'm doing very well for myself. Back up your hostile, arrogant claims, or piss off.

[BubbaDog]

I disagree with most of you. I don't think that caphis should take money from his friend.

I think he should tell his friend that he appreciates the offer, thinks he can make it on his own, and hopes that if he ever is in dire need of assistance he can turn to his friend for help.

Why? Caphis is trying to impress upon the guy that living within your means is a constant challenge, not something to be fixed by another's gift.

The best thing that either of you guys can give each other is friendship. Your buddy gains an understanding of how others live; you gain security by knowing you can get financial help if you ever really need it.

Your actions may not impress your friend now but as he gets older I think he will admire you for your pride.

Bubba

[Liberal]

You're a liar. One of those "would give" people. You give nothing but grief and envy, and if you had wealth you would hoard it. You are the man you pitted.

[belladonna]

Christ on a cracker Lib, who pissed in your Cheerios this morning?

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Holy crap, Lib! Do you remember posting this morning that you too try [to give people the benefit of the doubt in proportion to the size of the suspected fuckup]?

I definitely don't see you giving this guy the benefit of the doubt; on the contrary, you're making what looks like a bizarrely out-of-the-blue attack on his character, calling him nasty names and a liar, for an offense that even the offended was quick to forgive.

Please do try to give folks the benefit of the doubt. Hell, I'm a little afraid that by posting this I'm gonna earn myself some of that vitriol.

Daniel

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Errr...if we could edit, I'd change that "Holy crap" to just "crap." Sorry about that--I don't even notice when I'm being blasphemous sometimes.

Daniel

[caphis]

You're a liar. One of those "would give" people. You give nothing but grief and envy, and if you had wealth you would hoard it. You are the man you pitted.

</holding tongue>

Excuse me, you self righteous fucktard? Where the fuck do you have the callous pride to claim that I, someone you have NEVER FUCKING MET and know NOT A GODDAMN THING ABOUT am I liar? And that I am one of those "would give" people?

Go fuck yourself up the ass with your holier-than-thou facade. I am not a "would give" person, I DO give, however I can, whenever I can. My college meal plan includes up to 10 'guest meals,' all of which have been given -- for each semester that I've been here -- to people who are living on the street. People who are begging for a goddamn sandwich. People who would be MUCH more deserving of generosity than you ever will be.

I've spent countless hours volunteering my time at the local homeless shelters and have gotten to know several SEVERELY impoverished people. People whose situation has made me break down and cry, on several occasions. Not just the nameless, either, but last year when I was holding an extremely well paying job and was able to pay most of my tuition out of my own pocket, I gave several of my friends enough money to eat with. A friend of mine with a child was planning to drop out of college last year because she couldn't afford a babysitter for the odd hours she was in class. Myself and three other people helped take care of her child for her while she remained a full-time student for NOTHING, and have never asked for repayment.

I've helped out everyone who needs help that I can possibly think of, and have never turned my back on an honest request. I am not a "would help" person; far from it, I DO help people. If you converted every ounce of spite in your warped little mind into a desire to actually HELP people, that would probably be enough to solve everyone's problems. But no, you sit there, on your ass, and make claims against people that you DON'T EVEN FUCKING KNOW. I don't go out of my way to make myself known as someone who will help out; making a point of my level of servitude makes me seem pretentious, so I havent.

As for you on a personal level, I don't know you either, nor do I claim to be able to make judgements about your life or how you live it. But, because of your crass, arrogant remarks, I will tell you to go shove your bullshit back up your ass.

[artemis]

And his friend has none. He deserves a pitting because anyone that far removed from the real world deserves to be pitted.

The OP's friend has no perspective because he's young. His "real world" is a place where $2000 is a pittance, hardly an amount of money to get worked up over - just as my "real world" is a place where $20 - $50 is a weekend's entertainment money (something that would utterly shock a person from Somolia or Haiti, where $50 may be 20% of their yearly earnings). As he grows older and sees more of the wider world, he'll develop a better understanding of his actual financial situation compared to the "average" person.

If the OP's friend deserves pitting on that basis, then so does the average citizen of a First World country who actually believes he/she is struggling to earn a "decent living" when in reality he/she lives like a king compared to the "average" citizen of this planet.

He doesn't understand that young college students don't just have $2,200 or $12,000 dollars lying around, that is completely and utterly idiotic.

Plenty of young college students DO have $2200 lying around. After all, the amount of disposable income a student has usually depends on their parents' socioeconomic status, and rich people's kids go to school, too (often going to the same small subset of very prestigeous and expensive schools, which exacerbates the problem - during their studies, they don't see many "ordinary" college kids who aren't driving Beemers or spending their summers in Paris).

Not to mention that when the person on the phone is obviously trying to work through his finances in these amounts, it's crass to imply that they are piddling chump change.

I'm not rich by any means, but I make a good living and have money in the bank. If someone is mentioning that they are having trouble making ends meet and paying their monthly bills, I don't mention that I spent thousands or even hundreds on things. I just keep my mouth shut, offer constructive financial advice, if appropriate, and respect my friend.

You're older than the OP's friend, and that makes a difference. You have a better understanding of how much people's finances can vary, and more awareness of the fact that what constitutes "chump change" varies considerably from person to person. The OP's friend's crassness was born of ignorance and shock, not malice, and such ignorance is something we're all guilty of at some time or another.

[Cheesesteak]

If the OP's friend deserves pitting on that basis, then so does the average citizen of a First World country who actually believes he/she is struggling to earn a "decent living" when in reality he/she lives like a king compared to the "average" citizen of this planet.We may very well also deserve a pitting. I don't really consider a pitting a strong rebuke, regardless of the wording used, it is just a message board. He should know that he's somewhat divorced from reality, and hopefully his exchange with caphis will help expand his horizons.

I can excuse some lack of perspective in youth, but he IS in his 20's, I would expect a bit more than that from an educated person. At least with respect to things like average income, minimum wage, etc. as a way to understand the society in which you live. Perhaps he didn't even realize he minimized it the way he did, that's cool.

[Jadis]

Libertarian, I have to ask, since I'm completely perplexed....what the fuck are you babbling about? Seriously....you're acting like a complete whackjob.

[yosemite]

Lib, perhaps you should take a nap? I frankly am not understanding where you are coming from on this one.

caphis, I agree with LeftHand of Dorkness on this one, in that if you can find some way to make an equitable deal with this guy, where both of you feel like you got what you wanted, you should go for it. Whether it's an interest-free loan (get agreement spelled out on paper so there's no ambiguity), or you trade him with a bunch of home-cooked meals or a painting of his family or something like that, then go for it.

I'd also like to point out that you really don't want to go down the road of "what is really justifiable spending."

Don't do that. Because as others have mentioned before, you're never going to please everyone, and your standards of what is acceptable spending and what is wasteful will not be viewed that way by everyone. You can't win when you start with that.

I'm saying that careless spending of money disgusts me because I can see better ways to help others with the same money.


I understand what you mean, but see, it's not your call to make. It's not your money this guy is spending on clothes. You don't get to decide.

I've been on both sides of this issue. Once I had inherited some money and I spent some of it on new clothes. I had just lost a lot of weight and got clothes that fit me. It was something that I'd promised myself I'd do when I lost that weight. And I got a lot of clothes. It was great. (Not that I got expensive clothes—just different styles of jeans at Sears and Pennys, but still—it was great.)

But some petty, bitter friends of mine didn't see it that way. I was being "wasteful" with my money. Other people could use that money I was pissing away on clothes for something more important, see? So my friends bitched bitched bitched at me for how I was spending my money. I still remember how crappy that felt, for them to do that to me.

Sure, I binge every now and then and see an $8 movie or I may have nice things. But I work my ass off. And if I had such money to blow on shit (are you saying that $12,000 for an outfit is justifiable?),

I personally would choke at the thought of someone spending that much on clothes, but it's not my call to make, and it isn't your call either. Please don't fall into that trap. It's none of your business. Don't be petty. You cannot control how this guy spends money and how he spends money has NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU.

I wouldn't be buying anymore "luxury" items than I have now. I'd instead give that $12,000 to 12 people who were actually impoverished and hope it helps them out.
That's great for you. Do that when you make your own money. But don't second-guess how he should spend his. It's odious. Do you want people to do that to you? Do you want someone hovering over your shoulder, telling you that the $8 movie you "treated" yourself to was not "justified"? Wouldn't you find that extremely irritating if someone did that to you? Obnoxious? Yeah. That's because it is obnoxious. So don't do that. Don't even start to do that.

I almost choked once when my sister talked casually about plunking down $500 for a ring. Just a ring. A piece of jewelery. I could not fathom it. That's a lot of money to me, and if it were me and I had $500 to piss away, I'd put it towards a new G5 Macintosh computer, or perhaps something for the pottery studio. But a freakin' ring? How frivolous is that? But then I realized that it was not my call to make, and the ring was important to her, and unless I wanted to be a petty bitch (like my friends who bitched about my new wardrobe), I'd never utter one critical word to my sister and I would be happy for her.

If you don't want someone begrudging you your small indulgences (or large ones, as the case may be), if you don't want someone questioning every penny you spend, don't do that to someone else. It's true that this guy is clueless, but time will sort that all out. I don't think he means badly—he just doesn't get it.

[Brad the Impaler]

So then he does what he thinks is a nice gesture and says "I'll pay your $2200 for you if you want, no questions asked"... I declined. I said "thanks, but no thanks".

Are you nuts? Seriously ... are you?

2200 bucks is pocket change to him, and could save you lots of misery. He's your friend, albeit annoying, and you'd probably do the same for him if you were the rich one and he needed the money.

Why are you insisting on being a martyr?

Why would that make him a martyr? I have had people offer to pay $5 for me to register here, but said no, because it isn't their place to pay for me. I think it shows guts not to take it, or at least a pair of his socks, which could take care of a couple of hundred bucks if you sell 'em. :)

(Not that I hold any grudge against anyone who did accept someone's gift of straight dope. If I had some extra money, I'd gadly sponsor people, I just don't feel right being on the receiving side. I'm NOT trying to hijack this into that debate. )

[Abbie Carmichael]

Why would that make him a martyr? I have had people offer to pay $5 for me to register here, but said no, because it isn't their place to pay for me. I think it shows guts not to take it, or at least a pair of his socks, which could take care of a couple of hundred bucks if you sell 'em.

It doesn't give you guts. It just shows you're not all that bright. (And I don't mean that in a mean way.)

The idea of doing a mitzvah for someone is that it's not their place to do it for you to begin with. If it was their place to do it, then it's not a mitzvah. You don't get brownie points/good karma for doing stuff you're SUPPOSED to do. It's the stuff that you go out of your way to do that's impressive.

Why is it people are so willing to take their friends' time, which can never be replaced, but not their money? They'll call and dump on a friend for 3 hours about a serious problem they're dealing with, but they're too self-righteous to accept financial help from a friend who has more money than they know what to do with?

You are going to have very few chances in life where someone is willing to really help you out. When your chance comes and you don't take it, that's fine, but you're no hero. You're just shooting yourself in the foot.

[Gadfly]

Lib, lay off the bitch juice.

[caphis]

Libertarian, I'll go ahead and accept your non-response as an apology for your apparently not-well-thought-out attack against my person.

An actual apology would've been nicer, but there's only so much pride you can get out of someone, I suppose.

[Really Not All That Bright]

Take the money!

[caphis]

Take the money!

Probably will! :p

[Liberal]

Of course you will. It's what you coveted all along.

[Bryan Ekers]

This thread should eat some cake and calm the fuck down.

[Creative_Munster]

Of course you will. It's what you coveted all along.

Christ, seeing how you are able to read minds, it's no surprise that you might be in the same financial situation as the OP's friend. Being able to discern the thoughts of others has to be an enormous advantage in business dealings.

[Epimetheus]

I wouldn't be buying anymore "luxury" items than I have now. I'd instead give that $12,000 to 12 people who were actually impoverished and hope it helps them out.



RIIIGHT, that is why you have a 12,000 dollar car right? You could easily have bought a 100 dollar junker and gave that other 11,900 dollars to people that didn't even have 100 dollar junkers. :rolleyes:

I hate people like you that assume that people with money are obligated to give it away to "needy" people. You are a true hipocrit caphis, a wanker and a putz. Get off your high horse and admit that Libertarian is right and you are merely envious of somebody else's fortunes.

Fucking Commie

[Epimetheus]

Christ, seeing how you are able to read minds, it's no surprise that you might be in the same financial situation as the OP's friend. Being able to discern the thoughts of others has to be an enormous advantage in business dealings.

It doesn't take mind reading to tell when somebody has an axe to grind, and this person obviously covets money, why else would he have so expensive of a car, yet complain about somebody else spending lots of money on something else. (obviously he can't afford it, and knowing somebody that can, hates him for that luxary)

For the record, I MAKE 600 dollars a month, and owe nothing on my car, have no issues with money or other people having it, and don't feel obligated to recieve money from them, or feel obligated to give to others that are worse off than myself.

caphis: That rich bastard spends HIS money on clothes that cost as much as my car, wah, wah, he should give it to people that are needy- (translation: that lucky bastard, he should give me some money, because I am obviously so needy, the nerve of that bastard, spending HIS OWN FUCKING money on stuff FOR HIMFUCKING SELF, when he could easily give it away)

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Caphis, some folks ain't worth your time. Anyone, for example, who gets outraged over your slights against someone who isn't outraged themselves, isn't worth your time.

Daniel

[Epimetheus]

Oh, I'm not outraged against caphis' slights against his friend. I think caphis is just an idiot that has ignorant ideas about personal wealth and obligation towards those that do not have it.

Even as a rather strong liberal, I cringe at these morons concepts of wealth distribution and obligation inherent in spending ones own money on ones own self. (or spending ones own money on ones own kids in this case)

Guess what pal, there is nothing wrong with a family spending 12,000 dollars on clothes if they have that kind of money. They are not morally responsible for the drug addicts or lazy fucks who would rather watch TV than work another job or go to school to get a higher paying job. You want more money, marry into it, build up your own fortune or cross your fingers and hope you win a lottery. In my opinion, the only lottery I hope you win is Shirley Jacksons.

[Nutty Bunny]

In my opinion, the only lottery I hope you win is Shirley Jacksons.

Ok, so now Caphis should be stoned to death? That's pretty harsh, don't you think?

Instead of continuing to stew and bitch about his friend, he actually opened up a meaningful dialog about the issue and cleared the air, which is more than a lot of people would do. So now there's all this hostility toward him for trying to be honest with his friend? I don't get it.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Not only is that harsh, that's against the rules -- or haven't you read the sticky at the top of the forum, Epimetheus?

Daniel

[monstro]

caphis, I applaud you for your maturity in handling this situation. You were able to realize that your friend is not malicious, just clueless, and you've probably made a positive, lasting impact on his life.

I would take what yosemitebabe says to heart. She speaks truth and wisdom. We could all judge each other for our purchases. One person's necessity will always be another person's luxury.

As long as your friend is living within his means and not influencing your spending habits, leave him be. Also be thankful that you have such a financially blessed friend. It may come in handy one day.

[Abbie Carmichael]

Guess what pal, there is nothing wrong with a family spending 12,000 dollars on clothes

I'm pretty po' at the moment, being in college and all ...

However if we are talking about a entire wardrobe worth $12k, I'm not sure that's all THAT extravagant. I know a lawyer in town who wears suits that cost a grand or two.

I bought a dress yesterday, a pair of capri pants and a simple shirt. 100 bucks. For 2 outfits. At an "average" store.

If you add up the cost of undies, shoes, and every item of clothing you wear, yes 12k is still a lot but it's not THAT far out there.

If I wanted to chuck all my clothes and start all over from scratch and not have to wear the same thing two days in a row, I'd need about $5k, and I don't have expensive tastes.

[monstro]

Thank God for Value Village!

[Epimetheus]

Not only is that harsh, that's against the rules -- or haven't you read the sticky at the top of the forum, Epimetheus?

Daniel

Well, you can certainly interpret my statement that way, I wouldn't say that is how it was intended though.

[Epimetheus]

So now there's all this hostility toward him for trying to be honest with his friend? I don't get it.


Well, the overall tone of the rant is how rich his friend is, and how much he "wastes" on clothes and how little concept he has of how "real" people have to scrimp and save to make it by. His tone is hostile towards rich people in general, as is the general responses in this thread.

You judge a person by how they act and what they say, and the OP certainly acts as if his friends money is not really his to spend, but should be handed out to anybody less off than said friend, and him spending said money on things he likes is somehow "wrong" and makes him less "real" of a person. Or do you outright deny that this is not implied whatsoever.

Yes, I am hostile towards people that are so bigoted against rich people simply because they are rich. I am certainly hostile towards any idea that smacks of wealth distribution or an ethical code that states that people that earn more than somebody else should give it up instead of buying what they want.

Yeah, it would have been a great OP if all it was about was the OP bitching about how little of a concept rich people have of low-income lifestyles, wheter it be 10k a year or 50k. Oh wow, person A has grown up segmented from culture B, look how funny he is in not knowing anything about culture B! Hahaha, what a rich twerp. Please, and you are as aware of every culture as you expect him to be of yours? If not, then you (OP) are a hipocrite, and I hate hipocrites.

[caphis]

Of course you will. It's what you coveted all along.

Right. And those who accepted $5 subscription gifts are just as equally horrible as I am. :rolleyes:

Oh for Christ sake, either defend your attack against me, or shut the fuck up already. It's not what I "coveted all along," it's that -- HELLO -- if I don't find a monetary source, I WON'T BE GOING TO COLLEGE NEXT YEAR.

If all you're going to do is stop by the thread occasionally to take aim and shoot, then the least you can do is defend your reasoning. If you can't, then there's the door, don't let it beat you in the ass on the way out.

You're being a smarmy asshole, either put up or shut up. You don't fucking know me, so quit acting like you do. Or are you only able to comprehend the shorter posts, and ignore the longer one -- that is, the one directed to you.

To the rest of you in the thread who have shown a greater sense of understanding, thanks for all your suggestions. Anyone who thinks that $12,000 for an outfit ISN'T ridiculous needs to take a look around at the world for a few minutes.

Oh, and Epimetheus -- I didn't buy the car with $12,000 in cash, obviously. Your post of

RIIIGHT, that is why you have a 12,000 dollar car right? You could easily have bought a 100 dollar junker and gave that other 11,900 dollars to people that didn't even have 100 dollar junkers.

is faulty in that you assume I can just hand out whatever I want whenever I want. If you just HAVE to fucking know, no, I couldn't have easily bought a 100 dollar junker. I attend school pretty far away from home, hold a job there as well as a job at home, and need some sort of -- oh, what's the word?... -- RELIABLE transportation to and from each. When I bought the car originally, when I was 17, it was under my parents' behest that I have THAT CAR. As I explain, I work my ass off to make sure that I can pay for every dime of it, though.

[caphis]

Well, the overall tone of the rant is how rich his friend is, and how much he "wastes" on clothes and how little concept he has of how "real" people have to scrimp and save to make it by. His tone is hostile towards rich people in general, as is the general responses in this thread.


It certainly is his to spend as he wishes, but I don't HAVE to agree with how he does it. And if he wants to continue a conversation in which I've already voiced my disagreement, then I'm going to continue giving my opinion.

[askeptic]

Whats all the big deal about $12,000 suits? Don't they all cost about that much? Hell, my Piaget watch cost more than that.

Oh, yeah, some libertarians are definately whackjobs. I know from personal experience.

[Bippy the Beardless]

The OP seems an OK person, but has an issue with the fact that a rich fried spends what seems to him an exorbitant amount of money on clothes.

There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN THIS TO CAUSE ANYONE TO GET HOT UNDER THE COLLAR !

It should be pointed out that the rich guy buying 12000 dollar clothing is not harming the OP, also such money has not disappeared, it has probably gone to pay highly skilled tailors who are I assure you artisans and worthy of good pay. A cheap suit on the other hand might be made by skilled artists in a third world sweat shop, these artists would not be getting anywhere near the proportion of the suits cost that a tailor would, instead the price paid for a cheap suit would go mostly into the large clothing corporation that markets them.

Saying that the rich guy (who we are told already gives money to charity) should ware cheaper clothing and give more to charity, is no different from telling the OP that he should drive a cheaper car and give more to charity. As such the OP shouldn't bear a grudge against the rich guy any more than a poor person should bare a grudge against the OP.

[Liberal]

An excellent point, Bippy, and one that I had overlooked. As if there weren't already enough irony to this no doubt embellished story, Caphis' own clothing purchases support sweat shops where the hidden masses sew his middle-class jeans. He's like an old British fop who, angry because he was not invited to dinner with the Queen, beats his servant for letting a fly into the house. The nerve of that bitch Queen.

[yosemite]

I would take what yosemitebabe says to heart. She speaks truth and wisdom. We could all judge each other for our purchases. One person's necessity will always be another person's luxury.

I knew that if I stuck around on these boards, eventually I'd share some truth and wisdom! ;) (Thanks monstro.)

caphis, don't go down this road. Don't do this. You'll see eventually, it's not somewhere you want to be.

After my dad died, my mom sold the house and moved. She moved all my dad's stuff with her (naturally), which included a massive music collection (Classical LPs), a massive book collection (history, biology, travel, photography), admirable stamp collection, a coin collection. She also moved the very nice grand piano that my dad scrimped and saved to buy her.

Some of my mom's friends were appalled at this massive collection of stuff that my dad left. They were appalled that someone could spend so much money on books and music. They told her so. They implied that she was wasting her money even moving all the stuff. They were annoyed with her for spending money to get the piano moved. They were really down on my dad for "wasting" all that money on books! And music! How frivolous is that?

Some of these people were good people who spent all their spare money helping the poor, donating to their church, and so forth. They were good people. And they thought that my dad "wasted" his money on books and music.

Now, I think I'd be hard pressed to find someone on this board who would state that books and music are a waste of money, but as I have illustrated, some people—some good people—do think that books and music are a "waste" of money.

No matter how "worthwhile" you think that something is, there's going to be someone out there who will find something wasteful about it, something "unjustified" about it, and they'll give you grief about it. Do you want to be one of these kinds of people? Yes or no?

Maybe after you've been on the recieving end of such treatment (like I have, like my mom has) you'll understand how crappy it feels. But please try to pay attention to what I'm telling you now, and perhaps spare yourself behaving in an ungracious manner. Don't do this. If you do this to this guy, you're really no better than those petty people who begrudged me my new wardrobe after I lost my weight, and you're no better than those people who bitched to my mom about my dad's collection of books. You're NO BETTER. So don't do that.

[Gadfly]

An excellent point, Bippy, and one that I had overlooked. As if there weren't already enough irony to this no doubt embellished story, Caphis' own clothing purchases support sweat shops where the hidden masses sew his middle-class jeans. He's like an old British fop who, angry because he was not invited to dinner with the Queen, beats his servant for letting a fly into the house. The nerve of that bitch Queen.

Lib.. Jesus, where the hell are you coming from?

So, this guy, down on his luck, not doing well financially, gets together with a rich friend. Tells him how much he's in debt, as it comes up in a discussion. Friend: "Oh, that's just pocket change to me - I spend that much on clothing alone.." Without a word of concern. They have a quick discussion about the merits of this. Then the friend adopts a number of bizarre positions, including "my parents forced this horrible burden upon me", "all good clothing costs 12,000 bucks per outfit" and "it's harder to be rich, because I have to keep track of all that money". And he doesn't offer money, concern, or even the slightest bit of advice.

That is, until he wants the down on his luck guy to shut up.

Oh yes, Libertarian! He is an evil man, supporting sweatshops! Having no choice but to buy reasonably priced clothing is no excuse! He's just angry because he's not rich! His friend's condescending, cold, and rude behaviour have absolutely nothing to do with it! Money's what he really wants.

:rolleyes:

[Tuckerfan]

A buddy of mine and I had to go shopping so that he could buy a present for another friend's wife who'd just squeezed out a pup, and while we were waiting for the present to be giftwrapped at the "service desk" we got to talking with one of the gals who worked there.

My friend works for a large university in Nashville, and he makes $50K/yr doing pretty much nothing (his own admission), he was advising the gal behind the counter that she needed to get a Mac computer, and when I pointed out that Mac's were probably out of the gal's price range (she and I make probably about the same amount on the hour and she's a college student, so no slam on her at all), his response was, "Mac's aren't all that expensive, you can pick one up for $1,100." I tried to explain to him that was waaaaaay more than she can afford, but he couldn't quite grasp the facts of the matter. (I've known him for almost 20 years now, and he's a spoiled rich kid.)

Later on that evening, he and I were discussing Formula 1 racing (I like calling it "NASCAR rich white guys" because it pisses him off to no end) and I said that I had no interest in the matter. He told me that he didn't understand why, since I had a fascination with classic cars.

"There's no way that I could ever afford to drive one of those things," I said. "And that's what I like about classic cars is that I can sit in one and just feel history oozing into me."

"You could afford to drive one of those cars." He replied, dismissively. "There's this test track in France where you could go to drive one of them."

Rather than get into an argument about this, I simply asked him how much the airfare to France would cost me. He quoted me a ballpark figure, and I pointed out that that price was over twice my weekly income. This shocked him (since at first he failed to understand that a human being could live on "so little money"). He did, however grasp that such a trip was beyond my means (after all, why the fuck should I fly to France, just so I can spend a significant portion of my income on driving around a loop until I disappear up my own asshole?), and perhaps I might have finally gotten through to him that intelligence does not equal paycheck size. (Yeah, I seriously doubt it, but one can always hope.)

[Liberal]

Gadfly, surely you understand that the OP gave a tainted version of the alleged incident, if not because he is immature then simply because people always do. When I'm talking to friends, I don't pry into their finances. Why should his rich friend? He offered to help when he was told the problem. And our empty-headed hero attacked him like a stepped-on cat. Meanwhile, he sees absolutely nothing wrong with his having a $12,000 car while half the world starves and dies of AIDS. It's fucking pathetic.

[Creative_Munster]

I think a lot of you are being too hard on the OP. When you are broke, the last thing you want to hear is how much money someone has and how money shouldn't be a problem.

I, too, however, think the OP overstated the point when he wrote that if he had $12,000, he would give it to people who needed it more. I don't think that is really rational either. And I do doubt that the OP would do that That being said, what is so wrong about being annoyed on an emotional level that someone has things a hell of a lot easier than you for no other reason than luck. Luck at birth. Being born rich is the easiest way to stay rich and get richer. I see nothing wrong with the OP being annoyed at this basic fact of life. It is annoying.

It isn't like the OP wished death on this person. I think he just wants his friend to be slightly more appreciative of where he finds himself financially and how that contrasts with how most people must live in order to get by.

It isn't the OP's business what his friend does with his money. However, being a bit disturbed by it is understandable.

[badchad]

Libertarian:

You idiot.

You presumptuous little turd.

You're a liar.

He's like an old British fop who, angry because he was not invited to dinner with the Queen, beats his servant for letting a fly into the house. The nerve of that bitch Queen.

And our empty-headed hero attacked him like a stepped-on cat. Meanwhile, he sees absolutely nothing wrong with his having a $12,000 car while half the world starves and dies of AIDS. It's fucking pathetic.

Preach the LOVE good “Christain”;).

[Lamar Mundane]

I don't begrudge him his wealth. I just found it downright disgusting for someone to spend $12,000 on an outfit (NOT even a suit, he clarified this for me; his suits cost a bit more)

I can't believe we've gotten this far and this hasn't been questioned. $12,000 for regular clothes? I would bet that an average male actor at the Academy Awards doesn't have $12,000 worth of clothing on. I doubt that many of the women do (although I think a few do). Does this guy wear tailored high fashion from top designers everyday?

Plus, his suits cost a lot more than $12K? Seriously, what kind of suits cost $15-20K? Based on my googling, a Savile Row tailored suit costs about $4000. What do you get for 4 times that?

<Interesting Sidenote> When entering "expensive suits" into Google, one of the sponsored links on the right was "JC Penny". <IS>

[pencilpusher]

Hell give him my IM and tell him to get ahold of me. I'm crying because the power company took a double payment of 120.00 and thats the difference between me paying my rent and being homeless. Jesus on a jumping jack I'd give my left ass cheek for 2200!!! Little bastard could have them BOTH for 5K!! :eek:

[Gadfly]

Gadfly, surely you understand that the OP gave a tainted version of the alleged incident, if not because he is immature then simply because people always do.

Sure, personal stories always have a bit of a slant. I'm just viewing the situation on the basis of what was posted here.


When I'm talking to friends, I don't pry into their finances. Why should his rich friend? He offered to help when he was told the problem. And our empty-headed hero attacked him like a stepped-on cat.

His rich friend started by making a completely unecessary and rude comment: "Only $2200?" Rich friend asks for a clarification question, responds with another rude comment, about dropping 12,000 dollars on a single outfit.

This is tantamount to having a discussion with a homeless man who is in hard times about his financial troubles, and proceeding to wave your earthly posessions at him, crying "Lo, behold my iPod and reasonably priced attire - I bear on my limbs goods of more value than what you gather during a week of begging!"

The friend only offers help when the conversation gets nasty. He does it in a condescending manner, and seems to do it just to get him to shut up. Whether or not this was intended, the fact remains that he acted very, very rudely earlier in the conversation.


Meanwhile, he sees absolutely nothing wrong with his having a $12,000 car while half the world starves and dies of AIDS. It's fucking pathetic.

This.. Is where you lose me completely. Isn't this condemnation a bit of a double-standard? I mean, you defend his friend, who pays 12,000 bucks on an outfit, when he could buy a decent outfit for a hundredth of that price.

The OP paid $12,000 for reasonable transportation. Something he needed. A price that he couldn't go much lower than to stay within his criteria. And even if he could, a $12,000 car when you need transportation is certainly a less frivolous purchase than a $12,000 outfit, wouldn't you say?

[yosemite]

I mean, you defend his friend, who pays 12,000 bucks on an outfit, when he could buy a decent outfit for a hundredth of that price.
There we go, getting into that again.

Don't, I repeat, DON'T, start making judgments on what other people spend on stuff. While you (and I) may find $12,000 for an outfit to be outrageous, it's not our money. And as someone else has pointed out, the money goes to people who are making a living too.

I make pottery and artwork. While none of my artwork has sold for huge money, occasionally it has sold for more than a little bit. I am sure that the money one of my customers spent on my artwork could have gone towards helping a homeless person, or an orphan or something. But instead they gave the money to me, in exchange for a completely non-essential, non-life-sustaining item (artwork). Was such a purchase "justified"? Let's say I sold a painting for $12,000. (I haven't.) Would you begrudge me that money for my artwork?

The OP paid $12,000 for reasonable transportation.
Who gets to decide what is reasonable? Why couldn't the OP take a bus? People do it all the time. I went for years without a car. Took the bus everywhere. So why couldn't the OP? Why, I may decide to deem a car to be an "unreasonable" expense. That's my opinion. Who are you to disbute that?

Something he needed.

Needed? Who gets to decide that? Why couldn't he take the bus? Why couldn't he get a cheaper car? (I speak as a person who still owns and drives a 1987 Dodge, by the way.)
And even if he could, a $12,000 car when you need transportation is certainly a less frivolous purchase than a $12,000 outfit, wouldn't you say?
Who gets to decide what is frivolous?

My mom had some friends who decided that my dad's book and record collection was "frivolous." He wasted that money on books about history, travel, photography and biology. He could have spent that money ever so much better, don't you think? And yes, he wasted money on a very nice grand piano for my mother. The nerve! How frivolous can you get?

Is this the kind of person you want to be? Deciding for other people what is or is not "important" enough, or is or is not "frivolous"? By the way, what have you bought lately? Want to offer up a detailed list, so the rest of us can decide whether you made "justified" purchases?

[Gadfly]

Is this the kind of person you want to be? Deciding for other people what is or is not "important" enough, or is or is not "frivolous"? By the way, what have you bought lately? Want to offer up a detailed list, so the rest of us can decide whether you made "justified" purchases?

I'm not saying that the guy can't have a $12,000 suit. I'm saying that waving it in front of a guy who's down on his luck is kind of.. Rude? Inconsiderate?

And that Lib's criticizing the guy for spending 12,000 smackers on a car when children are dying in Africa and so forth - in the course of defending a man who apparently paid 12,000 clams for a suit - is a little bizarre.

Oh, and I'm basing his claims of needing reliable transportation in car form from his claims - I don't know how accurate they are.

I have no problem with someone blowing 12,000 dollars on an outfit. But really, if someone's in hard times, financially, don't wave it in front of them.

[yosemite]

I have no problem with someone blowing 12,000 dollars on an outfit. But really, if someone's in hard times, financially, don't wave it in front of them.
I agree that the rich guy is clueless and oblivious. However, you have to understand that to some people, just breathing while rich is "waving it in front of them." If you have a nice car, or live in a nice house, then that alone is enough to piss some people off. There are so many degrees to this kind of behavior, (and I have experienced it myself, and I am by no means rich), and I just want to make it clear that it is in no way acceptable to do this.

And you went beyond just railing on the guy for "waving it in front of him." For instance:
This.. Is where you lose me completely. Isn't this condemnation a bit of a double-standard? I mean, you defend his friend, who pays 12,000 bucks on an outfit, when he could buy a decent outfit for a hundredth of that price.

See, I don't understand what the point is here. The guy has every right to spend whatever amount of money he wants to spend on whatever the hell he wants to spend it on. And I defend that guy's right to spend $12,000 on anything as well. As a matter of principle, I defend him. And I don't give a shit that he could buy an outfit at a hundredth of that price. That has nothing to do with anything. It is none of my business and I don't see how it's your business (or the OP's business) either.

And then there's this:
And even if he could, a $12,000 car when you need transportation is certainly a less frivolous purchase than a $12,000 outfit, wouldn't you say?
This comment has nothing to do with the guy "waving it in his face." This is a pure, unadulterated value judgment on how people spend their money.

But you (and the OP) are talking about what kinds of purchases are and are not "frivolous," and are bitching about how this guy spends his money. That is not your call to make about someone else.

I'm not saying that you can't have an opinion (we all have opinions) but your opinion is basically meaningless in this context. Just like my mom's friends had a right to their opinions (about my dad's book purchases being "frivolous"). But I found their "opinions" to be damned intrusive and annoying. And RUDE. Do you agree that these people's opinions (about my dad's book collection) were rude, or do you think that they were entitled to make judgments about my dad's book buying budget? Do you think my dad was "waving it in their faces" because we had a huge bookcase full of books in our house?

If you think that you declare someone else's purchase to be less "frivolous" than another purchase, then I hope you understand that you open yourself up to the same treatment. Do you want to be treated that way—having someone else spout off their "opinion" about which one of your purchases was "frivolous" or not? Wouldn't you find that obnoxious?

Well, when it's been done to me, I sure as hell found it obnoxious.

[Gadfly]

If you think that you declare someone else's purchase to be less "frivolous" than another purchase, then I hope you understand that you open yourself up to the same treatment. Do you want to be treated that way—having someone else spout off their "opinion" about which one of your purchases was "frivolous" or not? Wouldn't you find that obnoxious?


Thank you - I'd never quite thought about the situation that way. Yeah, I would find it obnoxious. Looking back, that wasn't a terribly well-thought-out statement I made about the car compared to the clothes.

Back to Lib's condemnation. He basically condemned the OP for seeing nothing wrong with spending 12,000 dollars on a car - in the course of defending someone who spent 12,000 dollars on a single outfit. It seems a little ridiculous and two-faced, is all. I was pointing out that the rich friend was making a similar decision, and therefore, by Lib's standard, deserved condemnation as well, but didn't receive it.

[yosemite]

Thank you - I'd never quite thought about the situation that way. Yeah, I would find it obnoxious. Looking back, that wasn't a terribly well-thought-out statement I made about the car compared to the clothes.
Good! I'm glad we're on the same page with that. :)

Back to Lib's condemnation. He basically condemned the OP for seeing nothing wrong with spending 12,000 dollars on a car - in the course of defending someone who spent 12,000 dollars on a single outfit.

I think he was trying to point out that there is no "one size fits all" criteria to spending.

See, to some people, spending a whopping $12,000 on a vehicle would be beyond frivolous. In some parts of the world, this would be unheard of. Some people could get around on a donkey and use that $12,000 to feed a bunch of starving kids. I am sure you are aware that in some parts of the world, this would be true.

So if a hypothetical donkey-riding starving-child-feeding person sees the OP plunk down $12,000 for a car (a mere vehicle), they might carry on about how wasteful the OP was, since in their world view, that $12,000 could go for things that were much more "justifiable" and less "frivlous."

And no doubt the OP would disagree with the hypothetical donkey-riding person, and no doubt the OP would defend his decision to spend $12,000 on a car. But why should he disagree, since, in someone else's world view, that much money spent on a mere vehicle is pretty much obscene?

So, if the OP feels like he can complain or bitch about the rich guy spending money on clothes, then he opens himself up to be criticized for spending $12,000 on a car. Why not? It's pretty offensive to the donkey-riders of the world, after all.

[Zoe]

Yosemitebabe makes sense. It doesn't behoove any of us with electricity and computers to be doing too much heavy criticizing and judging. I wonder if the money I spent on Earthlink this month or even SDMB could have saved a life - literally saved a life. But if I let that reality get too close to me, I'll go beserk.

Like Lamar Mundane[/b], I am extremely skeptical about the $12,000 figure. I think the OP's friend is unfamilar with what fine clothes actually cost and what the rich actually spend on clothing. They didn't get rich [i]that way.

My cousin was a pauper by some standards I suppose, but he left behind assets of about $25,000,000. Yet he had his shoes resoled. They were expensive shoes and he was no fool.

[Measure for Measure]

I can't believe we've gotten this far and this hasn't been questioned. $12,000 for regular clothes? I would bet that an average male actor at the Academy Awards doesn't have $12,000 worth of clothing on. I doubt that many of the women do (although I think a few do). Does this guy wear tailored high fashion from top designers everyday?

Plus, his suits cost a lot more than $12K? Seriously, what kind of suits cost $15-20K? Based on my googling, a Savile Row tailored suit costs about $4000. What do you get for 4 times that? Yeah, it's a bit of a head-scratcher.

I just visited Brooks Brothers' website, distributors of quality manufactured suits, made in 1st World countries like Italy.
http://www.brooksbrothers.com/suits/landing_suits.tem
The prices range from $500 ("tailored in Italy") to $900.

Question for the OP: How old is your friend? Are you certain he wasn't pulling your leg or using hyperbole? This story is a little strange.

---------------
Apropos nothing, here's a quick calcuation: US GDP per capita $US, 1995 (1987$): about $21,000 or .57 "suits".

Madagascar GDP per capita: about $380.

$380* .57 =about= $220.

Value of M4M's weekend outfit < $220 < Value of M4M's suit.

[Gadfly]

So, if the OP feels like he can complain or bitch about the rich guy spending money on clothes, then he opens himself up to be criticized for spending $12,000 on a car. Why not? It's pretty offensive to the donkey-riders of the world, after all.

Sure, but a huge chunk of the population in 1st world countries could be criticized in the same way. But Lib singles out the OP. By criticizing the OP, isn't Lib himself being obnoxious, and opening himself up to criticism?

Also, Lib's posts seemed unecessarily mean-spirited. Then again, this is the Pit..

[Liberal]

You'll notice that my first post was conciliatory and retrospective in tone. I was hoping to share with him the benefit of my half-century of life experience. He responded basically by telling me to go screw myself and still blamed his friend for his own fucked up worldview. Given the circumstances, wouldn't you agree that I have been more than patient?

[Gadfly]

You'll notice that my first post was conciliatory and retrospective in tone. I was hoping to share with him the benefit of my half-century of life experience. He responded basically by telling me to go screw myself and still blamed his friend for his own fucked up worldview. Given the circumstances, wouldn't you agree that I have been more than patient?

I don't think his worldview is that fucked up. Furthermore, I don't think anyone who was treated in such a rude way by a friend really has any incentive to be patient with anyone.

[Liberal]

Well, you're right. I probably shouldn't have been so patient. But I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

[Gadfly]

Well, you're right. I probably shouldn't have been so patient. But I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Lib, that wasn't what I meant, and you know it. This guy is financially in a bad way, and his friend proceeded to wave his wealth in the guy's face. That merits a pitting alone. Walking in and immediately starting to pick apart his worldview without any aknowledgement of his friend's rudeness is just a little cold, wouldn't you say?

[Cat Whisperer]

You'll notice that my first post was conciliatory and retrospective in tone. I was hoping to share with him the benefit of my half-century of life experience. He responded basically by telling me to go screw myself and still blamed his friend for his own fucked up worldview. Given the circumstances, wouldn't you agree that I have been more than patient?
No, I don't see you as being patient with caphis at all. You seem more like you have an axe to grind on this issue, and s/he turned up as a good target for you.

More importantly, back to the OP. What you might consider, caphis, is telling your friend that it's important to earn your degree on your own, but any contacts he could supply you with to get a good job after college would be much appreciated. I'm with you on not taking the money - it would complicate a friendship too much for me. I could take money from my parents, but not from friends. There is a difference.

[Liberal]

He is NOT financially in a bad way. He has a place to live, a car, and clothes. He works and goes to school (if I recall correctly). He is better off than a billion other people. And his friend was not rude. His friend offered to give him money. Not loan. GIVE. But Caphis took that as an insult and came here to pit his unfortunate friend. Being jealous of his friend's good fortune is bad enough, but damning him if he doesn't and damning him if he doesn't is crazy. Caphis will not even acknowledge he is no different from his friend when compared to people who really are poor. He thinks its okay for him to have a living standard above others, but not okay for others to have a living standard above him. And that's what riles my ass.

[Gadfly]

Sure, why not. But you still have to admit that his friend waving his wealth in the OP's face was inconsiderate at best.

[Liberal]

When you crawl up a woman's dress, it is inaccurate to say that she waived it in your face. See, that's why I said early on that the whole story is fishy. You cannot have an actual friend who is rich beyond avarice while you don't know about it. An acquaintance, perhaps. A pen pal, maybe. But not someone you know.

[Evil Captor]

I'd say that the guy was kind of clueless in how he talked about money (but it was a decent gesture of him to offer—though I don't blame you for refusing his offer). However, his abundance of money has nothing to do with you and is none of your business. How he spends his money, and what he spends it on, is none of your business. You can have private opinions on it, sure, but bottom line, it's none of your concern.

Best that you don't discuss it with him again. He doesn't get where you're coming from, you don't understand where he's coming from (hell, I don't either) and that's that. If he's a decent friend otherwise, then just keep the conversation away from money from now on and forget about this incident.

Yes, it's none of your business. Just because you're eating scraps and that other guy is throwing steaks away because he doesn't like their shape, it's none of your business. Paying attention to people who have plenty when you have little or nothing just makes for bad feelings. (Makng Jedi hand wave) Pay no attention. This is not the rich guy you are looking for. Ignore him. Not ignoring him is class warfare ... or something.

[Measure for Measure]

I keep thinking that caphis and his friend had a factual misunderstanding of some sort.

His friend meant to say $1200, (could be more!) for a suit. Not $12,000. Hey, what's an extra digit among friends?
---

Oh and I agree with Evil Captor, assuming that I understand him correctly. Our purchases have a moral dimension, insofar as morality is based upon the consequences of our actions. Alternatively, one could take note of Mark 10:23-26:

"...How difficult it is for those who have money to enter God's domain!... Children, how difficult it is to enter God's domain! It's easier for a camel to squeeze through a needle's eye than for a wealthy person to get into God's domain!"

(Luckily, "...everything's possible with God". PC users, rejoice.)

[caphis]

He is NOT financially in a bad way. He has a place to live, a car, and clothes. He works and goes to school (if I recall correctly). He is better off than a billion other people. And his friend was not rude. His friend offered to give him money. Not loan. GIVE. But Caphis took that as an insult and came here to pit his unfortunate friend. Being jealous of his friend's good fortune is bad enough, but damning him if he doesn't and damning him if he doesn't is crazy. Caphis will not even acknowledge he is no different from his friend when compared to people who really are poor. He thinks its okay for him to have a living standard above others, but not okay for others to have a living standard above him. And that's what riles my ass.

Frankly, I don't give a shit what "riles your ass". Your arrogant tone in your replies has far overshadowed any point you tried to make with me, and you left nothing but a bad taste in my mouth from your first reply.

You took any quick shot you could at me, for absolutely no reason, you made assumptions about my life and about how I think, and accused me of lying (which merited a collective "wtf?" from the readers) for no reason. That makes you an ass.

[Evil Captor]

Oh and I agree with Evil Captor, assuming that I understand him correctly.

My point was that some people seem to think that wealth can and should make no difference among friends, or among people, and that it's wrong to take note of that fact in one's daily life and one's personal life. Sorry. We live in a world where some people starve to death for want of moey and some people can afford to buy their own personal jet aircraft. That's really fucked up. We can all try to behave as if relative wealth makes no difference -- after all, people would really be on your case if you were complaining about how your poor friend is always whining about not getting enough to eat -- but in the real world, money matters. As George Bernard Shaw once said, "Of course the rich are different from the rest of us -- they have more money."

[yosemite]

Sure, but a huge chunk of the population in 1st world countries could be criticized in the same way. But Lib singles out the OP. By criticizing the OP, isn't Lib himself being obnoxious, and opening himself up to criticism?
Lib singled out the OP because the OP felt entitled to single out his rich friend. The OP figured that he could criticize how someone else spent his own money, and Lib was pointing out that if you want to dish it out (criticism), you'd better be able to take it.

Yes, it's none of your business. Just because you're eating scraps and that other guy is throwing steaks away because he doesn't like their shape, it's none of your business.

For a rich to do literally do that (throw away perfectly good food while someone right in front of him is starving), is indeed heartless and clueless. But that's not all that is happening here, and that's not what I'm talking about.

For a rich guy to be callous and devil-may-care in front of a grindingly poor friend, to literally "rub his nose in it" is really crappy. I think that the OP's friend did a touch of that, just a touch of it, and for that he (the OP's friend) is oblivious and clueless. And that part of the OP's rant is not out of line.

But the rest of it is NOT THE OP's BUSINESS. To start bitching about how this guy spends his money on this and not that, (and how the rich guy's spending is not "justified") is out of line. If this rich guy wants to spend money on clothes, he can do so. Because it's his money and he doesn't have to answer to anyone else about how he spends it. Just like my dad's book collection is not anyone else's business.

Or, do you think that everyone and their sister is entitled to chime in and tell my family how much money we can spend on books? Or tell us that the money we've spent on books could be better spent on something else? Is this what you think?

Paying attention to people who have plenty when you have little or nothing just makes for bad feelings.
Yeah, for the most part, yeah. Their good fortune takes nothing away from you, as long as they:

1) didn't steal from you.

2) don't owe you money that they are refusing to pay pack (instead buying fancy suits or books, as the case may be).

3) Aren't literally crushing starving orphans under their boots as they throw away steaks.

Feeling outraged at how other people spend money or begrudging other people their good fortune makes you a bitter, ungracious person. And, as mentioned above, makes you open to the same sort of scrutiny. So, tell me. What have you spent money on lately? I'm sure some of it is not "justified." So let's all pore over your spending habits and pick them apart, shall we?

And while we're at it, you've made some money selling artwork, so you tell us—the people who spent that money to buy your goods—I'm sure they could have spent their money much more wisely, right? They could have given that money to the poor and needy instead of spending it on something completely non-essential, non-life-sustaining. I'm sure there are people who have told your clients (or potential clients) that they could spend their money in a far more "justifiable" way, rather than buy something from you. So I guess we should begrudge you getting that money for your work. It could have been spent on something far more worthwhile and "justifiable."

[laigle]

When my dad was in college, he got in a frat to try and network (seeing as how he was an orphan with two pairs of pants to his name and wanted to be a doctor). One of the guys there was the kid of someone who owned a chain of retail stores. He got a box of new, clean, very expensive clothes every week from his parents. The reason for this being that he didn't "believe" in doing laundry. So instead of cleaning his clothes, or even taking them home to have them cleaned for his sorry lazy ass, he just threw them away. My dad suggested giving them to charity once, and the guy took offense because poor people shouldn't be able to dress that well. He washed out of school, and a few years later out of life, owing to myriad addictions his parents financed for him.

[lel]

My dad suggested giving them to charity once, and the guy took offense because poor people shouldn't be able to dress that well.

Never heard of dumpster diving, had he? (Boy do I wish I were at that guy's college back then and could wear his clothes. Hello dumpster diving indeed!)

[Cheesesteak]

He responded basically by telling me to go screw myself and still blamed his friend for his own fucked up worldview. Given the circumstances, wouldn't you agree that I have been more than patient?You mean this response?And no, Libertarian, I don't begrudge him his wealth. I just found it downright disgusting for someone to spend $12,000 on an outfit (NOT even a suit, he clarified this for me; his suits cost a bit more), whether or not it was hard earned money. Sure, he has the right to spend it on whatever he wants, but I also have the right to disagree with frivolity.Hmmm... I don't see "screw yourself" in there anywhere. Of course in your response to this you call him an idiot, presumptuous turd, you accuse him of wanting his own debts forgiven while calling in everyone who owes him (WTF is THAT all about?) AND you accuse him of making up the OP in the first place.

I guess that's what one gets for 'disagreeing' with how someone else spends their money. :rolleyes:

[Evil Captor]

Lib singled out the OP because the OP felt entitled to single out his rich friend. The OP figured that he could criticize how someone else spent his own money, and Lib was pointing out that if you want to dish it out (criticism), you'd better be able to take it.

C'mon, if I call a guy who's stealing stuff a thief, I'm dishing out criticism, but that HARDLY forms the basis for an assault on my character.

For a rich to do literally do that (throw away perfectly good food while someone right in front of him is starving), is indeed heartless and clueless. But that's not all that is happening here, and that's not what I'm talking about.

Actually my analogy was pretty durned close. It's all about the waste. The rich guy is pointing out that he's wearing 12,000 suits when the othre guy is scraping to get by -- maybe his annual income is $12,000. So he's mocking the poor guy's struggles, just as a wealthy guy tossing away steaks might be mocking a poor guy's hunger. Exact same thing.

For a rich guy to be callous and devil-may-care in front of a grindingly poor friend, to literally "rub his nose in it" is really crappy. I think that the OP's friend did a touch of that, just a touch of it, and for that he (the OP's friend) is oblivious and clueless. And that part of the OP's rant is not out of line.

I think he did a lot of it.

But the rest of it is NOT THE OP's BUSINESS. To start bitching about how this guy spends his money on this and not that, (and how the rich guy's spending is not "justified") is out of line. If this rich guy wants to spend money on clothes, he can do so. Because it's his money and he doesn't have to answer to anyone else about how he spends it. Just like my dad's book collection is not anyone else's business.

C'mon, Yosemitebabe. $12,000 suits? What, were $1,000 suits just NOT GOOD ENOUGH for him? Jeebus, I have no idea what a $12,000 suit must entail ... lotta taffeta I'd imagine. Maybe a tiara. I think it's fair enough to look at crap like that and say ... "Jeebus, get a clue." And for the record, I also mock collectors of, well, records, baseball, comics, books, and other such stuff for buying crap at ridiculous prices, but you know what? They're STILL much better than this rich guy, because the things they buy may well appreciate in value and thus be a way of building wealth, which I'm not against. Whereas I think a $12,000 suit drops in value the minute it walks out of the store, and especially if you go commando in it a couple of times.

Or, do you think that everyone and their sister is entitled to chime in and tell my family how much money we can spend on books? Or tell us that the money we've spent on books could be better spent on something else? Is this what you think?

I think I answered that in my post above. I might well be mocking your asses big time.

Yeah, for the most part, yeah. Their good fortune takes nothing away from you, as long as they:

Oh, but it does. In anything but a growing economy, when someone else grabs a bigger piece of the pie, everybody has to make do with a smaller piece. That's what's wrong with the U.S. economy right now... the rich people are grabbing too much of the pie.

Feeling outraged at how other people spend money or begrudging other people their good fortune makes you a bitter, ungracious person.

Feeling personally outraged, maybe, but feeling outraged on behalf of society makes you a fine, upstanding person, a beacon of fairness and justice. We've got too many folks who are willing to ignore social injustice and inequality 'round here.

And, as mentioned above, makes you open to the same sort of scrutiny. So, tell me. What have you spent money on lately? I'm sure some of it is not "justified." So let's all pore over your spending habits and pick them apart, shall we?

Like most poor and middle class people, I blow all my money on food, shelter and clothing every fucking month. It's disgustamating.

And while we're at it, you've made some money selling artwork, so you tell us—the people who spent that money to buy your goods—I'm sure they could have spent their money much more wisely, right?

Hardly. My art is likely to appreciate in value, thus enriching those who buy it. :p Plus, at $15 or $20 a pop, I'm not breaking anybody's bank account. :p

[yosemite]

C'mon, if I call a guy who's stealing stuff a thief, I'm dishing out criticism, but that HARDLY forms the basis for an assault on my character.
No, you're missing the point. If you criticize someone for the car they drive, or for their hairstyle, or whatever, you'd better be able to handle people criticizing your car and your hairstyle. See?
It's all about the waste.
Yes, and who gets to decide what is "wasteful" enough?

I agree with everyone else that $12,000 is appalling for a suit. That's my personal opinion. But I wouldn't spout off to that guy and I certainly wouldn't know where to draw the line between "justifiable" and "wasteful." Who gets to decide? Is Pepsi Cola wasteful when you can get generic for much cheaper? Does that mean that anyone who buys Pepsi is wasteful and you can dig into them for drinking Pepsi? Well, yeah, I guess you can dig into anyone who buys Pepsi, but you'd be considered an obnoxious, petty boor, now wouldn't you?

So where do we draw the line? Is it Pepsi vs. generic? Or a $12,000 car vs. a $20,000 car? $30,000 car? What exactly is the cut-off point—the exact spot where "justifiable" becomes "wasteful"? Who gets to decide?

The rich guy is pointing out that he's wearing 12,000 suits when the othre guy is scraping to get by -- maybe his annual income is $12,000.
I never disputed that the rich guy was clueless for mentioning his suit budget right in front of someone who was complaining about money woes. Clueless, indeed. That part of the rant is understandable. But then to rant and rave about what this guy spends his money on, and to say what is "justifiable" and what isn't? That's a different matter completely.
C'mon, Yosemitebabe. $12,000 suits? What, were $1,000 suits just NOT GOOD ENOUGH for him?
C'mon Evil Captor, Pepsi Cola? Generic wasn't good enough?

Once again, what is the cut-off here?

And for the record, I also mock collectors of, well, records, baseball, comics, books, and other such stuff for buying crap at ridiculous prices, but you know what?
Yeah, I know what. Buying that stuff gives people pleasure, and it's none of your business.
Whereas I think a $12,000 suit drops in value the minute it walks out of the store, and especially if you go commando in it a couple of times.
You are entitled to your opinion, and for the record I agree that $12,000 is too much for a suit, but it still isn't any of your business. And it has nothing to do with you or me or anyone else.

The OP took this guy's spending habits to heart and carried on about how "unjustified" such spending is. But that's not his call to make because it wasn't his money to spend.
Oh, but it does. In anything but a growing economy, when someone else grabs a bigger piece of the pie, everybody has to make do with a smaller piece. That's what's wrong with the U.S. economy right now... the rich people are grabbing too much of the pie.
And so what do you want to do? Bitch and complain and fuss over how other people spend their money? Would you like it better if they spent more money buying your stuff? Would that make it all fair to you? Or spent in in just the way you see fit?

We've got too many folks who are willing to ignore social injustice and inequality 'round here.
So what do you want? So where do you draw the line, once again? Is it social injustice to spend too much money on Pepsi? Or at Starbucks? Or on computers? Or porn? Why don't you give me a detailed list, with dollar amounts, of what purchases you deem "justifiable" and what is "socially unacceptable."

Please. Give me a list. I wait to be enlightened.
Like most poor and middle class people, I blow all my money on food, shelter and clothing every fucking month. It's disgustamating.
But you've got a computer. Is it an ancient 486 or something newer? You do know that you could get along with a cheap ancient 486, right? Or better yet, sell your computer, ditch your ISP and use the library to get on the Internet. Or better yet still, just ditch the Internet completely. A lot of really poor people don't have access to computers. They live in a van by the river. How wasteful and unjustified your extravagant spending habits are!
Plus, at $15 or $20 a pop, I'm not breaking anybody's bank account. :pAnd the rich guy was breaking into someone else's banking account to buy his suits? No, it was his own banking account. And the people who charged the amount they charged for the suits weren't forcing anyone to buy them either.

Besides, how do you know that some of your clients aren't compulsive buyers, buying too much art? Maybe they've got a garage-full of extravagant, "wasteful," "unjustified" stuff. So they don't need the stuff you sell—they could be spending the money in a much more prudent manner. So how dare you take money from them!

[Epimetheus]

I never understand the "Piece of the pie" statements. Is there some absolute portion of the economy that is distributed about to everybody, and once it is all taken, there is nothing left? So all the rich people are taking your chances of making money? Is that what this is all about?

Woe is me, I cannot make any decent money because everybody has taken it first!!

The fact that this rich person is spending his money on 12,000 dollar suits instead of having it in his bank rotting should mean more to you than anything. The money is flowing, and is not a "piece of pie."

[Shirley Ujest]

When my dad was in college, he got in a frat to try and network (seeing as how he was an orphan with two pairs of pants to his name and wanted to be a doctor). One of the guys there was the kid of someone who owned a chain of retail stores. He got a box of new, clean, very expensive clothes every week from his parents. The reason for this being that he didn't "believe" in doing laundry. So instead of cleaning his clothes, or even taking them home to have them cleaned for his sorry lazy ass, he just threw them away. My dad suggested giving them to charity once, and the guy took offense because poor people shouldn't be able to dress that well. He washed out of school, and a few years later out of life, owing to myriad addictions his parents financed for him.

I need closure on this. laigle tell me how your own dad turned out. Is he a doctor? Is there a happy ending?

[Gaudere]

For those people who question how anyone could spend 12k on clothes, what the guy actually said was "the stuff I wear on a daily basis is 12k"...which leads me to think he has an expensive watch. He didn't specifically say clothes, and high end watches can easily be 12k.

[Dangerosa]

Expensive watch or slipped digit, my thought too.

Hard to do $12,000 in casual clothes (gold plated underwear?). Not hard to do $1200 in clothes or $12000 in "stuff I wear" if you include jewelry - particularly watches.

On the cluelessness....yes, clueless. But it isn't hard to have no concept - especially if you are young and you've never really needed to pay attention to how much anything costs. I remember making $3.35 an hour in college, and my little sister, still in high school, bothering my mother for $6 socks. To my sister, who hadn't worked a day in her life yet, and had not real concept of money, $6 was just $6 from what was my parents apparently limitless supply of money (in her view - in truth it was limited - but she couldn't conceive of such a thing). To me, it was two hours plus (after taxes) of work for me.

[laigle]

I need closure on this. laigle tell me how your own dad turned out. Is he a doctor? Is there a happy ending?

Oh yeah. Of course he's pretty busy since he allows in uninsured patients, but that's the price of not being in it for the money.

[laigle]

No, you're missing the point. If you criticize someone for the car they drive, or for their hairstyle, or whatever, you'd better be able to handle people criticizing your car and your hairstyle.

I call bullshit on this whole rich bastard wankfest. Greed and wastefulness were considered immoral long before this OP came around. The twit was not being criticized for being rich, so quit trying to convince yourself you're an aggrieved minority. He was being criticized for not knowing the value of a dollar, and for pissing away perfectly good money. And people NEED to be criticized for those things, because they are not only aggravating to the unwashed peasants, they are moral failures. They do make you a bad person.

[Measure for Measure]

Kudos, laigle.

More generally, it is entirely valid to address matters of continuity within a moral framework.

For example, although we are all wasteful/sinful/tardy/whatever to some extent, it is no defense for the extremely wasteful/sinful/tardy/whatever to point out that others share their characteristic as well.

Quantitative differences matter. Double-parking is not the same as doing 80 in a 25 mph zone, although both are illegal.

[yosemite]

Greed and wastefulness were considered immoral long before this OP came around.
And everyone's idea of greed and wastefulness varies, depending on who you are, and the people who surround you. So? Are you the final say on what exactly is too greedy and too wasteful? You gonna decide for everyone else where that line is drawn?The twit was not being criticized for being rich, so quit trying to convince yourself you're an aggrieved minority.
Wait a minute, wait a minute . . . you are implying that I'm an aggrieved minority? Like, you think I'm a rich person? Me, the one who still drives a 1987 Dodge? Me, who has never, even at my best, been rich, and right now is not rich at all?

This issue matters to me and it hits close to home for me because I've been criticized for buying too many jeans at Sears. I've seen my dad (who worked at the Post Office all his life) criticized for buying too many damned books. Sure, he always drove old cars and we lived in a modest house, but damn, he spent too much money on books! How wasteful!

You think that this kind of mindset only is directed at rich people? You're wrong. It gets directed at everyone. Because no matter how "poor" you think you are, you are "rich" in someone else's eyes. This kind of behavior and thinking is petty and boorish, and it's best not to go down that road.
He was being criticized for not knowing the value of a dollar, and for pissing away perfectly good money.

And yet again, I ask: what is the definition of "pissing away" money, anyway? Can you tell me precisely what that is? My dad left about (I estimate) 3,000 Classical LPs. He bought them at their regular retail price, none of them were expensive on their own, but he loved Classical music and he just kept on buying and buying. (And listening and listening—he loved that collection and got a lot out of it.) So, is 3,000 records "pissing away" money? Do you begrudge him that? Are all his books, or the grand piano he bought my mom "pissing away" money?

And people NEED to be criticized for those things,And people certainly have criticized my family for my dad's "pissing away" money on books and records. Because in their worldview, that was a terrible waste. Are you going to chime in and agree? How many books are too many books? Can you tell me? What is the exact amount that is too much to pay for a book? Or a purse? Or a car? because they are not only aggravating to the unwashed peasants,
Oh, I get that. I've seen that. My dad's books were "aggravating" to those who didn't think books were important. But what would you have my dad do? Not buy any books? Not buy as many? Was he obligated to buy things to please his neighbors? (Boy, that grand piano sure pissed off the neighbors, I can tell you . . . )
they are moral failures. They do make you a bad person.
There aren't enough eye rollies for this one.

By your criteria, we're all bad people and we're all moral failures. We sit here, comfy, with electricity and an Internet connection. We probably live in a house or apartment. We probably have more than one set of clothes. And that's far more than many people get by on. And they know that we have computers, and they know that we have houses, or cars, and they don't. Isn't that terribly aggravating to them?

You drive down the street in your car, and there are people who have no cars. You are waving your car in their face. You are a bad person.
Quantitative differences matter. Double-parking is not the same as doing 80 in a 25 mph zone, although both are illegal.
So I want you to give me an exact amount that is too much to spend for a:

1) car.
2) pair of jeans.
3) package of hot dogs.
4) computer.

I also want you to tell me whether or not it is justifiable or wasteful to have a record or CD collection that is larger than:

1) 10 CDs
2) 50 CDs
3) 100 CDs

And let's try this: Is someone "justified" in spending money on:

1) porn.
2) popcorn.
3) European vacation.
4) extra vehicle.
5) iPod.
6) portable DVD player.

What kinds of items are "justifiable" and which items are "wasteful" and an example of "pissing away money"? Can you tell me, specifically, which things are okay to buy, and which items make you a "bad person" if you spend money on them? Please. Tell me which.

Unlike your speed limit analogy, which has a strict, definite number value, I'd say that you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who can agree on which items are "wasteful" and which are not, on how much is too much to pay for something, or how many shoes are too many shoes, how many cars are too many cars, and so forth.

So, unless you can give me a detailed list authorized by some central group that speaks for all of us, defining where that line exists between "just wants" and "pissing away money," then you're just spouting off your opinion. And if you feel entitled to pass judgment on someone else for paying "too much" (in your opinion) for something, then you deserve the same sort of scrutiny and criticism yourself. For how much you spend on lunch, for what kind of car you drive, how much you spend on entertainment, and so forth.

Now, since I've already been on the receiving end of that kind of criticism, I have to say that I don't much care for it. It sucks to have someone bitch at you for your clothes, or your collection of CDs, or whatever. It sucks to have someone get all bent out of shape and begrudge you enjoying stuff that you bought with your own damned money. As if what you feel is important, and what you enjoy, is somehow taking away something from them. Like you can't buy stuff for yourself, but you always have to think about them, and pass it by them first to make sure that your own buying choices "pass muster." And that sucks.

Since I know how much it sucks to be treated like that, I'm doing my best to not dish that kind of treatment out to others.

And while I'm on this little prolonged rant, I have a tangental (but related) point to make. I got people getting pissed at me or my family for our buying choices, even though it had nothing to do with them. Their attitudes were strikingly similar to the people I've know, who, for whatever reason, were pissed that I could draw. I had one friend who would literally seethe when I pulled out my sketchbook to doodle in front of her. It was almost like she thought I was slapping her in the face because I could do something that she couldn't do. Like I was insulting her. But what the hell was I supposed to do? Not draw at all? Only draw at carefully orchestrated times, in order to not offend her?

How much of our lives and our behaviors do we need to adjust in order to not be considered a "bad person"? Can't we just enjoy what we enjoy without always having to worry about how some completely unrelated, unaffected third party is going to get all pissed at us because we have had good fortune?

[laigle]

Are you the final say on what exactly is too greedy and too wasteful? You gonna decide for everyone else where that line is drawn?

When the question at hand is who will be criticized by me? Yes, that's right, I am! Congratulations, you've figured it out! I make my own decisions about what I deem moral and immoral. And no amount of idiotic drivel from you will be changing that. Now go call Rush up and have him come up with a new comeback line for you, since forming your own ideas is such an alien concept.

When the question is what you think, or what society at large is going to sanction, you can have a say. Till then, go fuck yourself. Nobody suggested throwing him in jail. They suggested he was a bad person. You don't get to tell us we can't think that.

Oh, and since you mentioned it, yes, we are all moral failures. Some of us more than others though, which is the part you're incapable of grasping. And once again, as far as my criticism is concerned, I get to decide the terms of that scale. Ain't life a bitch?

[yosemite]

When the question at hand is who will be criticized by me? Yes, that's right, I am! Congratulations, you've figured it out!
Yeah, you have that right. I never said you didn't. I merely said it was petty and boorish. Oh yeah, I guess that's my opinion.

I make my own decisions about what I deem moral and immoral.
And so does everyone else. About your attitude.
And no amount of idiotic drivel from you will be changing that.
And I notice that you dodge the issue. You think that we all should condemn those who we think are "wasteful"? Well, we're all wasteful. So I guess that means that we all can piss in each others cornflakes all damned day long, all of us begrudging someone else who is the teensiest bit better off than we are, or someone whose priorities are more towards new cars instead of more CDs, and won't life be grand? Won't that make our world ever so much better, to all be petty and bitter and jealous with each others possessions? To feel morally entitled to pass judgment on each and every person who doesn't adhere to our own strict idea of what is right?

:rolleyes:

Now go call Rush up and have him come up with a new comeback line for you, since forming your own ideas is such an alien concept.
Another weak attempt to side-step the issue. And another assumption about where I'm coming from. First you assume that I'm rich (I probably own a far crappier car than you do—doesn't make me morally superior than you?), and now this.

I got this idea from my own experience, which I have specifically laid out repeatedly many times. Shocking, isn't it, that I can form opinions from my own life?

Nobody suggested throwing him in jail.
No, what you're suggesting is that it's morally right and okay to be a bitter, petty person who begrudges someone else something that has nothing to do with you. And when you sanction that kind of behavior, you deserve to get the same kind of bitterness directed right back at you. Enjoy. You asked for it.

Speaking for myself, I hope that if I don't dish it out, I won't have to take it. I've taken enough as it is, thank you.
They suggested he was a bad person. [You don't get to tell us we can't think that.
You can think whatever you want, honey. And I can think you're bitter, petty, and possibly jealous for thinking it. And once again, I can think that you definitely deserve to have someone else piss in your cornflakes on a regular basis. Because hey—you dish it out, you deserve to get it back, right?

Oh, and since you mentioned it, yes, we are all moral failures. Some of us more than others though, which is the part you're incapable of grasping.
Once again, missing the point. Why am I not surprised?

There are always ranges of "wasteful," but since no one can agree on where the line is, that means that pretty much everyone is evil and wasteful (in someone else's worldview) which I suppose means that we all should make each other miserable, right?

How dandy.

[artemis]

When the question is what you think, or what society at large is going to sanction, you can have a say. Till then, go fuck yourself. Nobody suggested throwing him in jail. They suggested he was a bad person. You don't get to tell us we can't think that.

Oh, and since you mentioned it, yes, we are all moral failures. Some of us more than others though, which is the part you're incapable of grasping.

From the OP:
And I know he's gone and donated thousands to Childrens Hospitals before with his family...

Looks to me like the "bad person" in the OP has, with one stroke of his pen, already done more good for the needy that you are ever likely to do in your entire life. How exactly then is he a "moral failure"? Because he hasn't given as much as he potentially could give? Well, neither have you, and neither have I. I don't know anyone who doesn't indulge in something that couldn't be classified as an "unnecessary indulgence".

I know middle-class people who own horses, boats, and RVs; they cost considerably more than $12,000 dollars. I know middle-class people who regularly go on expensive vacations. Are these people automatically "bad people" because they didn't donate that money to charity?

Who decides how much of a person's income must be given away to others in order for that person to avoid the label of "greedy and selfish"?

[Epimetheus]

Ain't life a bitch?

I don't know about life, but you sure are.

[OpalCat]

Of course you will. It's what you coveted all along.

Jesus fucking Christ, Lib! I have to agree--in this thread you're being even more of an asshole than usual.

[Measure for Measure]

Yosemitebabe makes a mix of decent and not-so-decent arguments. Let's start with the wheat.

If somebody brings up my father's moral failings, it puts me in an awkward position. Firstly, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do about it. Secondly, it is likely that I know more of the relevant details regarding my Dad's transgression (littering, say) than does the finger-wagger. Thirdly, I have been put into a moral quandary of my own, where I must weigh familial loyalties against upholding social standards.

Furthermore, if my Father had passed away, the preceding is magnified. So methinks that some of yosemitebabe's acquaintances lack discretion, from the sounds of it. Hey, I've made social errors too.

------ And if you feel entitled to pass judgment on someone else for paying "too much" (in your opinion) for something, then you deserve the same sort of scrutiny and criticism yourself. For how much you spend on lunch, for what kind of car you drive, how much you spend on entertainment, and so forth.

Yes. But I deserve exactly the same sort of scrutiny that I dish out. Since, I wasn't asking to go through Mr. 12000's receipts, he can't go through mine. Mr. 12000 is welcome to chat with me about why I purchased a Dell Dimension rather than a cheaper locally built machine (or an Optiplex for that matter).

It won't do, however, to equate spending, say $200,000 per year on personal items, as opposed to something closer to the average. They simply aren't in the same ballpark.
So I want you to give me an exact amount that is too much to spend for a: 1) car. 2) pair of jeans. 3) package of hot dogs. 4) computer.1) I'm afraid that we have a communication problem. Please let me know exactly the point in the color spectrum where red is separated from orange. You can't, and I can't, because we're discussing a continuity. There are lots of cases where categories (and characteristics) can be reasonably discussed without worrying about bright lines.

There may be no bright line between a "tall", "medium" and "short" person, but that in no way invalidates the categories themselves. That's the point about continuity that I was trying to make.

2) Thinking sensibly, what is "too much to spend" depends upon context. I will spend more on food when I'm working a 50+ hour week than when I have the time to fix my meals. Your average tycoon can probably get away with wearing a Brooks Brothers suit, but not if he's in advertising: when flash is called for, other brands may be prudent.

3) I could probably come up with a methodology for answering your question, but yosemite-babe was speaking by way of illustration anyway, so I won't.

-----------------------
Now, since I've already been on the receiving end of that kind of criticism, I have to say that I don't much care for it. It sucks to have someone bitch at you for your clothes, or your collection of CDs, or whatever. It sucks to have someone get all bent out of shape and begrudge you enjoying stuff that you bought with your own damned money. As if what you feel is important, and what you enjoy, is somehow taking away something from them. Like you can't buy stuff for yourself, but you always have to think about them, and pass it by them first to make sure that your own buying choices "pass muster." And that sucks.

Since I know how much it sucks to be treated like that, I'm doing my best to not dish that kind of treatment out to others. ...How much of our lives and our behaviors do we need to adjust in order to not be considered a "bad person"? I'm not sure what I think of all that. But let me hone in on the last sentence. I don't fear moral judgment: I welcome it. If you want to discuss whether my behavior has been prudent or well-considered, by all means, let's do that. [Note: Make direct eye contact when saying this. Don't get defensive. Pose lots of questions. ("Do you think that's reasonable?") Widen your eyes slightly, on occasion. At other times, narrow them into slits. Cock an eyebrow.]

I can handle moral judgment. What trips me up is resentment, which necessarily bypasses rational discourse. I'm guessing that Yosemitebabe has overlapping concerns.

All the same, if your actions have consequences, then they are likely to have a moral dimension. To pretend otherwise is amoral, immoral, or nonutilitarian.

I think this post is long enough for now.

[Measure for Measure]

----- There are always ranges of "wasteful," but since no one can agree on where the line is, that means that pretty much everyone is evil and wasteful (in someone else's worldview) which I suppose means that we all should make each other miserable, right?

That POV reeks of moral relativism. There are always ranges of immorality, some acts are worse than others, and none of this should stop us from condemning those who act egregiously or recognizing worse acts where they exist.

Still, yosemitebabe has put her finger on a classic problem with utilitarianism: while it identifies better or worse moral actions, it is a poor indicator of moral adequacy.

[Liberal]

I have to agree--in this thread you're being even more of an asshole than usual.Hmm... I thought I saw a razor blade in that welcome basket.

[yosemite]

Yosemitebabe makes a mix of decent and not-so-decent arguments. Let's start with the wheat.

If somebody brings up my father's moral failings, it puts me in an awkward position. Firstly, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do about it. Secondly, it is likely that I know more of the relevant details regarding my Dad's transgression (littering, say) than does the finger-wagger. Thirdly, I have been put into a moral quandary of my own, where I must weigh familial loyalties against upholding social standards.
All very good points and definitely an issue.

But moreover, it comes down to someone judging my dad based on their own values. Some people don't value books. They hardly have any books in their house. So, to see someone have literally a whole wall—floor to ceiling—of just books, is appalling to them. Because they don't get that much out of books. But does that mean that the person who does get a whole lot out of books is a "bad" person?

So methinks that some of yosemitebabe's acquaintances lack discretion, from the sounds of it. Hey, I've made social errors too.
Yes, that's definitely part of it. I don't particularly give a shit what people think in their heart of hearts, but when they bitch about it to me (whether it be my spending or my dad's spending), then that's a different matter.

Yes. But I deserve exactly the same sort of scrutiny that I dish out. Since, I wasn't asking to go through Mr. 12000's receipts, he can't go through mine. Mr. 12000 is welcome to chat with me about why I purchased a Dell Dimension rather than a cheaper locally built machine (or an Optiplex for that matter).
And as long as you don't resent his tone (keeping in mind that his tone is similar to your own) then you're all fine. If he thinks you're intrusive and is intrusive back, and you don't mind, well, that's not so much of a problem for you, but it is a problem for him. Perhaps he doesn't want you asking intrusive or judgmental questions about his spending habits. Perhaps he doesn't think it's your business.

Not everyone's life is an open book, you know.

It won't do, however, to equate spending, say $200,000 per year on personal items, as opposed to something closer to the average. They simply aren't in the same ballpark.
No, they aren't, which makes condemning someone for spending $200,000 seemingly so much easier. But we still come down to the where we draw the line, and who draws it, and what is the best and most appropriate way to express it.

There may be no bright line between a "tall", "medium" and "short" person, but that in no way invalidates the categories themselves. That's the point about continuity that I was trying to make.
And yet each person's opinion will vary. "Tall" may mean something different in an area where the average person is 5' 6". And if you come from an area where the average is 5' 9" and you try to tell someone else who is not from that area that they are too tall or not tall enough, you're going to have difficulty. Because the standards differ depending on who surrounds you.

Thinking sensibly, what is "too much to spend" depends upon context.
And there are a variety of contexts, and also people's preferences, quirks, private feelings, and so forth. And perhaps it's not your business to decide what is "too much" for someone else when they are merely spending their own money in the way they prefer.

I'm not sure what I think of all that. But let me hone in on the last sentence. I don't fear moral judgment: I welcome it. If you want to discuss whether my behavior has been prudent or well-considered, by all means, let's do that. And there is a way to do that if it's a pressing concern. For instance, if someone wants to throw away an old used computer and you think that they could donate it to the homeless shelter, by all means, make a suggestion. Or if they ask for your input, then by all means, give it.

But if they enjoy what they are buying and seem to get something from it, and they aren't hurting you, then perhaps keeping your mouth shut is appropriate, unless you see a pressing, immediate concern (like a particular homeless shelter needing a computer right now).

Way back in this thread I brought up my sister, who bought a $500 ring, which appalled me. I'd never spend money like that and it seemed like such a frivolity to me. I am still a little taken aback that she'd spend money like that, but I never intend to utter one question about it, or to criticize her (or even mildly inquire) about why she bought that ring or whether or not the money could be better spent. Because that ring brought enjoyment to her, and she worked honestly for the money that paid for that ring. And I have no intention of raining on her parade or ruining her enjoyment.

I've also thought on occasion about these ultra-rich people who spend scads of money on the "finer things of life" like expensive art, fancy designer clothes, and so forth, and I've decided that unless they are apathetic, dull, bored people who don't remotely enjoy the stuff they buy, then I'm really happy for them. I can sew a little and I can appreciate a well-designed garment perhaps a little more than most people. When I want to splurge I'll pay the Big Bucks for a Vogue Designer Pattern (woo!) and let me tell you, I can appreciate the subtle details and elegant cut of some of these patterns. They are really nice. So, even if I can never afford a designer outfit, I'm glad that someone can afford them and I'm glad that someone out there gets paid to design and make such beautiful things.

Same goes for the expensive paintings and houses and yachts. A lot of these items are created by people not unlike me—people who create things—and I'm glad that someone is paying these people for making lovely things.

I will add one other thing, though: when I see someone who doesn't even remotely appreciate the beatiful things they buy, then yeah, I have to say that it bothers me. But it isn't really a matter of how much they spent on that thing, it's just that I believe that we should all appreciate the things we have. If I give someone one of my hand-made mugs, for instance, and they don't understand why it's special and prefer to use K-Mart slipcast mugs, well, I personally won't feel like giving them any more of my mugs. And even though I realize that it's none of my business, I admit that it would bother me if some rich millionaire bought a whole lot of my mugs, but never used them, never enjoyed them and didn't give a shit about them. But once again, that's not about the money spent. I'd be just as upset if an equally poor coworker didn't appreciate one of my mugs. (And even with that admission, I can see that it would be hard to decide what was appreciative enough? It gets so complicated, that's for sure!)

I can handle moral judgment.
I think most of us can, and should. But it depends on why the moral judgment is given.

When it comes to spending money, I think that we color our judgments with our own personal preferences and hang-ups. And so we get situations like the non-book fan judging the person who loves books A LOT, and trying to tell them that they are bad because they buy "too many" books. And that's not really productive, now is it?
What trips me up is resentment, which necessarily bypasses rational discourse. I'm guessing that Yosemitebabe has overlapping concerns.
Yes, yes, yes, you definitely bring up a huge issue.

Rarely do people start in with these judgments without some underlying resentment. I think that usually we can tell when someone's judgment is touched with more than a bit of resentment, and I think that it's an element with the OP, and with many, many people.

All the same, if your actions have consequences, then they are likely to have a moral dimension. To pretend otherwise is amoral, immoral, or nonutilitarian.
But in the case of spending money, it's not so easy to know that someone else's spending is wrong. If someone buys a $1,000 painting from me, for instance, are they extravagant and bad? I mean, think about it—$1,000 for a piece of stretched canvas. But what if I desperately need that money? What if I donate half of that money to some worthy charity, or hire someone less well off than me to paint my house? We never really know where the money may end up (unless we're buying drugs or giving money to a wino ;)) so even if one person spends it on something "frivolous," the person they give the money to may not.

I guess another reason I feel as strongly about this is because I create "nice things" that can be expensive and can be deemed "frivolous." Some of the people who have paid me for my work have been pretty well off. Where would I be if there weren't rich people in the world to buy my art?

I see in preview: Lib, stop. Stop now. Stop stop stop stop. Please. Stop. That was way over the line. Please take a rest. Stop stop stop. Please.

[askeptic]

Lib, not being nasty, but is there anywhere I could see some of your art? I really am interested and I would not dare attempt to criticize it. I would just like to see it.

[yosemite]

askeptic, did you mean me? I don't recall Lib talking about art. In case you mean me, you can check out the site in my profile or go to my Geocities site. (http://www.geocities.com/yosem_babe)

[torie]

I'm confused by all the "pissing money away" comments.

There really is no such thing as "pissing money away".


Mr. 12000 spends 12,000 on a suit. Part of that 12,000 goes to the tailor, who goes and buys food with it. Part of the money spent for food pays the cashier's salary, which he gives part of to his kid to buy dinner at a resturant. Part of that money goes to the waitress as a tip. She uses this to help pay for college. That money gives all the researchers at universities thier jobs....and so on...and so on.


Am I missing something here? :)

[askeptic]

askeptic, did you mean me? I don't recall Lib talking about art. In case you mean me, you can check out the site in my profile or go to my Geocities site. (http://www.geocities.com/yosem_babe)


Yep, I have said it before, and I know I will say it again, I am a DUMBASS. Sorry YB, I will definately check out your site.

[Liberal]

No. I think you can see like an eagle. :)

[Liberal]

Oops. Sorry I stepped on your post, Askeptic. I meant mine for Torie.

[torie]

No. I think you can see like an eagle. :)

Thank you!

I said something sma-art! I am so smart! S-M-R-T, I mean S-M-A-R-T, I am so smart! :D

[Bad News Baboon]

You guys are making good points in regard to material worth and such, but...

I'm still stuck on the $12,000 outfit part.
Some of you are quoting prices for suits, which the OP has clearly said "It's not suits, either" or words to that effect.
I'd buy the watch theory, but almost no one (at least no one I have ever met) includes a watch in the price of the outfit. As for that matter, people tend to not include the cost of shoes (which would have been another good guess on expensive items).

Unless Armani and Ford are personally hand tailoring his shirts, I just don't see it. Someone is using hyperbole. Whether it's the rich friend or the OP, I don't know.

I also don't understand the friendship. The OP is seeming to make the rich guy out to be a jerk. If so, why bother with the friendship? IMO, the OP sounds pretty bitter and seems to have a chip on his shoulder in regards to the friend's money. Friendship is a two way street, you know. I could see the rich guy writing an equally 'tame' rant about the OP, in regards to boorish behavior.

one last bit:

The OP states:
"AND THEN he has the nerve to tell me that I don't know how hard it is to manage that kind of money. OBVIOUSLY you don't either, you ass, if what you're wearing costs more than everything I OWN. I voice dissention, but he tells me that I just don't know how it is."

??
What exactly does spending a jillion on clothes have to do with managing money? If he can AFFORD it, then he's obviously managing it, no? And, he is being honest, you DON'T know how it is.

[caphis]

You guys are making good points in regard to material worth and such, but...

I'm still stuck on the $12,000 outfit part.
Some of you are quoting prices for suits, which the OP has clearly said "It's not suits, either" or words to that effect.
I'd buy the watch theory, but almost no one (at least no one I have ever met) includes a watch in the price of the outfit. As for that matter, people tend to not include the cost of shoes (which would have been another good guess on expensive items).

I've stepped back from the discussion a bit, but I'll clear this point up since there seems to be some confusion. I asked what he meant when he referred to his $12,000 outfit, and he told me that it consisted of a shirt, pants, underpants, socks, and shoes.

Unless Armani and Ford are personally hand tailoring his shirts, I just don't see it.

This is the case, apparently, because he says that he often gets fitted for new outfits.

[Measure for Measure]

I have to admit caphis, that I'm having difficulty with this story. (Apologies.)

A web search shows that Mark Christopher makes custom shirts (20 fittings!) for perhaps $300.

http://www.markchristophercustomshirts.com/articles/style_makers.htm

I keep thinking that it's $1200, not $12,000.

Can anybody explain to me how a guy can put together an outfit for $12,000 (even more!)?

[Measure for Measure]

I'm confused by all the "pissing money away" comments.
There really is no such thing as "pissing money away".

Mr. 12000 spends 12,000 on a suit. Part of that 12,000 goes to the tailor...and so on...and so on. Spending money on one item/activity implies either that you won't be spending money on another, perhaps more worthwhile item/activity/endeavor or you won't be saving that money, and thus adding to the long-run investment pool.

[Kayeby]

Can anybody explain to me how a guy can put together an outfit for $12,000 (even more!)? If he's mentioned that he's getting fitted for clothes that could mean anything from getting something made cheap (but well) in Thailand to getting fitted for haute couture at Chanel. A haute couture wardrobe could easily run to the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it's said that there are only 200 or so regular haute couture customers in the world.

Not being ultra-rich or a male, my guess would be that most of the money would be in a nice jacket (there are alligator jackets for well over $12,000), good shoes, and probably the pants.

[yosemite]

From the link that Measure for Measure provided: Mr. Lingley's shirts, which are made of fine cottons and are hand finished, cost $110 to $275 and require about 20 measurements for a fitting.
That means that the tailor or seamstress took 20 different measurements of the client's body: neck width, arm lenth, chest width, etc. etc. That doesn't mean that the customer comes back 20 times to get fitted. Just that the measurements are very exacting. (I usually just go with a few measurements when I sew something—nowhere near 20.)

I used to work in a fabric store where many of the employees took seamstress work on the side. I don't know what they charged exactly, but in order to pay them for anything remotely worth their time, it was going to cost a more than a little. While I've never been paid to sew something for someone else, I know that I couldn't and wouldn't consider it worth my time to sew a tailored shirt for less than $150 (for labor, material and notions), especially if I was going to use that many measurements to get the fit just right. And I'm not a professional seamstress, not by a long shot, so I wouldn't charge as much as an experienced professional.

So actually, I thought that the guy's prices cited in that article are pretty much reasonable or at least expected, considering the product he is providing.

Also keep in mind that some fabrics can be kind of expensive. (Not $12,000 expensive, but expensive.) You get a fine silk or a wool and you need to use several yards of it, add onto it expensive lining, expensive buttons, and so forth, and that jacks the price up. But no—nothing near $12,000!

I know how to save money by sewing, but I don't pay myself to sew (and I avoid the ultra-pricey fabrics and notions). But if you are paying someone, let's say, $25 an hour (not unreasonable for an exacting skill) and you add onto it expensive materials—it's gonna add up.

[yosemite]

And I missed a detail: the article says that the garments are hand finished. I am not 100% sure that the guy in the article meant it this way, but in my little sewing world, hand finished means that you hem it by hand, not by machine, and so forth. Very time consuming.

Damn. If that's the case, that guy has pretty reasonable prices, really. And even though he uses cottons, they're obviously the expensive fancy-shmantsy cottons, not the cheap $4 a yard calico/quilting cottons.

[Evil Captor]

No, you're missing the point. If you criticize someone for the car they drive, or for their hairstyle, or whatever, you'd better be able to handle people criticizing your car and your hairstyle. See?[/qoute]

Oh, I see that you're dodging the point all righty. You're trying to keep things morally neutral, as if there's a continuum that runs from average folks to $12K suit guy, and that makes us all the same. Bzzzt! Wrongo! It's like you're saying, "Sure, that guy beat his wife to a pulp and put her in the hospital for a month, but we've all been guilty of violence toward our spouses, even if it's only mental. So before you call that guy a "wife beater" be prepared to answer the question, "Have you EVER harbored a bad thought about your spouse?"

Differences in quantity can become a difference in quality, in short, and Mr. $12K suit is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over to one end of the scale here.

[quote]Yes, and who gets to decide what is "wasteful" enough?

Not you, certainly, because you apparently wouldn't blink at a guy wearing diamond-studded, platinum chain mail jockey shorts among the naked. It's all the same to you.

I agree with everyone else that $12,000 is appalling for a suit. That's my personal opinion. But I wouldn't spout off to that guy and I certainly wouldn't know where to draw the line between "justifiable" and "wasteful."

Well, first you have to engage your brain. I think you've worked so hard at keeping your mind open on this issue that your brain fell out somewhere back on page 1.

Who gets to decide? Is Pepsi Cola wasteful when you can get generic for much cheaper? Does that mean that anyone who buys Pepsi is wasteful and you can dig into them for drinking Pepsi? Well, yeah, I guess you can dig into anyone who buys Pepsi, but you'd be considered an obnoxious, petty boor, now wouldn't you?

See what I mean? Pepsi vs. generic soda. Vs. $12K suit. Get some perspective here.

So where do we draw the line? Is it Pepsi vs. generic? Or a $12,000 car vs. a $20,000 car? $30,000 car? What exactly is the cut-off point—the exact spot where "justifiable" becomes "wasteful"? Who gets to decide?[/qoute]

Suit vs. car vs. $12K suit. Apples vs. oranges vs. diamond and ruby encrusted pomegranates.

[quote]]The OP took this guy's spending habits to heart and carried on about how "unjustified" such spending is. But that's not his call to make because it wasn't his money to spend.

And so what do you want to do? Bitch and complain and fuss over how other people spend their money? Would you like it better if they spent more money buying your stuff? Would that make it all fair to you? Or spent in in just the way you see fit?

You strike me as one of those people who are so desperate to ignore the inequities in our society that you walk around going, "Avert your eyes from the rich! Avoid looking at or thinking about all that wealth that you don't have, lest you be driven mad by avarice and greed!"

Now, looky here little missy, I know that a person who's born rich is no more responsible for his condition than someone who's born poor (although I think a lot of conservatives don't understand that this rule works both ways). And I'm not looking at this guy and saying, "I wish I could be an idiot popinjay in a $12K suit." Oh, I wish I had the RESOURCES he can command all righty, but that's a different thing. And I think it's healthy to look around at the people around you and ask, "Is it FAIR that Oswald Popinjay III gets to spend his life lolling around on a yacht swilling expensive champagne and playing bongo butt with thong babes whilst I must clean the scuppers and scrape the barnacles all day in exchange for a glass of brackish water and a fish skeleton for dinner?" You'd rather we all squinch up our eyes and ignore such things.

Ain't gonna happen.

...lotsa crap intending to make this an ad hominem argument.

Oh, please. You don't have to be Ghandi to criticize obvious shit. This is just pathetic.

[yosemite]

Not you, certainly, because you apparently wouldn't blink at a guy wearing diamond-studded, platinum chain mail jockey shorts among the naked. It's all the same to you.You refuse to address the concept that we all are among the naked. You live in a house and have electricity and drive a car amongst people who have none of those things. But you want to be selective in who you condemn, when in fact you undoubtedly have many luxuries that would seem extravagant to those who have much less. But that doesn't compute with you, does it?


Suit vs. car vs. $12K suit. Apples vs. oranges vs. diamond and ruby encrusted pomegranates. You won't answer the question, I see.

Sure, we can all point to the $12,000 suit and say that's way too much. I think that's way too much, personally. But I also don't think it's any of my business because it's not my money. Besides, that $12,000 suit could just as easily be a $12,000 painting, that maybe he buys from me some day. Do you begrudge me that? Would you begrudge yourself that, if someone were to pay you $12,000 for one of your paintings?

Or are you going to keep on plugging your ears and continue to ignore that question? Let me make it even more plain to you: do you think that any artist should be able to charge $12,000 for the artwork and do you think that anyone who buys a $12,000 painting is wrong for doing so?

Please. I would appreciate a simple yes or no answer to that.

You strike me as one of those people who are so desperate to ignore the inequities in our society that you walk around going, "Avert your eyes from the rich! Avoid looking at or thinking about all that wealth that you don't have, lest you be driven mad by avarice and greed!"
And you strike me as one of those bitter people who thinks that everyone else's life and personal choices are your business.

And I'm not looking at this guy and saying, "I wish I could be an idiot popinjay in a $12K suit." Oh, I wish I had the RESOURCES he can command all righty, but that's a different thing.
And would your lifestyle change any? Let's explore that. Would you move to a nicer house? Get a faster computer? A newer car? Be honest now, would you?

Or would you give every penny of these RESOURCES to the naked and poor? If not, then you very likely would be "pissing away" your money in a way that would offend a great many people. Perhaps you'd buy too many books, which to some is apparently unforgivable.
And I think it's healthy to look around at the people around you and ask, "Is it FAIR that Oswald Popinjay III gets to spend his life lolling around on a yacht swilling expensive champagne and playing bongo butt with thong babes whilst I must clean the scuppers and scrape the barnacles all day in exchange for a glass of brackish water and a fish skeleton for dinner?"
Very colorful. But the root of the problem. Life ain't fair. It ain't fair that I can draw and my friend (the one who seethed at me when I pulled out a sketchbook) can't draw, but I'm not going to stop drawing just to make her feel better. (I know the analogy breaks down a little, but the point is, I don't have to stop doing the things I enjoy or buying the things I enjoy just because it pisses someone else off. It's none of their business.)

Sure, it would be nice if the rich guy would give all his money to charity and live in a shack, but I don't think any of us should expect him to do that. Sure, it would be nice if the rich guy lived in a 3 bedroom home in the suburbs instead of owning two mansions—sure. Sure, it would be nice if no one ever had any nice houses or nice things and we all lived in identical little boxes and everyone was the same. Oh wait—I'm not so sure that's such a nice idea.

You don't have to be Ghandi to criticize obvious shit. This is just pathetic.
But that's the point. It may seem obvious to be shocked a $12,000 suit, but it's equally obvious to other people to criticize someone for having too many damned books. I was shocked that my sister would spend $500 on a ring. But is that equally obvious to you? Is it? How many people here would agree that $500 is shockingly expensive for a ring? Let's take a poll and see if it's so "obvious" to everyone.

But no, it's so much better to just all make each other miserable over the stuff that seems obvious to us, isn't it?

You've conveniently ignored torie's and artemis's points earlier in this thread, so I'll refresh your memory: so, someone buys a $12,000 suit. They pay the tailors, they fund the people who make the fabric and the buttons. The money goes to people who earn a living. Just like the money for an expensive painting goes to people who earn a living.

And what about those who spend $12,000 on a boat or RV or on expensive cruises or vacations? Are they equally as evil as the guy with the $12,000 suit? Can a person go on a fancy vacation every year and spend a lot of money or does that automatically make them evil in your eyes?

Also, the guy in question has undoubtedly given more to charity than perhaps you'll ever give in your whole life. But I guess it doesn't matter how much they give, because they spend some money on things you don't approve of—is that it?

[Rilchiam]

I'm just gonna ramble here. It's taken me a while to read this entire thread. I started it when it was new, but I had this sewing machine to wrestle with ;).

One issue that no one's brought up yet is the possibility of repudiating inherited wealth. Let's call the OP's friend "Ruddiger". Suppose Ruddiger didn't wear $1200 or $12,000 or whatever outfits. Suppose he chose instead to wear faded jeans and flannel shirts and t-shirts with raunchy logos. Suppose he never talked about how much money he had, while trying to conform to what he thought was "normal" or even "poor".

I guarantee that it would backfire on him at some point. Someone with an ax to grind would eventually find out where his parents lived. Or they'd notice that Ruddiger had perfect teeth, and Ruddiger would admit that in his youth, he'd had a lot of orthodontia. Or they'd notice that Ruddiger had the newest, latest gadget, such as a SOTA cell phone.

Then Ruddiger would find himself up against the wall, defending himself against charges of "What, you think you're slumming? You trying to be one of the po' folk? Fuck off back to Upper St. Clair!" Might as well "act rich" and make no bones about it, than pretend to be something you're not and be doubly condemned, first for having money, then for being secretive about it, as if it really is wrong to inherit wealth.

-------------------------------------

How much of our lives and our behaviors do we need to adjust in order to not be considered a "bad person"? Can't we just enjoy what we enjoy without always having to worry about how some completely unrelated, unaffected third party is going to get all pissed at us because we have had good fortune?

When I was in grade 10, a friend of mine called Teri-Ann, who lived in the projects, introduced me to another girl, also from the projects, called Pam. Now, Pam and I could have been friends, but for the chip on her shoulder. It started slow, but eventually it was an everyday thing: "You got contact lenses? You got a new pair of corduroys? You got a whole bag of Doritos for yourself?"

It didn't get under my skin right away. The contact lenses I could understand, because Pam also wore glasses. I remembered how envious I'd been of contact-lens wearers, and assumed she felt the same way. But I was less sympathetic about the corduroys---I mean, big deal, new pants, and they weren't designer! And the Doritos thing really defined her position.

See, Pam had, I think, two siblings, maybe more, living with her. My sisters hadn't lived at home since I was little. My dad was also hardly ever home, because his job required him to travel. So it was me and my mom, and my mom preferred a different kind of snack food. I didn't think my mom was spoiling me by adding one bag of Doritos to her weekly shopping list: to me, spoiling would be allowing me to scarf them up in a day or two, then immediately running out to get more. But Pam saw it as, I didn't have siblings to share with, so I was ipso facto spoiled.

And then there was the job thing. See, in my community, Daughter generally kept house while Mom worked. That still makes sense to me: Mom has completed her education and training, so she can earn more. Daughter can divide her time between housework and homework, so she can get into a good school, and eventually reach the same ability to earn as Mom has. But Pam and Teri-Ann both worked at a burger joint because (I think), the family needed every little bit that could be earned right then.

So Pam was down on me for not working outside the home. (I truly understood what Betty Friedan was on about after this was all over.) Finally, one day, she asked me point-blank, "Do you get everything you want?"

"Not when I don't deserve to."

Followed by a long discourse about basically what I said above: I did work, my mom could earn more, I needed time for my schoolwork, and I didn't want very much to begin with. I was never a "gimme girl", believe me. I may not have paid cold hard cash for those contact lenses, but I earned them through good behavior and trustworthyness and not asking for anything else for a while before or after.

Well, Pam basically...didn't answer. In fact, we stopped talking to each other after that, by mutual agreement. And because I didn't want to put Teri-Ann in the middle of this, I didn't see much of her for a while either.

Finally, months later, she and Pam had a falling-out over something totally different, so we started hooking up again. Now, I wasn't the one who brought it up, but we eventually got around to the subject of Pam and her "You got this? You got that?"

"Because she doesn't have anything!" Teri-Ann snorted. "Listen, if she had your money---"

"[sigh] I don't have money...."

"If she had money, period---she wouldn't know what to do with it! She'd spend it all on Fritos and junk jewelry!"

---------------------------------------------------

Boss, who also started out in the projects but worked himself up (I don't know what happened to Teri-Ann, but I imagine she got out of that shit town and never looked back) says that in the long run, it's bad to buy cheap. A cheap car will break down more often. So will cheap appliances. Cheap clothes will wear out faster. Cheap food is not necessarily nutritious. So there you are with car repair bills that add up to more than you paid for the car itself, a new crappy coffeemaker every year, clothes that either look like shit or likewise have to be replaced often, and poor health because you're not eating right. That's not getting ahead.

Mr. Rilch has followed his lead on this. They wear polo shirts and cargo pants to work, not torn jeans and concert shirts. It makes them look successful, which is highly important in the film biz, and, because the clothes are well-made, they don't tear as often or wear out as fast. (Of course, I'm there to mend what does get torn...;))

And even the guys who are stuck in grunge mode when it comes to clothes still understand the importance of appearing to be a success. If your car is a POS, people will think, "Well, he must not earn much---must not work very often, or not for a good salary. Well, if no one else wants to hire him, why should I?" Same with gadgets. You don't necessarily flaunt what you have, but it's not politic to admit "I can't afford an iPod." Unless you have a respectable debt, like child support or a chronically ill spouse. (But you don't want to noise that around too much either, lest people think you're trolling for pity jobs.)

So I would say that some expenditures are definitely "justifiable". In order to better yourself, you have to treat yourself better.

[Evil Captor]

You refuse to address the concept that we all are among the naked. You live in a house and have electricity and drive a car amongst people who have none of those things. But you want to be selective in who you condemn, when in fact you undoubtedly have many luxuries that would seem extravagant to those who have much less. But that doesn't compute with you, does it?

Y'know, in the play "Lemmings" John Belushi did a hilarious riff on a movement activist, saying things like, "If you are not a black lesbian mother ... you are an OPPRESSOR!" and advising such people to get righteous by giving away all their worldly goods away and then digging a deep hole in the earth and covering themselves with compost and bludgeoning themselves to death.

It was a great send-up of the kind of self-important blowhards that were around in the 70s, and you sound kinda like the obverse of them. That is, they were imploring people to BE like that. You seem to think that if we acknowledge that there are great disparities in wealth in our society and that that might be, at some level, WRONG, then we have no choice but to dress in rags, eat recycled cardboard work in salt mines.

C'mon. Most folks like nice things. That's cool. Lotsa folks don't get enough to eat. That's not cool. Some people have so much wealth that it's fucking ridiculous, also not cool. I bet if we got rid of every fucking billionaire on Earth tomorrow, we'd all be just fine.

Fact is, I'd like us to all have the same level of income, I'd just like that level of income to be very high. If I could make it so that everyone on Earth could live at the level of affluence of an upper-middle class American tomorrow, and it meant all the multi-millionaires would vanish from the Earth, I'd do it in an eyeblink, and not so much as a twinge of guilt for all those lost gilded lilies.

Besides, that $12,000 suit could just as easily be a $12,000 painting, that maybe he buys from me some day. Do you begrudge me that? Would you begrudge yourself that, if someone were to pay you $12,000 for one of your paintings?

That's what I call the "Lotto fallacy." "Sure there's rich people out there, but you or I might win the Lotto and then WE'D be rich people, and wouldn't you just hate these attitudes then?"

News. Odds are, we AIN'T gonna win the lotto. Last I read, less than 5 percent of all Americans ever move into the upper class from the middle class, in any given generation. That means 95 percent of us ... don't. And it's stupid to base your judgements on the prospect of winning the lotto.

Please. I would appreciate a simple yes or no answer to that.

Sure, you'd love to define the terms of our argument. I get that. Ain't gonna happen.

And you strike me as one of those bitter people who thinks that everyone else's life and personal choices are your business.

No, I'm not bitter. I'm not mad at anybody. I think I am free to think about other's lives and personal choices, and judge them, yeah. But I'm not mad at them. It's not their fault, it's our economic and social systems. I'm open to various ideas on how to change them, but there is no way you are going to get me to think our economic and social systems are anywhere CLOSE to optimal with mindless blather like "Life isn't fair." True, the universe is morality-free, and I'm beginning to think you are the same way. But I'M not that way. And I think most people aren't that way.

[Liberal]

A good post, Rilchiam. You're very wise. :)

[phall0106]

A slight hijack here...my daughter (senior in hs) had her cell phone stolen while she was in the front of the class, talking with her teacher. (It was turned on vibrate, and in her purse, sitting on her desk. Whomever took it, had to go into her purse and take it.) She used it only for emergency purposes at school, and her teachers were cool with it. Anyway, we never found who took it, but the teacher, for whatever reason, felt really guilty about it. He offered to replace it. However, Daughter told him, thank you, but no, she'd replace her phone herself. She didn't feel right taking the money when it obviously wasn't his fault that it was stolen. (He said that she'd been talking to him, and if he'd been paying closer attention, it wouldn't have been stolen. Splitting hair, she thinks, and still felt like it was her responsibility to replace her phone.)

Anyway, he mentioned it a few more times within the following week, each time Daughter telling him, thank you, but no. Finally, he stopped saying anything. Daughter replaced her own phone.

Several weeks later, she recieves a card of apology from the teacher, with a check that would have covered about 1/2 the replacement cost. She asked me what she should do, and I told her that it was up to her. She decided to put it into her College Fund (her housing deposit is due for college within the month, and she's responsible for that), and wrote him a thank you note, telling him that she put the money towards her College Fund Housing Deposit, and she would carry this memory of his support with her through her college times.

the teacher read the thank you note and cried. She said she was grateful that she'd taken the money and written the note, and glad that it meant so much to both of them.

[yosemite]

You seem to think that if we acknowledge that there are great disparities in wealth in our society and that that might be, at some level, WRONG, then we have no choice but to dress in rags, eat recycled cardboard work in salt mines.
No, that's not at all what I want. I just want to point out that everyone has their own idea of what is a "nice thing" and for some people, it's more than for other people. And I'm not going to make someone else miserable for something that is not my own business.

I did mention before that certain things bother me: having something really nice and not appreciating it. Do a lot of rich people fall into this category? Probably. Ho hum, flying to Paris again, life is so tedious. These kinds of people I do lose respect for. But having a nice life and appreciating it, and (presumably) also giving to charity? I have no desire to give these people a hard time.

C'mon. Most folks like nice things. That's cool.
But it's not cool. Not to you. Someone hires a fine tailor to make a really fancy suit out of beuatiful fabric and that's a nice thing, but that's not cool as far as you're concerned.

So no, Lotsa folks don't get enough to eat. That's not cool.
And so the rich guy who hires the tailor helps feed that tailor's family. And perhaps the rich guy also gives a lot to charity. And yet that's not enough for you.
If I could make it so that everyone on Earth could live at the level of affluence of an upper-middle class American tomorrow, and it meant all the multi-millionaires would vanish from the Earth, I'd do it in an eyeblink, and not so much as a twinge of guilt for all those lost gilded lilies.

Have you ever been to Hearst Castle (http://www.hearstcastle.org/)? I have, a few times. It's fabulous. It was built by a very rich man. This place is amazing. Beautiful structure, fabulous gilded pool, great artwork, beautiful inside and out. A real marvel.

Now, it's great that this place is shared with others and I think that's a very good thing, but had Mr. Hearst only been upper-middle-class, he'd never have been able to afford to fund and build the damned thing to begin with. Sure, when he was alive (I presume) it wasn't open to the public, but now it is open to the public. And it exists because this guy was stinking rich. I'm glad it exists. But I guess that you would wish it never existed, and all its beauty and art also didn't exist. Because it never would have existed without a very rich man.
That's what I call the "Lotto fallacy." "Sure there's rich people out there, but you or I might win the Lotto and then WE'D be rich people, and wouldn't you just hate these attitudes then?"
No, that's my reality. No, I've not made $12,000 on a piece of art. But some of my peers have charged more than $1,000 for a painting and I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility for me to get to that point as well. (The most I've made on a single piece was $700—that was for photo rights.) I have a decent education and I've tried to develop my skills and I think that they're worth something. I don't want some bitter, jealous person telling me that I've got no right to charge that much for my work. And I don't want some bittery jealous person telling the well-off that they shouldn't buy my work, that it's "unjustified."

I respect and admire "Art Angels" and yes, usually these people are loaded with money. They help support the arts and I think that's fantastic. I'm sorry that you don't understand where I'm coming from, but that's not my problem, that's just your ignorance.

Getting really good at something and getting paid well for it isn't a lotto. It isn't just happenstance or dumb luck, either. I see what other artists around me can earn and I don't think I'm a half-bad artist. I can aspire to get paid handsomely for my hard work and I don't feel guilty or greedy about that. And no amount of bitterness or jealousy from someone else is going to change my aspirations.

Sure, you'd love to define the terms of our argument. I get that. Ain't gonna happen.
Of course not. Because you have no answer. You just want to keep repeating that "it's not FAIR!" and "It's OBVIOUS that this is too much" without exploring it further. Just repeat that over and over again and avoid any clarification. We're getting nowhere, because you refuse to engage in an honest debate.

No, I'm not bitter.
Sure you are. It oozes from your posts. But I'M not that way. And I think most people aren't that way.
No, you think you are being oh-so-moral, while in fact you are being a judgmental, sour wet blanket. Contrary to your beliefs, assuming that you KNOW all about someone (how much they give to charity, how much they help out other people and fund the arts, etc.), when in fact you know little does not make you morally superior. It just makes you look petty and bitter—stewing over someone else's private business like that.

And since you won't even address some of the other posts here and refuse to debate honestly, well, I don't think there's anywhere else for this to go with you.

[Rilchiam]

A good post, Rilchiam. You're very wise. :)

Why, thank you!

[Evil Captor]

But it's not cool. Not to you. Someone hires a fine tailor to make a really fancy suit out of beuatiful fabric and that's a nice thing, but that's not cool as far as you're concerned.

Bullshit. I know what's cool to me, and what's not. Wanting nice things is cool to me. Frex, I got no problem iwth the humpty-thousand dollar gowns and such they wear at the Oscars and so forth. I consider that costuming for an important ritual event, much like the costumes of Balinese temple dancers or European court royalty. But a $12K suit just for hanging around? C'mon.

And so the rich guy who hires the tailor helps feed that tailor's family. And perhaps the rich guy also gives a lot to charity. And yet that's not enough for you.

By that logic, ANY economic activity is acceptable -- "And so when a plantation owner buys slaves, the slave shippers get money, wich they spend on their homes, which helps people who make bricks and furniture and such, and they spend it on their ships, which helps shipwrights ... etc." I have seen free market types use it to support modern slavery (not that I'm saying you support slavery). Hmmm ... I think maybe we need to open a second front here on the Straight Dope to fight evil.

Have you ever been to Hearst Castle (http://www.hearstcastle.org/)? I have, a few times. It's fabulous. It was built by a very rich man. This place is amazing. Beautiful structure, fabulous gilded pool, great artwork, beautiful inside and out. A real marvel.

Hotels can be quite beautiful and marvelous too and serve a much better function for more people. Seems like a waste, just for one guy. Glad to hear it's being opened up for public consumption.

No, that's my reality. No, I've not made $12,000 on a piece of art. But some of my peers have charged more than $1,000 for a painting and I don't think it's beyond the rea lm of possibility for me to get to that point as well. (The most I've made on a single piece was $700—that was for photo rights.) I have a decent education and I've tried to develop my skills and I think that they're worth something. I don't want some bitter, jealous person telling me that I've got no right to charge that much for my work. And I don't want some bittery jealous person telling the well-off that they shouldn't buy my work, that it's "unjustified."

I could give a shit how much you charge. If someone's dumb enough to pay a gazillion dollars for your work, I reserve the right to think he's a fool. Most of the really inflated prices for artwork has to do with the fact that artwork tends to be long-lasting and to retain value. If you buy a piece of artowrk for $1 million because you think you'll be able to sell if to $2 million in ten years, you're not really throwing money away. It might be more efficient economically to invest that money in the stock market, but as I understand it, the stock market will sometimes lose your money, whereas investment-grade art rarely does that.

I respect and admire "Art Angels" and yes, usually these people are loaded with money. They help support the arts and I think that's fantastic. I'm sorry that you don't understand where I'm coming from, but that's not my problem, that's just your ignorance.

I understand your need to believe your hoped-for source of income are great people. Probably some of them are. Probably some of them aren't.

Getting really good at something and getting paid well for it isn't a lotto.

BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! God, I bet that set off bullshit alarms in every Straight Dope household in the world. I'm sure that as a general rule, the better you are at something, the more likely your reward, but SURELY you aren't trying to tell me that financial reward inevitably accompanies skill in the arts? Please tell me you're not that ignorant. History is full of the story of great artists who died penniless and schlockmeisters who made millions.

Also tell all the people who worked their tails off to learn computer programming and related stuff and who are now serving happy meals and running cash registers in malls about the "non Lotto" aspect of working hard to get good at something.

Sure you are {bitter}. It oozes from your posts.

No, I'm not. You just THINK I am because you think my interest in social justice comes from jealousy and bitterness. It's an immature judgment arising from limited life experience. You're like these Christians who go around assuming that atheist are grumpy, irascible people who live in a constant state of anger and hate because "they have rejected God's love." Um, no. Atheists don't hate God any more than they hate Santa Claus or the tooth fairy, or any other supernatural being they don't believe in.

And people who want social justice don't hate rich people. As I said, I would like EVERYONE to be rich -- does that sound like someone who hates rich people? What I hate is poverty, and what it does to people. I don't hate rich people for not being poor. I'm completely with rich people on this whole "not being poor" thing. If this means some rich people have to be a little less rich, I'm completely cool with that -- but that doesn't mean I hate rich people.

And since you won't even address some of the other posts here and refuse to debate honestly, well, I don't think there's anywhere else for this to go with you.

Nah, you're just sensing that you've stepped in it and want to get out before you sink any deeper. I don't blame you.

[Liberal]

When he was 13 years old, Andrew Carnegie worked as a bobbin boy in a textile mill for $1.20 per week.

[Evil Captor]

When he was 13 years old, Andrew Carnegie worked as a bobbin boy in a textile mill for $1.20 per week.

I never said it wasn't possible to win the lotto. It's just not an extremely rare, millions-to-one occurence. What kind of fool goes around citing lotto winners as proof of social justice?

[artemis]

This is just too rich. Hypocrisy, thy name is Evil Captor.

Frex, I got no problem iwth the humpty-thousand dollar gowns and such they wear at the Oscars and so forth. I consider that costuming for an important ritual event, much like the costumes of Balinese temple dancers or European court royalty. But a $12K suit just for hanging around? C'mon.

In other words, you're fine with someone spending $12,000 dollars for an article of clothing they don't absolutely need and will wear only once, but spending $12,000 for an article of clothing they do need and will wear over and over again is NOT fine. Unlike Balinese temple dancing, the Oscars don't intinsically demand an elaborate costume; there's no reason the participants couldn't attend wearing an ordinary suit or an evening dress. From an "economic justice" standpoint, your position makes no sense.

By that logic, ANY economic activity is acceptable -- "And so when a plantation owner buys slaves, the slave shippers get money, wich they spend on their homes, which helps people who make bricks and furniture and such, and they spend it on their ships, which helps shipwrights ... etc." I have seen free market types use it to support modern slavery (not that I'm saying you support slavery).

How is buying an expensive, hand-tailored suit, or a yacht, or a mansion, etc., equivalent to slavery? How is the tailor or the homebuilder being harmed?

As several other people have pointed out, buying "ordinary clothes" at your local shopping mall, clothes which owe their low prices to the fact that they were made in Third World countries where poorly-educated workers are easily exploited, is less economically just than buying a hand-made suit: the price of that hand-made suit refects the fact that the tailor making that suit is paid very well for his labors.

I could give a shit how much you charge. If someone's dumb enough to pay a gazillion dollars for your work, I reserve the right to think he's a fool. Most of the really inflated prices for artwork has to do with the fact that artwork tends to be long-lasting and to retain value. If you buy a piece of artowrk for $1 million because you think you'll be able to sell if to $2 million in ten years, you're not really throwing money away. It might be more efficient economically to invest that money in the stock market, but as I understand it, the stock market will sometimes lose your money, whereas investment-grade art rarely does that.

So-called "investment-grade" art has no more intrinsic value than a portrait of Elvis on black velvet. It's just paint on canvas. How can you, a person who is supposedly so interested in economic justice, support a system that allows people to "waste" $10 million dollars purchasing a piece of paint-covered canvas to decorate their wall when other pieces of paint-covered canvas (or velvet, if you prefer) can be obtained at the local flea market for far less money and will decorate that wall equally well? How can you justify the purchase of an original Picasso or Van Gogh when high-quality prints of those paintings can be found at the local poster shop for a FRACTION of the original's price?

And as for "investment-quality art" never losing its value, all I can say is that I have some tulip bulbs to sell you.

No, I'm not. You just THINK I am because you think my interest in social justice comes from jealousy and bitterness. It's an immature judgment arising from limited life experience.

In this thread, you've shown no interest whatsoever in true social justice; all you've done is whine about how some people's purchases which don't meet with your personal approval are inherently wrong (although you've never been able to successfully articulate what it is that separates those purchases from other, equally expensive purchases you apparently DO approve of). You're the one who's been behaving in an immature fashion, not Yosemitebabe.

And people who want social justice don't hate rich people. As I said, I would like EVERYONE to be rich -- does that sound like someone who hates rich people? What I hate is poverty, and what it does to people. I don't hate rich people for not being poor. I'm completely with rich people on this whole "not being poor" thing. If this means some rich people have to be a little less rich, I'm completely cool with that -- but that doesn't mean I hate rich people.

Then advocate and lobby for social policies that decrease wealth disparities and the harmful impact of wealth disparities, such as progressive taxation and universal health care. THAT supports social justice. Your criticizing other people's private spending habits does not. All it does is create an atmosphere where everyone feels free to poke their noses into your own personal life and criticize YOUR "frivolous and wasteful" (in their eyes, not yours) purchases.

As long as Mr. Rich Guy is playing by the rules society has set and is obeying the laws of his country and paying his legally-mandated taxes, how he spends his money is no one's business but his own.

[Liberal]

He didn't win the Lotto. He used a connection at the mill to secure a job a year later (14 years old) as a messenger for twice the pay. He spent his spare time memorizing all his routes and customers so that he could recognize them on the street. They began to ask for him by name. He was then promoted to telegrapher for $20 a week. He saved enough money to buy a ferry for $100. He established his customer base using the contacts he had made earlier, all of whom he had kept in touch with and had done favors for. He worked 16 hours a day doing everything on his own until he could afford to hire help. He dealt fairly with people and made people feel important. They repaid him with patronage.

[Bippy the Beardless]

Bullshit. I know what's cool to me, and what's not. Wanting nice things is cool to me. Frex, I got no problem iwth the humpty-thousand dollar gowns and such they wear at the Oscars and so forth. I consider that costuming for an important ritual event, much like the costumes of Balinese temple dancers or European court royalty. But a $12K suit just for hanging around? C'mon.

Can you not see that chip on your shoulder, the one saying 'being able to pay 12K for casual clothes isn't fair'. Why are you wearing that chip, it doesn't suit you, in fact it looks somewhat ugly, maybe you should try getting it removed?

[Saintly Loser]

You're a liar. One of those "would give" people. You give nothing but grief and envy, and if you had wealth you would hoard it. You are the man you pitted.

WTF? Lighten up, dude. The OP is a "liar?" Don't you think that's a bit extreme? I don't think he was "giving grief and envy" (somewhat odd grammer, but I think I get your point). He didn't sound all that envious to me.

Like the OP, I don't begrudge rich people their wealth, whether they earned it or inherited it. As long as they came by it honestly, it's fine by me. I don't really care.

I am somewhat annoyed by ostentation. And wearing $12,000 worth of clothes is nothing but ostentation. I wonder if it's even possible. I mean, you can go to Brooks Brothers and have a suit custom-made for a couple of grand. Maybe a bit more if you really go nuts with the fabric. Shirts and shoes could add another thousand. But that's pretty much as expensive as men's clothes get. So I'm wondering what the hell the OP's friend was wearing that cost $12,000. One would pretty much have to wear some ridiculous pimp suit made out of the fur of some endangered species. And to mention that (the cost of one's clothes) to anyone is sheer, unadulterated, tasteless ostentation.

If anyone is lying here, it's the OP's friend. Nobody thinks that it's normal to wear (or even own) 12 grand worth of clothes. Nobody thinks it's nothing out of the ordinary to have that kind of money.

[yosemite]

Evil Captor, I think artemis covered most of the points masterfully, (and I await with great curiosity how you respond to all these excellent responses from artemis), but I'd like to touch upon a few additional things.

First off, Hearst Castle was not, and is not a hotel. It's just some dude's house. Yes, it's now open to the public, but it wasn't always.

And it never would have existed had that guy not been stinking, filthy, obscenely rich. Much of what is in that house and on those grounds are beyond opulent. I mean really, who needs gold tiles in their swimming pool?

But it's a beautiful place and for a modest fee you can tour it. And I'm glad it is in existence and I'm glad that some stinking rich guy pissed money away on his gold-tiled swimming pool. But everything you've said so far indicates that it's a waste and probably should have never existed. And as someone who enjoys seeing beautiful things and enjoys the notion that they are allowed to exist, (even if I never get to possess them myself) I find that sad.


BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! God, I bet that set off bullshit alarms in every Straight Dope household in the world. I'm sure that as a general rule, the better you are at something, the more likely your reward, but SURELY you aren't trying to tell me that financial reward inevitably accompanies skill in the arts?
Where did I say that, exactly?
Please tell me you're not that ignorant. History is full of the story of great artists who died penniless and schlockmeisters who made millions.
Surely. I am acutely aware of that. But I'd like to at least have that hope that sometime, eventually, occasionally, some of us artists will get more than a few beans for our art. And what you are saying is that it's bad and wrong for a rich person to "piss away" a certain dollar amount on a certain luxury item, which means that you'd prefer it if the Randolph Hearsts of the world didn't buy stuff from people like me, or anyone else.

And I've worked too hard to have someone else wish to have that limitation put on me. Most of us have worked too hard. The fancy button-makers of the world, the tailors of the world, the artists of the world—we'd like to have people buy our very fine products. But you don't think we should get that opportunity.

You sound like a dog in the manger—you don't see yourself ever getting a certain thing, so you want to begrudge every other person on the planet the hope of that thing.

[Liberal]

WTF? Lighten up, dude. The OP is a "liar?" Don't you think that's a bit extreme?Yes, and that's why I apologized.

[alice_in_wonderland]

I just have to step in here - I don't actually have any $12,000 outfits.

However, I get the quarterly catalogue from Holt Renfrew. The have casual wear outfits that cost $20,000. They're very nice (and trust me, they look TOTALLY different than a $20 outfit) - not something I need, but nice nonetheless.

Furthermore, I'm sure that many of you would condem me out of hand if you knew that have more than one $5,000 outfit. I assume you would do this without knowing what percentage of my annual income I donate to charity, or how many dopers I had sponsored on this site, which is fine. I don't need people to approve how I spend my money - I feel pretty good about it. That being said, I don't criticize people for paying $$ for fan-fiction, or anime, or porn, or really fancy cars, or meat, for that matter - it seems a touch hypocritical for them to criticize me (or the friend in the OP) based on their own priorities without recognizing that someone else has different ones.

[Bippy the Beardless]

So Alice in Wonderland, how are you doing ;) ?

[Yamirskoonir]

Just like a $20 one, but with a different tag on the inside.

Heh. Why I never buy anything from Nordstroms:

I sew costumes and do a lot of fabric shopping. One day, I was at the local $2/yard hole-in-the-wall store, and saw entire bolts of this hideous, garishly-plaid, patched-together looking shit going for $.25/yard because they couldn't get rid of it.

Went to Nordstrom's the next week and saw women's shorts made out of the exact same shit on the New-for-Spring display. Price: $75. And these were women's warm weather shorts, they barely covered to mid-thigh and didn't even have back pockets! Coulda made my own fugly crap for a mere $.50!

[caphis]

Yes, and that's why I apologized.

Would you be so kind as to point out where you apologized to me?

[Bad News Baboon]

However, I get the quarterly catalogue from Holt Renfrew. The have casual wear outfits that cost $20,000.

Had he said his friend was a woman, I could understand the $12,000 price tag.
It's just that it's really rare to see a man's casual outfit run into those prices.
Not saying it's not possible... just rare. Even Armani leather pants only cost like $5,000. (Only! ;))

[alice_in_wonderland]

Had he said his friend was a woman, I could understand the $12,000 price tag.
It's just that it's really rare to see a man's casual outfit run into those prices.
Not saying it's not possible... just rare. Even Armani leather pants only cost like $5,000. (Only! ;))

Well, in fairness, I'm remembering the winter catalogue so there were a lot more cashmere layers to bump the prices up. :)

I imagine if I went and looked in the spring book things would top out around $15,000 or so.

[Measure for Measure]

Not only that, but caphis has stated that the 12K outfit is not even a suit!

The Economist had an article on fashion this year. There is also this article in Slate, which explains why outfits on the runways appear so bizarre.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2094195/

There is something called haute couture, which I translate as, "Fashion Prototype". Basically, it's an R&D product from a famous designer.

(More deeply, H.C. is (1) something to display at fashion shows which, however expensive, produces editorial copy for Vogue et al that is cheaper than advertising. Also, (2) H.C. establishes Brand Identity: the point of making a $15,000 (or $100,000) dress is to create the panache necessary to sell the $35 blouse for $70 and the $60 perfume for $300.)

However. I thought this game was basically For Women Only. I am still puzzled. My current hypothesis is that Mommy is one of the 200 (1000?) Haute Coulture clients, and from time to time she suffers the embarrassment of seeing nothing appropriate for herself in Christian's latest collection. So she makes do by buying something for Johnny.

Nah, couldn't be.
-----
yosemitebabe: Admittedly, the New York Times article on those shirts was from 1993. They're probably more expensive now. (Furthermore, my point was that $300 < < < $12,000.)
------
Finally, let's not forget that the OP was as much about cluelessness as anything else.
-------------
Alice: Re: Holt Renfrew: Please describe the most expensive outfit for a man that is not a suit in that catalog. Thanks, maybe we can dispel at little ignorance.

[Liberal]

Would you be so kind as to point out where you apologized to me?Oops, you're right. That was Askeptic to whom I apologized. I hereby apologize to you as well — for my tone, but not for the substance of what I said. I think you should consider that a man who lives in a glass house ought not to throw stones. Even as you criticized your friend, your own circumstances were far above so many people. Everything you said about him, others below you could say about you. Even the charity thing. You spoke about how charitable you are even as you condemned your friend's offer of charity as something rude and condescending. Did it not occur to you that those people whom you give money to might also have a sense of pride and dignity and see your donations in the same way you saw his? In short, what angered me most about you was not the way you saw your friend. That could be dismissed as simply immaturity. What angered me was your refusal to judge your friend and yourself by the same measuring stick. Nevertheless, I am not your moral judge, and you're right that my opinion is worthless. I should have been less mean, but you opened yourself to criticism by opening this thread. At this point, you can take whatever, if anything, you want to from all this. You've heard all sides now. The moral decision that remains is yours and yours alone.

[alice_in_wonderland]

Alice: Re: Holt Renfrew: Please describe the most expensive outfit for a man that is not a suit in that catalog. Thanks, maybe we can dispel at little ignorance.

Wool cashmere pants (around $2,000), button down shirt (about $400), cahsmere sweater (1) (around $1,500), cashmere sweater (2, around shoulders) (around $1,500), casual blazer (around $2,500), scarf ($400)

Obviously, that's exclusive of shoes, wrist watch, jewelry or outerwear. I have no doubt that if I were to hunt around through my old catalogues, I would be able to find a more expensive outfit for men.

[Evil Captor]

This is just too rich. Hypocrisy, thy name is Evil Captor.

And a very nice "fuck you" to you.

In other words, you're fine with someone spending $12,000 dollars for an article of clothing they don't absolutely need and will wear only once, but spending $12,000 for an article of clothing they do need and will wear over and over again is NOT fine.

Actually, I think many people who go to the Oscars and wear expensive clothing are only "borrowing" the clothes from the designers, jewellers and so forth. They get a very expensive outfit which the TV commentators will commentate on, the designers get to strut their stuff at a high-profile event, and the teeming millions get to watch on TV. Everybody wins. There's social utility here, it's not just some popinjay in $12K worth of bling bling.

Unlike Balinese temple dancing, the Oscars don't intinsically demand an elaborate costume; there's no reason the participants couldn't attend wearing an ordinary suit or an evening dress. From an "economic justice" standpoint, your position makes no sense.

They don't DEMAND the expensive clothes but you are just not paying attention if you don't think they're part of it.

How is buying an expensive, hand-tailored suit, or a yacht, or a mansion, etc., equivalent to slavery? How is the tailor or the homebuilder being harmed?

My point was that the "economic justification" argument is meaningless because it justifies ANY economic activity, including buying slaves, contract murders, etc. An argument that justifies ANYTHING justifies nothing. In essence you are saying that buying a $12k suit is good because doing anything with $12,000 is good. I merely pointed out that this is a specious argument, or in Pit terms, it's completely full of shit. Capiche?

As several other people have pointed out, buying "ordinary clothes" at your local shopping mall, clothes which owe their low prices to the fact that they were made in Third World countries where poorly-educated workers are easily exploited, is less economically just than buying a hand-made suit: the price of that hand-made suit refects the fact that the tailor making that suit is paid very well for his labors.

The essential problem here is the deep and widespread poverty in the Third World. Another thread entirely. I've had a few go-rounds with free marketers who will tell you that slave labor and child labor is justifiable because the participants in these enterprises would be starving to death if it were not for these terrible jobs. It's a sticky issue and something of a hijack.

So-called "investment-grade" art has no more intrinsic value than a portrait of Elvis on black velvet. It's just paint on canvas. How can you, a person who is supposedly so interested in economic justice, support a system that allows people to "waste" $10 million dollars purchasing a piece of paint-covered canvas to decorate their wall when other pieces of paint-covered canvas (or velvet, if you prefer) can be obtained at the local flea market for far less money and will decorate that wall equally well? How can you justify the purchase of an original Picasso or Van Gogh when high-quality prints of those paintings can be found at the local poster shop for a FRACTION of the original's price?

There are quite a few business mags and wealthy investors who disagree with you on this point. Perhaps you can persuade one of them to give you an original van Gogh for ten bucks. As it is, your argument consists of pissing into the wind.

You are right that there is nothing intrinsic to the Van Gogh that makes it so valuable -- just paint on canvas. It's the social value that makes it expensive. For rhe record, I think that most of th time when people pay laege sums of money for art, they're being foolish -- but those wealthy investors would disagree with me, too, and point out that they expect to make money on the artwork. Since most of the time they do make money ...

And as for "investment-quality art" never losing its value, all I can say is that I have some tulip bulbs to sell you.

My only point was that there's a marketplace for investment grade art, enough that people buy it as a secure way of parking their wealth. I'm sure there are some instances where people lose money, especially when taking a flyer on "riskier" artworks. Frankly, I don't really agree with all these inflated prices for artwork, but I am not going to pretend this market doesn't exist or function.

In this thread, you've shown no interest whatsoever in true social justice; all you've done is whine about how some people's purchases which don't meet with your personal approval are inherently wrong (although you've never been able to successfully articulate what it is that separates those purchases from other, equally expensive purchases you apparently DO approve of).

What? You say I'm not a true Scotsman?

Please, Mr. Artemis, explain to me how a $12,000 casual wear suit makes sense. How is it RIGHT? I'll grant you, the individual in question has every right under our present system to buy and wear a $12,000 casual outfit, but under what conceivable grounds am I supposed to think it's a good idea? Please, enlighten me, I'm such an unwashed mass and all.

You're the one who's been behaving in an immature fashion, not Yosemitebabe.

I see nothing in my previous posts that requires a more nuanced response to that charge than: "Neener-neener-neener!" But I wasn't accusing Yosemitebabe of behaving in an immature fashion. I was saying she has an immature viewpoint. She understands that people live at different levels of affluence in the U.S. and the world, and has come to realize that you can't blame the wealthy for being born wealthy (hopefully she also does not blame the poor for being born poor.) This is one step. But there are more steps along the road. She apparently thinks that because you shouldn't blame people for the level of wealth or poverty they are born into, that this means you therefore can't or shouldn't look askance at the social inequities that our current system creates, even when they manifest themselves as loudmouthed popinjays prancing about in casual wear that is worth more than many people's entire annual income. Hopefully she will reach that point some day.

Then advocate and lobby for social policies that decrease wealth disparities and the harmful impact of wealth disparities, such as progressive taxation and universal health care. THAT supports social justice. Your criticizing other people's private spending habits does not. All it does is create an atmosphere where everyone feels free to poke their noses into your own personal life and criticize YOUR "frivolous and wasteful" (in their eyes, not yours) purchases.

Once again, one has to be Ghandi to advocate more social equality. Poppycock. I do things along the lines you suggest already, specifically, I vote democratic and argue in a variety of forums, and in Real Life, for a single-payer, universal health care system not based on employment, a saner tax system and several other things you haven't suggested. However, if all I did was was mock popinjays in overpriced casual wear, that at least would be a step in the right direction, even if it was a tiny step in comparison with some of the more constructive things I could be doing. The first step in the right direction still gets you going in the right direction.

As long as Mr. Rich Guy is playing by the rules society has set and is obeying the laws of his country and paying his legally-mandated taxes, how he spends his money is no one's business but his own.

Nah. We are all free to look at obvious frippery and mock the living hell out of it. That mockery alone will not get us very far, but the attitude behind it, applied in other ways, just might.

[Evil Captor]

He didn't win the Lotto. He used a connection at the mill to secure a job a year later (14 years old) as a messenger for twice the pay. He spent his spare time memorizing all his routes and customers so that he could recognize them on the street. They began to ask for him by name. He was then promoted to telegrapher for $20 a week. He saved enough money to buy a ferry for $100. He established his customer base using the contacts he had made earlier, all of whom he had kept in touch with and had done favors for. He worked 16 hours a day doing everything on his own until he could afford to hire help. He dealt fairly with people and made people feel important. They repaid him with patronage.

I'm not claiming that Carnegie dind't work hard for his money or play the canny businessman -- though I understand that he did some VERY NASTY things to get to the top, as well as the Horatio Alger stuff you seem to have bought wholesale.

Frex:

[qoute]However, the workers in his steel mills had a different view of this
man. They worked under inhumane conditions, sometimes 12-hour shifts on
floors so hot they had to nail wooden platforms under their shoes. Every
two weeks they worked a 24-hour day, then received one day off. The best
housing they could afford was crowded and filthy. Most died in their
early 40s.

In 1892, 300 hired gunmen were released on unarmed strikers at one steel
plant. The effect was so disastrous it not only stopped the organization
of unions in that plant, but stopped all unions in the steel industry
nationwide until 1936. [/quote]

Lovely guy, really, I can see why you admire him so.

He wasn't so much a lottery winner as a successful gangster, so I guess you are right. My whole point was that it's VERY RARE that people go from the middle class to wealth, whether by sheer luck or by enormous effort. Guess you missed that.

[Evil Captor]

Can you not see that chip on your shoulder, the one saying 'being able to pay 12K for casual clothes isn't fair'. Why are you wearing that chip, it doesn't suit you, in fact it looks somewhat ugly, maybe you should try getting it removed?

OK, what's fair about some people being able to afford casual wear that costs more than the annual income of many people in that same society? Explain it to me. Don't be afraid to sound patronizing, I can handle it.

[yosemite]

I await aartemis's response to all of this, but a few points stuck out at me:Actually, I think many people who go to the Oscars and wear expensive clothing are only "borrowing" the clothes from the designers, jewellers and so forth.
Can we spell "backpedal"?

In your previous post you said:I got no problem iwth the humpty-thousand dollar gowns and such they wear at the Oscars and so forth.
Well, why do you talk about how you have no "problem" with these expensive gowns, since (you now claim), they're just "borrowed" anyway?

They get a very expensive outfit which the TV commentators will commentate on, the designers get to strut their stuff at a high-profile event, and the teeming millions get to watch on TV. Everybody wins. There's social utility here, it's not just some popinjay in $12K worth of bling bling.
What? But what's the point of commentating on a $12,000 gown, or promoting it so the designer can get some exposure, if your whole complaint is that such clothes are OBVIOUSLY too much and no one has any business buying them? Hell, according to you, the rich actors don't even buy these gowns, they're just borrowing them!

So who exactly is the target clientele of these fancy gowns? By everything you've said so far, no one is, because no one has any business pissing their money away on something so "unjustified."

She apparently thinks that because you shouldn't blame people for the level of wealth or poverty they are born into, that this means you therefore can't or shouldn't look askance at the social inequities that our current system creates, even when they manifest themselves as loudmouthed popinjays prancing about in casual wear that is worth more than many people's entire annual income. Hopefully she will reach that point some day.
Oh good grief. Not paying attention, were you?

I think we've repeated (and repeated and repeated) that the rich guy in the OP was clueless for talking so casually about his wardrobe budget to the OP. I agreed, and have always agreed, that the rich guy was a twit for doing that. That, I think, covers the "popinjay" "prancing about" portion of the discussion. I don't much care for popinjays prancing around myself. I also don't much care for people who don't appreciate the stuff they buy. This is something I've repeated several times.

But what does that have to do with someone buying what they feel is important to them and being able to enjoy that thing (that they bought with their own money because they could afford it and it was important to them) without a bunch of whiney busibodies sticking their noses in and condemning them? Pretty much nothing.

A middle-class person can be a "popinjay" and prance around. A middle-class person can not appreciate the stuff they have. These qualities are not exclusive to the rich, nor are all rich people (who buy expensive nice things) popinjays who don't enjoy or appreciate the stuff they buy. They are two completely different issues.

But I'm sure you won't acknowledge that.

And while I'm at it, is Alice in Wonderland and "popinjay" and is she "prancing around"? You don't know how she spends her money, you pretty much don't know much about her financial dealings—all you know is that she's admitted to owning several very expensive outfits. So is she a bad person now?

OK, what's fair about some people being able to afford casual wear that costs more than the annual income of many people in that same society?
What's fair about some people buying computers or several cars or going on nice vacations when other people in that same society never have a car and never get to go on a vacation and never can afford a computer? Why don't you answer that first.

[Bad News Baboon]

Wool cashmere pants (around $2,000), button down shirt (about $400), cahsmere sweater (1) (around $1,500), cashmere sweater (2, around shoulders) (around $1,500), casual blazer (around $2,500), scarf ($400)


Maybe it's because I live in Texas, butseriously, I have never seen a man (much less a college age one!) wear a button down shirt, blazer and TWO cashmere sweaters. In photo shoots, yes, but not reality.

I do, however, realize you're just trying to make the numbers add up to $12,000.

[alice_in_wonderland]

Maybe it's because I live in Texas, butseriously, I have never seen a man (much less a college age one!) wear a button down shirt, blazer and TWO cashmere sweaters. In photo shoots, yes, but not reality.

I do, however, realize you're just trying to make the numbers add up to $12,000.


I imagine in Texas the man would be very hot if he did. ;)

There are a couple of men's clubs here in town where the outfit I described would not be unusual.

I'm actually finding people's disbelief kind of wacky - Holt's has a private area for shopping (you get your own shopper) where the prices aren't marked - you know - if you need to know the price, you can't afford it type set up. I think most high-end retailers do as well.

[Measure for Measure]

So who exactly is the target clientele of these fancy gowns? By everything you've said so far, no one is, because no one has any business pissing their money away on something so "unjustified."See my post.

If we're talking about "Haute Couture" (and we are, I think), the buyers of these gowns don't come close to covering the costs of production.

The money is made when
1. Haute Couture is transformed into "Pret a Porter" (sp?), i.e. manufactured outfits, which look more conventional.

2. The large upper-middle class market pays for the $300 perfume, in order to indirectly participate in the Dior $12,000-a-dress lifestyle.
---
The starlet is really supporting #2, above. The 200-1000 H.C. buyers are really a fringe market. If this target clientele disappeared, they would not really be missed.

[Measure for Measure]

Wool cashmere pants (around $2,000), button down shirt (about $400), cahsmere sweater (1) (around $1,500), cashmere sweater (2, around shoulders) (around $1,500), casual blazer (around $2,500), scarf ($400)

Obviously, that's exclusive of shoes, wrist watch, jewelry or outerwear. I have no doubt that if I were to hunt around through my old catalogues, I would be able to find a more expensive outfit for men.Thanks for the info, Alice!

Problem is, caphis has said that we're talking about "shirt, pants, shoes".

So, let's say we combine the (simply stunning!) wool cashmere pants along with the (to die for!) button-down shirt: we're still only at $2400. Ok, let's slap some $2000 (WAG) alligator shoes on our clothes horse: we're still about $7500 short.

No, if this guy is a real fashion victim, he (or his Mom) has to be buying the Design. Not the fabric, not even the (manufactured) Brand.

OTOH, maybe Mom is part of the fashion industry and there's a little social back-scratching going on.

I'm thinking that our hero is not only socially clueless, but also confused about the cost of his garments. Maybe he has math anxiety.

[yosemite]

See my post.

If we're talking about "Haute Couture" (and we are, I think), the buyers of these gowns don't come close to covering the costs of production.

The money is made when
1. Haute Couture is transformed into "Pret a Porter" (sp?), i.e. manufactured outfits, which look more conventional.

2. The large upper-middle class market pays for the $300 perfume, in order to indirectly participate in the Dior $12,000-a-dress lifestyle.
---
The starlet is really supporting #2, above. The 200-1000 H.C. buyers are really a fringe market. If this target clientele disappeared, they would not really be missed.
And Mr. Rich-guy is not wearing H.C. He's wearing casual clothes that cost a lot.

Besides, are you saying that it's okay and somehow different to support super-expensive big name designers who also happen to sell $300 perfumes? Like that's not also monumental "unjustifiable" expense that could be spent so much more righteously? To pay a whole lot of money to just be associated with the Dior lifestyle?

And getting back to the expensive gowns at the Oscars thing: I see no reason that the stars have to wear these kinds of gowns. It would probably be considered "daring" and "edgy" to go to some fresh-out-of-fashion-design-school person's boutique down on Melrose and have them design something fabulous for a thousand or so. In fact, I think I've heard of some of the stars doing something similar to that. (The L.A. news always has a lot of entertainment stories and covers shit like this.)

I don't think it's some do-or-die thing—like they have to to wear a gown from one of the Big Designers. The stars just want to do it. (And I think if they want to, they should be able to, don't get me wrong. I'm just not seeing how it is apparently more "justifiable" than Mr. Expensive Suit buying whatever he wants to buy.)

[artemis]

Actually, I think many people who go to the Oscars and wear expensive clothing are only "borrowing" the clothes from the designers, jewellers and so forth. They get a very expensive outfit which the TV commentators will commentate on, the designers get to strut their stuff at a high-profile event, and the teeming millions get to watch on TV. Everybody wins. There's social utility here, it's not just some popinjay in $12K worth of bling bling.

WHAT social utility? The actors and actresses dress up in $20,000 dollars worth of clothes to make it clear to the watching masses that they are indeed members of the Beautiful People crowd, the fashion designers get exposure so that they can sell yet more hideously expensive clothes to other wealthy people, and the teeming masses get to watch as the privileged strut their wealth. This is EXACTLY the sort of behavior you claim to hate - and yet here you are defending it.

The Ocsars are an awards ceremony. If the participants all decided to show up in rented tuxedos and $200 evening dresses similar to those worn by ordinary middle-class people at "important events", nothing about the awards ceremony itself would be changed. The elaborate display we all see on Oscar night is pure ostentation, nothing more. It is hypocritial for you to defend it and at the same time rage about the OP's rich friend buying expensive clothes instead of shopping at Sears the way the rest of us do.

My point was that the "economic justification" argument is meaningless because it justifies ANY economic activity, including buying slaves, contract murders, etc. An argument that justifies ANYTHING justifies nothing. In essence you are saying that buying a $12k suit is good because doing anything with $12,000 is good. I merely pointed out that this is a specious argument, or in Pit terms, it's completely full of shit. Capiche?

Bullshit. I said that doing anything LEGAL with $12,000 is good. Slavery and contract murder are not legal. Now if you succeed in making the purchase of expensive clothes illegal and the OP's friend continues to buy them in defiance of the law, you'll have a case that what he's doing with his money is wrong. Until then, he's entitled to spend his money however he wishes, provided he's not violating the law in doing so.

There are quite a few business mags and wealthy investors who disagree with you on this point. Perhaps you can persuade one of them to give you an original van Gogh for ten bucks. As it is, your argument consists of pissing into the wind.

You are right that there is nothing intrinsic to the Van Gogh that makes it so valuable -- just paint on canvas. It's the social value that makes it expensive. For rhe record, I think that most of th time when people pay laege sums of money for art, they're being foolish -- but those wealthy investors would disagree with me, too, and point out that they expect to make money on the artwork. Since most of the time they do make money ...

You contradict yourself. You tell me that my argument is "pisisng into the wind", and then in the next paragraph you admit that it's true - a Van Gogh has no more intrinsic value than a lesser artist's work. Since that is the case, how is it justified for a person to spend millions on a Van Gogh, when they can buy a lesser-known artist's work for far less money and put the rest of their money to a more socially productive use? There is no NEED to buy a Van Gogh painting to decorate your wall. Buying a Van Gogh for $20 million dollars is just as ostentatious as building the Hearst mansion was - and yet you have indicated in earlier posts in this thread that you disapprove of the construction of the Hearst mansion (which, being real estate, could just as easily have been justified as an "investment" by Hearst the same way the art collectors justify spending millions of dollars on a painting).

My only point was that there's a marketplace for investment grade art, enough that people buy it as a secure way of parking their wealth. I'm sure there are some instances where people lose money, especially when taking a flyer on "riskier" artworks. Frankly, I don't really agree with all these inflated prices for artwork, but I am not going to pretend this market doesn't exist or function.

Certainly the market for expensive artwork exists and functions. So does the market for very expensive clothes. Odd that you should have problems with a person participating in one of those markets but not in the other, given that they are both of equal social utility.

Please, Mr. Artemis, explain to me how a $12,000 casual wear suit makes sense. How is it RIGHT? I'll grant you, the individual in question has every right under our present system to buy and wear a $12,000 casual outfit, but under what conceivable grounds am I supposed to think it's a good idea? Please, enlighten me, I'm such an unwashed mass and all.

How is spending $12,000 on a car right? Or a painting? Or an in-ground swimming pool? Or a telescope? Or a horse? Or a kitchen remodel? Or a fancy family vacation to Europe? Or a college education?

None of those things are needs. No one HAS to buy any of those things. And most of the people living on this planet will never be able to afford any of those things no matter how badly they want them or how carefully they save their money. But I doubt you're going to criticize caphis for spending $12,000 on a car, or spending tens of thousands of dollars on his education. You seem fine with someone spending large sums of money on non-essential items provided they're non-essential items YOU personally approve of. Who made you the judge of what is or is not a legitmate use of another person's money?

She apparently thinks that because you shouldn't blame people for the level of wealth or poverty they are born into, that this means you therefore can't or shouldn't look askance at the social inequities that our current system creates, even when they manifest themselves as loudmouthed popinjays prancing about in casual wear that is worth more than many people's entire annual income. Hopefully she will reach that point some day.

And how does convincing Mr. Rich Kid not to buy those expensive designer clothes change the social inequalities that exist? He's still rich, whether he buys the clothes or not. And how can you be comfortable chastizing him for his purchases while living in a First World country? To much of the world's population, YOU are a loud-mouthed poppinjay prancing about in casual wear worth more than they'll earn in a year. They are as impressed by your supposed concern for social justice as you would be by a man with "only" $50 million dollars deriding Bill Gates's spending as excessive.

There's a fellow in my town who lives in a nice but decidedly middle-class neighborhood (Dundee, in Omaha, NE - 3555 Farnam Street, to be exact). His house costs less than mine does. He wears ordinary clothes, does his shopping at the local malls, blends right in. Tell me - are you going to criticize me for purchasing my "overly expensive" quarter-million dollar house and give Warren Buffet, the second-richest man on the planet, a free pass because he prefers to plow his money back into Berkshire-Hathaway to make even more money rather than spending it on luxury goods?

Once again, one has to be Ghandi to advocate more social equality. Poppycock. I do things along the lines you suggest already, specifically, I vote democratic and argue in a variety of forums, and in Real Life, for a single-payer, universal health care system not based on employment, a saner tax system and several other things you haven't suggested. However, if all I did was was mock popinjays in overpriced casual wear, that at least would be a step in the right direction, even if it was a tiny step in comparison with some of the more constructive things I could be doing. The first step in the right direction still gets you going in the right direction.

No, it is NOT a step in the right direction. It changes nothing that matters. All it does is create a climate where everyone, from Mr. Rich Kid to you to the person on welfare shopping with food stamps, risks being criticized for making "wrong" purchasing decisions based on arbitrary and utterly inconsistent criteria. Working to reduce income disparity is a good thing. But even if we achieved a world with 100% income equality, people would have different opinions about what constitutes a "reasonable" purchase. If you don't want to find your own lifestyle held up for examination and your own purchases derided as "wasteful" and "unnecessary", then don't do it to other people.

[Measure for Measure]

With all due respect, yosemite, we tend to talk at cross-purposes a lot. No problem, I'm just pointing out the potential for misunderstanding. Here's my big-picture POV: the OP was mostly (not entirely) about cluelessness. A human quality. One which hasn't inspired much controversy here.

As for the sub-issues, I've glommed on to the following: $12,000?!? For pants, shoes and shirt on a guy? Never mind the ostentation, how is that possible???And Mr. Rich-guy is not wearing H.C. He's wearing casual clothes that cost a lot.That is a contentious point. As I tried to show above, the numbers don't add up. (And can't H.C. be casual-ware? R&D prototypes can be swimware, eveningware or whateverware.)Besides, are you saying that it's okay and somehow different to support super-expensive big name designers who also happen to sell $300 perfumes? Like that's not also monumental "unjustifiable" expense that could be spent so much more righteously? To pay a whole lot of money to just be associated with the Dior lifestyle? I was not casting judgment: I was describing a market structure. I may have implied that buying on the basis of brand is a sucker's game. But I did not state that explicitly.

My point though was that it doesn't matter whether anybody buys the $15,000 H.C. dresses or not: they would be produced anyway. And getting back to the expensive gowns at the Oscars thing: I see no reason that the stars have to wear these kinds of gowns.No, but doing so provides entertainment for the masses. Therefore, following my consequentialist ethics, it morally imperative to accept a free gown from a top designer to wear to the Emmy's, particularly if it's in poor taste. The starlet's shame is our gain. Many enjoy reading about the least or worst dressed of 2004. The stars just want to do it. (And I think if they want to, they should be able to, don't get me wrong. I'm just not seeing how it is apparently more "justifiable" than Mr. Expensive Suit buying whatever he wants to buy.) Well, remember that the starlets often aren't paying squat for the gowns. Accepting a promotional gift is different than buying an expensive anything.

[Measure for Measure]

And how does convincing Mr. Rich Kid not to buy those expensive designer clothes change the social inequalities that exist? He's still rich, whether he buys the clothes or not. And how can you be comfortable chastising him for his purchases while living in a First World country? To much of the world's population, YOU are a loud-mouthed popinjay prancing about in casual wear worth more than they'll earn in a year. They are as impressed by your supposed concern for social justice as you would be by a man with "only" $50 million dollars deriding Bill Gates's spending as excessive.I hope that I've pulled a central quote of yours.

1) Opportunity cost. If Richy-Rich didn't spend his mullah on designer clothing, economic activity would be shifted elsewhere. If Richy saved the money during an economic expansion, the resources would presumably enhance the country's stock of investment capital. Since the US has a low savings rate this would, in general, enhance economic welfare and security.

The interesting thing about this argument is that the harms associated with misallocated resources are rather diffuse. That is, aside from their magnitude, the harms don't fall disproportionately on one person or group of people.

2) Conspicuous consumption and positional goods: Much of the value of a $12,000 outfit comes from the fact that it's more expensive than a mere $3,000 outfit. That is, much of the product's value reflects the fact that it's somehow better than other products. Of course, it may also have intrinsic properties, but I would argue that they are secondary in this case.

Conspicuous consumption harms fall locally: they are borne by those who view the consumption. (Some may want to dismiss these sorts of harms entirely. For the time being, I merely want to identify them.)

3) $50 shoes. $30 shirt. $40 pants. $3 socks. $20 belt. $40 sweater = $183. Dang. Clothes are expensive. That's far more than most in Sub-Saharan Africa earn in a month - but also less than they earn in a year.

4) The POV of the philosopher Peter Singer seems relevant. Global disparities in wealth are quite large. There's a good case for giving away 20% of the amount above a locally "comfortable" income, say, $50,000 in the US. Most will balk at that.

5) An interesting link is here (http://www.nonprofits.org/lib/mills.html). Here's one quote: "One problem here is that while we want some selfishness to turn out to be justified, we don't want *all* selfishness to turn out to be justified. "

"...we want to explain why "it is sometimes permissible to refuse to perform an optimal act. But ...at the same time [we want to] avoid arguments that rule out the possibility of there being any moral requirements at all. Thus the explanation must also account for the fact that sometimes a given optimal act *is* required by morality." If we try to establish some protected zone of self-interest, we will have trouble showing that this zone can ever be legitimately encroached upon. And if we argue that reasons of self-interest sometimes outweigh moral reasons, then we will have to say that moral sacrifice is sometimes actually *un*justified. But certainly we want it to be permissible, even if not required, for the moral saint to go the extra mile. Kagan concludes that it is difficult to set principled limits to what morality may demand of us."

[artemis]

The POV of the philosopher Peter Singer seems relevant. Global disparities in wealth are quite large. There's a good case for giving away 20% of the amount above a locally "comfortable" income, say, $50,000 in the US. Most will balk at that.

Measure for Measure, I quite agree that global (and for that matter, regional) disparities in wealth are a huge moral problem. I have no problems with adopting societal policies intended to reduce those disparities (and I'm someone who would definitely lose out under such schemes; when I vote Democratic, I'm voting against my economic interest). My objections to Evil Captor's stance is that ineffective, rude, and ultimately hypocritical. You saw his responses in his later posts - here he is railing aginst the OP's friend for spending $12,000 on a suit, but defending actresses who wear similarly expensive clothes to awards cerremonies, and "investors" who spend milions of dollars on paintings. Why is spending $12,000 on a suit a heinous offense, but spending $12 million on a painting OK? Or $20,000 on a car (an expense most Americans would regard as reasonable), for that matter?

And Evil Captor doesn't seem to realize that all the same objections he's raising to the OP's friend's spending can also be raised against HIS spending. Evil Captor is posting on the Dope; presumably he owns a computer. No one needs a computer. What right does he have to spend $1000 on a computer when there are people in Africa who don't earn that much money in a year? Why hasn't he sold his computer, stopped his internet and cable service, and donated the money he saves from those "frivolous, unnecessary" expenses to charities? What RIGHT does he have to spend money on such luxuries?

Criticizing individual expenditures is pointless; people will never agree on what should or should not be bought. Anything can be seen as a "wasteful luxury" to someone. People who are concerned about wealth disparities should concentrate instead on implementing broader societal changes that will make it more difficult for people to accumulate huge amounts of wealth, and let the market function without interference. If there are few multimillionares, there won't be many $12,000 suits sold - and the ones which are will be will more likely be bought by people who REALLY want that suit and are willing to give up a lot of other material items in order to have it.

Hell, I'm not even close to being a millionare - but I could buy a $12,000 outfit right now, without even going into debt, if I wanted to. But like most middle-class and upper-middle class people, there are a lot of other things I value more (including having money in the bank in case of hard times ahead). When the opportunity cost of owning an item becomes high enough, there's no need to mock people and deride them as "prancing poppinjays" to prevent them from purchasing it; they abstain of their own accord.

[Bippy the Beardless]

OK, what's fair about some people being able to afford casual wear that costs more than the annual income of many people in that same society? Explain it to me. Don't be afraid to sound patronizing, I can handle it.

Clothing is a necessity in our society. The money spent on clothing goes to the producers of said clothing. $12,000 is a hell of a lot of money, but it doesn't magically disappear when the clothing is bought. It goes to the tailor's, the cloth manufacturers, the middlemen,... all of whom use that money (minus the governments share) to finance their own lives and businesses. There is no inherent waste in this situation.
Compare this to the person mentioned earlier who receives a package of clothes each week, and then throws them away when they are dirty, such a person is wasting resources, and deserves scorn for such resource wasting. (Not to say we don't all waste resources one way or the other, but such obvious wastefulness is horrible).
Compare to the person who buys the cheapest possible casual clothing, this person is paying less than it 'reasonably' costs to produce that clothing. By this I mean they are buying clothes that are produced by underpaid 'almost - slaves' in the third world, the factories producing the cloth are poorly maintained and wasteful of resources (to keep the prices down). Such purchasing is necessary to those who cannot afford otherwise, but would be mean spirited by someone who could afford items produced by more responsible manufacturers who are more careful for their employees and the environment.

The rich man who is subject of the OP seems nieve in the extreme, but why should he not spend his own money in the way he wishes so long as it causes no harm?

[Evil Captor]

5) An interesting link is here (http://www.nonprofits.org/lib/mills.html). Here's one quote: "One problem here is that while we want some selfishness to turn out to be justified, we don't want *all* selfishness to turn out to be justified. "

Thanks for the link, the person cited here is closer to my position on social and economic inequity in the world than anything I've seen here, though I do have some differences with her.

Look, the well of human misery in the world is a near-bottomless pit, what's more, just throwing money at it won't work. Many Third World countries are governed by kleptocracies that will simply absorb all the money sent their way at the top, leaving little or nothing for the people on the bottom who really need it.

Even in countries which are not total kleptocracies, the inevitable pattern in almost any society is for the people at the top to absorb most of the wealth and for the people on the bottom to get by on a relatively small proportion of it. Even here in the U.S., land of the free market, home of the brave, etc., the wealthy are rapidly becoming a kleptocracy, to wit:

The top one percent of U.S. households owned 42 percent of all stock in 1997...
The top ten percent of households owned 82 percent of all stock-market wealth...
Only 27 percent of households held more than $10,000 in stock in 1997...
57 percent of Americans didn't own any stock at all...
The top fifth of households saw their income rise 43 percent between 1977 and 1999, while the bottom fifth saw their income fall 9 percent....
Since 1973, every group in society except the top 20 percent has seen its share of the national income decline, with the bottom 20 percent losing the most. They have just 3.6 percent of national income, down from 4.4 percent a quarter century ago.
Indeed, the top fifth now makes more than the rest of the nation combined...

But it's not just the U.S., all over the world, the people at the top grab everything they can get their hands on, not because they're unusually greedy pigs, but because they are human beings, and human beings in general -- poor, wealthy, etc., have prove over and over again that if given the chance, they are greedy pigs. The perceived morality of the poor is mostly just a matter of lack of opportunity. There are exceptions at all levels, but as a group: greedy pigs, greedy pigs, greedy pigs.

Everywhere, people in a position to do so will gladly allow hundreds to starve if it means they get a second vacation in Ibiza each year.

Capitalism as we know it tends to enable the people at the top because they use their wealth to bend the rules and tilt the playing field in their favor, all the while claiming they are the worthy beneficiaries of the free market. Some are in fact brilliant capitalists, most are mediocre and aren't really doing a much better job of managing their money than your average poor person would if they were raised in the same circumstances and had the same opportunities.

Still, it is better than most other economic systems, which in many cases amount to little more than organized looting. Karl Marx took a hard swing at this problem when he wrote Das Kapital, but like a lot of social thinkers he got bogged down in the economics and he was unfortunately influence by the British social class system, and he didn't deal with sufficient rigor with the issue of how to deal with the fact that workers who get the upper hand in a socialist economy will very quickly become the same greedy pigs they replaced.

This is in fact one of two central issues wrt to wealth and poverty in the world. (The other ... the tendency of poor people in Third World societies to treat children, especially male children, as a form of wealth and to sparp 'em out as fast as they can ... we already have a handle on, as there's a well-documented tendency for birth rates to go down once Third World folks move to industrialized nations. The prospect of a good life with fewer children will transform all but the most ardent Catholic into a birth control proponent, as far as their personal lives are concerned.) This is the one that makes poverty so deep and so widespread. Most countries have the resources to feed and house and clothe their people decently, but the folks at the top are utterly uninterested in this.

The problem of fighting this tendency is a hellishly difficult one, because we find ourselves up against some fundamental human tendencies: the tendency to amass wealth as a form of ego-boo, the tendency to want to protect and provide for oneself and one's family through wealth, the tendency of people to accept hierarchical arrangements, the tendency of in-groups to ignore the interests of out-groups

There are all sorts of ways to potentially deal with these issues, other than a frontal assault on what it is to be human. Frex, most of the advances in wealth for poor people in industrial societies have been as a result of the effect of technology on society, not a wonderful largesse on the part of the wealthy. I suspect that when the problem is solved … and it WILL be solved … it will be as a result of some intellectual or technological breakthrough, rather than some wonderful upgrade in human character and behavior.

I’m working on some aspects of this problem, in my own personal and slow kinda way. Ultimately, I see a world where to be human is to be wealthy, by our present standards. Everyone will live their whole lives knowing they will always have enough to eat, clothes to wear, and a place to stay, simply because they are part of human society. They’ll have more interesting problems to deal with during their waking hours than how to keep their sanity while working for an idiot boss.

I see this as an absolutely wonderful world, well worth striving for, and one sufficiently wealthy enough to allow for the existence of Yosemitebabe’s “nice things” on a scale she can’t even concieve of at present. But if it meant dumping the gold-plated swimming pools, the $12,000 casual suits and the million dollar paintings … well, hell, I can live with that. Small beer, in my opinion.

[Measure for Measure]

Clothing is a necessity in our society. The money spent on clothing goes to the producers of said clothing. $12,000 is a hell of a lot of money, but it doesn't magically disappear when the clothing is bought. It goes to the tailor's, the cloth manufacturers, the middlemen,... all of whom use that money (minus the governments share) to finance their own lives and businesses. There is no inherent waste in this situation.Um, yes there is.

Spending the money on something else would shift resources towards that alternative use. By analogy, the government could spend $100 million building pyramids in the Mohave. The money would go the concrete-maker, the ditch-digger, the engineer, the middlemen... ... all of whom use that money (minus the governments share) to finance their own lives and businesses.

Nonetheless, I would think that the funds would be better placed in productive investment, research or transfers. Ditto if our possibly-apocraphal rich guy is spending the dough.

Resource allocation matters.

[Bippy the Beardless]

I agree that it is a problem that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. My gripe with the OP is that the rich person who invests their money wisely is adding to this state by making themselves even richer. Whilst the rich person who spends their money on luxury items is spreading their wealth to poorer people, which is a good thing if it doesn't needlessly end up wasting limited resources.
The fact that the rich man could spend the money on better things, is not an issue to me, as it is almost impossible to find a monatary transaction where it could not be argued that the money could have been spent better. But the rich person investing the money, even if the investment is in good cause research or transfer, is still being made in order to gain the rich person more money. If that was not the reason for the investment then the rich person is in essence giving charitably to a profit or loss making venture. It certianly helps the wheels of economy go round, but it doesn't help redistribute wealth.

[yosemite]

I find it not surprising that you've chosen not to directly address artemis's post. It very clearly shows your hypocricy. I suppose you'll never answer: why is a $12,000 suit evil, but a $12,000 evening dress okay?
I’m working on some aspects of this problem, in my own personal and slow kinda way.
How, by being a rude hypocrite?
Ultimately, I see a world where to be human is to be wealthy, by our present standards. Everyone will live their whole lives knowing they will always have enough to eat, clothes to wear, and a place to stay, simply because they are part of human society.
But who will decide what is enough to eat,good enough to wear, and what is a good enough place to live in?

But if it meant dumping the gold-plated swimming pools, the $12,000 casual suits and the million dollar paintings … well, hell, I can live with that. Small beer, in my opinion.
So you wish for Hearst Castle to never exist, nor the Van Gogh painting. Charming for you, but not for those who have enjoyed touring the Hearst Castle, or enjoyed viewing the Van Gogh painting.

And other people may wish for your nice house, nice computer, or nice car to never exist. Because in their worldview, those things are excessive and should be "dumped." I'm sure they can "live with that" too.

[Measure for Measure]

Bippy:
----- My gripe with the OP is that the rich person who invests their money wisely is adding to this state by making themselves even richer.

Um, wah? I may be missing something, like any reference whatsoever to investment or savings in the OP. I thought the topic was, "Cluelessness and conspicuous consumption".

From the OP, "AND THEN he has the nerve to tell me that I don't know how hard it is to manage that kind of money."

Uh, ok, but that doesn't really touch on the $12,000 suit, does it? I certainly don't recall the OP attacking wise investment.

----- The fact that the rich man could spend the money on better things, is not an issue to me, as it is almost impossible to find a monetary transaction where it could not be argued that the money could have been spent better.

It is this sort of moral relativism that I object to. Stealing is wrong, although I can think of worse things: "I didn't murder", is hardly a defense.

Spending an unusually exorbitant amount on a frivolous item is wrong (assuming for the moment that it is frivolous to the buyer as well, a scenario which is wholly consistent with the OP), although it certainly doesn't rise to the level of stealing. To say that mammals have duck-like characteristics in no way implies that ducks can't be identified.

One of yosemitebabe's possibly unintentional subarguments, "Different people have disagree on what is and what is not moral, so we shouldn't make moral judgments on this", is objectionable as well. (Sorry about that, y: I hasten to reiterate that the underlying moral issues are not clear cut. I'm just saying that ambiguity doesn't justify a flight away from them.)

If your actions have consequences, you won't get a free pass from me.
------

As another poster pointed out earlier, this OP is hardly the first attack on wasteful spending: heck, I believe that I am defending traditional conservative values here. When addressing moral behavior that forms a continuity (lots of grey) it is entirely sensible to attack the most extreme cases first: where else would one begin? This is the case whether we're discussing any virtue, be it political corruption (everyone could be more honest!), dieting (who among us couldn't lose a few pounds, so why should focus on that 3000 lb person's health problems?) ...or conspicuous consumption.

[yosemite]

One of yosemitebabe's possibly unintentional subarguments, "Different people have disagree on what is and what is not moral, so we shouldn't make moral judgments on this", is objectionable as well.

How many times do I have to say that I was appalled by the cost of the suit? It's too much for my blood. So was my sister's $500 ring.

So, I guess you're saying that instead of keeping my yap shut to my sister about her $500 ring, and perhaps assuming that she knew what she was doing, and the $500 of her own money spent on the ring was worth it to her, I should have piped up, and told her how appalled I was, and how I thought she should have spent the money differently? Because certainly, I would have never spent that money that way.

So is that what you think I should have done? Yes or no?

If your actions have consequences, you won't get a free pass from me.
So, fine. So next time my sister shows me something that I think costs too much, I'll make sure to not give her a "free pass." That will make things ever so much more pleasant.

When addressing moral behavior that forms a continuity (lots of grey) it is entirely sensible to attack the most extreme cases first: where else would one begin?
Speaking for myself, a $500 ring seems pretty extreme to me. I mean, to me it does. It seems quite obvious to me. And I daresay that the folks who condemned my dad's book collection felt it was "extreme" enough to warrant their censure.

Look—I can see getting irked with someone who has a clueless "let them eat cake" attitude. I certainly can see getting irked with someone who treats their expensive goodies like Kleenex, to be thrown out without a second thought. But that is a separate issue from just buying the stuff in the first place. People may buy many things for various reasons. Alice in Wonderland here is one of those people. Do you mean to say that you know she is immoral? Are you condemning her because she owns some expensive clothes? Are you not going to give her a "free pass"?

Some people may have some prudent spending habits to "counteract" (if you will) their seemingly extravagant spending. For instance, my dad bought a shitload of books and records, but he always kept his car for over ten years. Yet people who drove a far nicer car than he did censured him for his books. Why did they feel entitled to do that?

Oh, but I'm sure that they thought they were on the moral high ground, not giving him a "free pass" like that. :rolleyes:

[Measure for Measure]

YB
Perhaps I should define my terms.

On page 2, yosemitebabe said, ". To start bitching about how this guy spends his money on this and not that, (and how the rich guy's spending is not "justified") is out of line. If this rich guy wants to spend money on clothes, he can do so. Because it's his money and he doesn't have to answer to anyone else about how he spends it. Just like my dad's book collection is not anyone else's business."

To say, "How somebody spends their money is their business", is to give them a free pass: regardless of the consequences of their behavior, we will refuse to pass judgment.

Well, nothing doing: nobody whose actions have consequences can escape the terrifying moral evaluation of M4M, The Scowling Prophet(c).

So the book collection doesn't get a free pass. (It does, however, happen to pass muster in M4M's um book, after due consideration.)

--- [Regarding, the $500 ring.] So is that what you think I should have done? Yes or no?

Um, no. However, if the ring is $5000 you are permitted to look at her strangely. Thanks for asking.
<< Actually, the trickier part comes when she asks about how much you like the $500 ring. "Interesting choice sis!" >>

---- [Regarding Alice's $5000 dress] Do you mean to say that you know she is immoral?

Separate issue. I haven't passed judgment on Alice, because 1) I haven't gotten enough background info and 2) her behavior is not off-the-charts extreme. (Unlike the alleged $12,000 pants-shirt-shoes-socks purchase.) <<I trust that Alice is breathing an enormous sigh of relief right now.>>

However. Another thing I won't say is, "Alice: Spend your money on whatever you want." Uh-uh. No free passes, no blanket permission, no-siree-bob.

------ Some people may have some prudent spending habits to "counteract" (if you will) their seemingly extravagant spending. For instance, my dad bought a shitload of books and records, but he always kept his car for over ten years. Yet people who drove a far nicer car than he did censured him for his books. Why did they feel entitled to do that?

I should admit that this is good point, IMHO. Comprehensive moral judgment requires lots of information. And yet for privacy reasons, this information is unavailable.

For this reason, we are left with casting judgment only in extreme cases. Like (just say) spending $12,000 on.... well you know. Raised eyebrows and dubious attitudes are permitted for a wider set of circumstances.

[yosemite]

YB
To say, "How somebody spends their money is their business", is to give them a free pass: regardless of the consequences of their behavior, we will refuse to pass judgment.
But what "consequences" are we talking about, and how severe must these "consequences" be?

Someone spending $1000 on a computer instead of giving that money to charity is a "consequence," is it not?
Um, no. However, if the ring is $5000 you are permitted to look at her strangely. Thanks for asking.
<< Actually, the trickier part comes when she asks about how much you like the $500 ring. "Interesting choice sis!" >>
Very funny. But since you're playing along, please tell me what is the exact dollar amount that is "too much" for a ring, or a car, or a computer.

And while you're at it, please tell us what dollar amount spent on these items warrants an eye roll, or raised eyebrows, or a chewing out. I await to be enlightened.

Separate issue. I haven't passed judgment on Alice, because 1) I haven't gotten enough background info
And you think you've got enough background info on all the other people who have spent thousands on luxury items? Really?
and 2) her behavior is not off-the-charts extreme. (Unlike the alleged $12,000 pants-shirt-shoes-socks purchase.)
Wait a minute. She spends (if memory serves) something like $5,000 on individual outfits. Do you seriously think that many people here will agree that this is not a whole helluva lot to spend on an outfit? Wow.

Another thing I won't say is, "Alice: Spend your money on whatever you want." Uh-uh. No free passes, no blanket permission, no-siree-bob.
You are kidding, right? This is a whoosh, right?

Must be. Otheriwise, you're saying that other people have to get "permission" from you to spend their own damned money. And that's just too damned bizarre.

I should admit that this is good point, IMHO. Comprehensive moral judgment requires lots of information. And yet for privacy reasons, this information is unavailable.
And that's why most of us should keep our yaps shut. And that's been one of my main points all along. Unless you know someone else's private finances, and how much they give to charity, for instance, or what other investments they make, you know jack shit and perhaps it's best to keep your judgments to yourself.

For this reason, we are left with casting judgment only in extreme cases.
But you and I (and I daresay everyone else on this thread) cannot agree on the "extreme" cases. I think Alice in Wonderland spent a whole helluva lot of money on her outfits and to me, it doesn't seem that much less extreme than Mr. Rich Guy in the OP. Not that I am condemning Alice or thinking that I have any right to tell her how she should spend her money and I wouldn't be surprised if she's far more wise with her spending than I am. But to me, (and I suppose, many others), $5,000 is a shitload. But it's not "extreme" enough for you? Fine. So you won't give her the fish-eye? Fine. But a lot of people would—especially if they were encouraged to feel that they were entitled to give her the fish eye over her private spending habits.

As for me, I think it's a very arrogant, uncharming thing to do, so I'm not going to do it. And artemis put it well in a previous post: this sort of thinking leads to an atmosphere where everyone feels entitled to be rude and intrusive and judgmental, and that seems unpleasant to the extreme.

[Evil Captor]

I agree that it is a problem that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. My gripe with the OP is that the rich person who invests their money wisely is adding to this state by making themselves even richer. Whilst the rich person who spends their money on luxury items is spreading their wealth to poorer people, which is a good thing if it doesn't needlessly end up wasting limited resources.
The fact that the rich man could spend the money on better things, is not an issue to me, as it is almost impossible to find a monatary transaction where it could not be argued that the money could have been spent better. But the rich person investing the money, even if the investment is in good cause research or transfer, is still being made in order to gain the rich person more money. If that was not the reason for the investment then the rich person is in essence giving charitably to a profit or loss making venture. It certianly helps the wheels of economy go round, but it doesn't help redistribute wealth.

You have not addressed the fact that your argument is meaningless: it applies to ALL transactions. It's morally neutral -- you are simply saying you like the fact that somewhere, someone spent $12K rather than burying it in his back yard.

[Evil Captor]

I find it not surprising that you've chosen not to directly address artemis's post. It very clearly shows your hypocricy. I suppose you'll never answer: why is a $12,000 suit evil, but a $12,000 evening dress okay?
How, by being a rude hypocrite?

No, by arguing with rude hypocrites. And I DID address this problem. I said an Oscar dress has a LOT of social utility -- for the stars who design them, for the people who make them, and for the millions who watch the Oscars on TV. Whereas Mr. 12K casual wear is presumably just pumping up his own pathetic sense of self-worth with the outfit. And of course, its value decreased radically the moment he put it on, and will probably be worth 1/100 of its value in less than a year. It's sheer waste and frippery, and has little or no social utility other than to prop up the ego of the wearer. Now, it's true that it enriches the people who make such bling bling, but as has been pointed out, surely there are better ways to spend our money.

But who will decide what is enough to eat,good enough to wear, and what is a good enough place to live in?

I don't anticipate any worldwide dictator state making any such decision. My bet though, is that the standard will be -- everyone will have a room of their own to sleep in where they won't freeze or get eaten by bugs, etc., everyone will have access to TV and the internet, everyone will be able to eat well enough to not have hunger pangs, everyone will have clothes they can appear in public in without being pointed at in horror and dismay (unless that's their intent, as is clearly the case with some club clothes), and everyone will have some means of travelling to other cities/countries when they need to. Food, shelter, clothing, and a hookup with the world via telecom (community). I don't think anyone will DECIDE that for everyone else, it will just become obvious at some point that that is the minimal standard. There'll probably be minimum standards for health care, too.

So you wish for Hearst Castle to never exist, nor the Van Gogh painting. Charming for you, but not for those who have enjoyed touring the Hearst Castle, or enjoyed viewing the Van Gogh painting.

C'mon, YB, try reading with comprehension. I never expressed any such wish. I really don't think it will be necessary to trash those things to achieve a just society. Reread what I said about poverty and tech. You don't make poor people wealthy by taking away rich people's bling-bling. (You are still at liberty for mocking rich people who are too interested in it, of course.)

And other people may wish for your nice house, nice computer, or nice car to never exist. Because in their worldview, those things are excessive and should be "dumped." I'm sure they can "live with that" too.

They probably are excessive to someone whose ambition is to have enough to eat. But it doesn't stop there. Have you ever heard of Abraham Maslow, YB?

[Evil Captor]

But what "consequences" are we talking about, and how severe must these "consequences" be?

M4M has already spoken of raised eyebrows and dubious looks. Really, you gotta read what people write. I guess the bottom line is, loss of respect for being a twit with your money.

Very funny. But since you're playing along, please tell me what is the exact dollar amount that is "too much" for a ring, or a car, or a computer.

This is what I call the "lawyer's fallacy" which consists of discrediting general principles (Thou shalt not steal) because they can't cover every conceivable specific case (But your honor, this man was only taking the bread to feed widows and orphans!) The reason that general principles (Sending money foolishly is something deserving of mockery) exist is that most of the time, for most people, and in most cases, they work. All your quibbling about exact price tags, etc., is covered by "YMMV."

George Bernard Shaw came closer to the mark than anyone I've seen. He said, "A gentleman is someone who produces more than he consumes." Note that Shaw's definition didn't proclude frippery or bling bling. Unfortunately, his def is outdated, as automation means that in many respects, most of us aren't needed to produce things. Still, his idea is a nice way to start thinking about wealth and social responsibility.

[yosemite]

Evil Captor: to requote myself:I find it not surprising that you've chosen not to directly address artemis's post. It very clearly shows your hypocricy.

You're still doing it. You ignore him, you ignore my mention of him. Some of the things you talk to me about have already been addressed by artemis, but I guess he doesn't exist anymore, does he?

Why is that? Something seems . . . gutless about that. I am very curious to see how you would respond to his posts, since it seems obvious to me that he's exposed your hypocricy quite well. Are you determined to avoid doing that?

[yosemite]

M4M has already spoken of raised eyebrows and dubious looks. Really, you gotta read what people write.
No, you've gotta read better. Here's what M4M wrote: To say, "How somebody spends their money is their business", is to give them a free pass: regardless of the consequences of their behavior, we will refuse to pass judgment
I think this is obvious: the consequences of their spending behavior.


C'mon, YB, try reading with comprehension. I never expressed any such wish.
But previously you said this:But if it meant dumping the gold-plated swimming pools, the $12,000 casual suits and the million dollar paintings … well, hell, I can live with that. Small beer, in my opinion.
The only mention of gold-plated swimming pools was from the Hearst Castle. So, I can only assume that you meant dumping the Hearst Castle, or perhaps some equally opulent place like it (to be built sometime in the future). And the million dollar paintings? We've discussed them here too. The names Van Gogh, I believe, came up. And you clearly state that it's okay to "dump" the million dollar paintings. You do realize, of course, that most million dollar paintings are by people like Van Gogh. Certainly I don't ever expect to produce a million dollar painting. So which artists' works would we be talking about, exactly? Not mine, that's for damned sure.


And I DID address this problem. I said an Oscar dress has a LOT of social utility -- for the stars who design them, for the people who make them, and for the millions who watch the Oscars on TV. Whereas Mr. 12K casual wear is presumably just pumping up his own pathetic sense of self-worth with the outfit.
And here is artemis's response, which I completely agree with, and which you've repeatedly ignored:

WHAT social utility? The actors and actresses dress up in $20,000 dollars worth of clothes to make it clear to the watching masses that they are indeed members of the Beautiful People crowd, the fashion designers get exposure so that they can sell yet more hideously expensive clothes to other wealthy people, and the teeming masses get to watch as the privileged strut their wealth. This is EXACTLY the sort of behavior you claim to hate - and yet here you are defending it.

The Ocsars are an awards ceremony. If the participants all decided to show up in rented tuxedos and $200 evening dresses similar to those worn by ordinary middle-class people at "important events", nothing about the awards ceremony itself would be changed. The elaborate display we all see on Oscar night is pure ostentation, nothing more. It is hypocritial for you to defend it and at the same time rage about the OP's rich friend buying expensive clothes instead of shopping at Sears the way the rest of us do.

How long are you going to ignore that? Do you have any response to that? Or are you going to (presumably) continue to pretend that it was never written and keep on glossing past it?

[Bippy the Beardless]

You have not addressed the fact that your argument is meaningless: it applies to ALL transactions. It's morally neutral -- you are simply saying you like the fact that somewhere, someone spent $12K rather than burying it in his back yard.

No. Some Transactions are loans, such as $12000 investment. They are made with the express expectation of getting more back at a later date.
Others are purchases, such as buying $12000 of clothing. For which the purchaser gets maybe a few $100 of resources.
Other transactions, are gifts or charitable donations. For which the purchaser gets nothing tangeable in return. But can be used as a Tax Benifit.

In one the rich person gets richer, in the others they get poorer. It is quite simple. The clothing does not consist of $12000 worth of resources, it is not resellable for $12000.

[Measure for Measure]

Smaller points:
----- And while you're at it, please tell us what dollar amount spent on these items warrants an eye roll, or raised eyebrows, or a chewing out. I await to be enlightened. [yosemitebabe]

We've already established that context matters: indeed that was your point regarding your Dad's allocation of funds between books and cars. Indeed, I took the trouble to highlight that issue. So asking for exact dollar amounts to be applied generally is inappropriate. I could plausibly sketch situations that justify various moral stances, but I see little point.

I do, however, see a point in opposing amoral stances where I consider them inappropriate.

----- And you think you've got enough background info on all the other people who have spent thousands on luxury items? Really?

No, but I think I have enough background on Richy in the OP. Let's face it, there's virtually no issue of defamation, legal or moral, since nobody here (with the small exception of his friend) knows his identity. So we're on pretty solid ground discussing this case that, after all, is largely hypothetical for the purposes of this discussion.

When, pray tell, did I judge "all the other people who have spent thousands..."? I merely gave myself the option of judging them.

-----------------------------------------------------

But the above is merely tit-for-tat: I don't think it gets at the underlying issues particularly well.


------- And that's why most of us should keep our yaps shut. And that's been one of my main points all along. Unless you know someone else's private finances, and how much they give to charity, for instance, or what other investments they make, you know jack shit and perhaps it's best to keep your judgments to yourself.

But when a certain behavior is demonstrably extreme --which $12,000 casual wear on a guy is (indeed, in a way that even the same amount on a woman would not be), I feel comfortable drawing moral conclusions on the basis of it. Richy is pushing the boundaries of conspicuous consumption: furthermore he has shown an indifference to the underlying quality of the materials. Here we have a lot more information than we usually do.

Similarly, if my brother bought a $12,000 outfit I would be in a position to question him about it, because of a stronger knowledge base.

--------- But to me, (and I suppose, many others), $5,000 is a shitload. But it's not "extreme" enough for you? Fine.

I didn't say it wasn't extreme enough for me. I said that I would withhold judgment. Big difference. Empirically, there are a fair number of women who may own one garment or piece of jewelry that exceeds $5000 in value. Again, I'm neither supporting nor condemning that behavior. (Gender ignorance plays a role here, among other reasons).

----- Otherwise, you're saying that other people have to get "permission" from you to spend their own damned money. And that's just too damned bizarre.

Permission was put in quotes, I note. It's a strange way of putting it.

People can and will behave in all sorts of unethical ways. Some may shoplift, for example. While I can imagine circumstances where that would be a moral course of action, I would say generally speaking that I consider such behavior wrong.

In contrast, I am not willing to say that Alice, for example, can spend her money in any way she likes while still being considered a moral person by me. I can imagine scenarios where she would be allocating resources immorally and I can imagine purchases that would permit me to put a reasonable bound on her moral character.

The only bizarre part is mistakenly conflating my opinion with any notion of "permission". Clearly, I have no authority to make Alice to X, Y or Z. I can enforce certain ethical norms only to the extent that I draw inferences about Alice's character on the basis of her behavior.

In sum, I reserve the right to form opinions --or reserve judgment-- on the basis of what I observe. Big deal.

------------------------------------------------------------

Once again, I feel like I'm struggling with minutia. Let me outline some underlying issues:

1) Inadequate information does not justify eliminating certain moral standards.

2) There are legitimate questions of diplomacy and tact here. But they are not unique to this particular question: if my brother shoplifted, a judgmental attitude might be counterproductive, but that does not imply that I should condone shoplifting.

3) One should not assume that all discussions of practical ethics will inevitably turn into shouting matches.

4) Moral ambiguity is ubiquitous. This fact does not justify amorality, though it does encourage circumspection when evaluating a certain behavior.

------------------------------------------------------------
This post is still too windy. Hey, I tried. YB: Feel free to ask me to hit some of the points that I missed, if you feel them to be central or important.

[Measure for Measure]

WHAT social utility? The actors and actresses dress up in $20,000 dollars worth of clothes to make it clear to the watching masses that they are indeed members of the Beautiful People crowd, the fashion designers get exposure so that they can sell yet more hideously expensive clothes to other wealthy people, and the teeming masses get to watch as the privileged strut their wealth. This is EXACTLY the sort of behavior you claim to hate - and yet here you are defending it.

The Ocsars are an awards ceremony. If the participants all decided to show up in rented tuxedos and $200 evening dresses similar to those worn by ordinary middle-class people at "important events", nothing about the awards ceremony itself would be changed. The elaborate display we all see on Oscar night is pure ostentation, nothing more. It is hypocritial for you to defend it and at the same time rage about the OP's rich friend buying expensive clothes instead of shopping at Sears the way the rest of us do. I will address this point only because it seems important to certain members, for reasons that are unclear to me. I will elaborate on my remarks made earlier.

My understanding is that the Oscars are a spectacle watched by literally billions of people. The are entertainment and they are a promotional vehicle. I am not surprised that actors and actresses arrange stylish outfits for themselve during it, but I see their fashion choices as being essentially business decisions.

Basically, I disagree with artimis's characterization: the clothing worn by the participants in the show (including those in the audience) will affect their level of exposure in the media. Their level of exposure, in turn, can affect their careers in non-trivial ways: for this reason, I think of these garments as business-wear more than party-wear.

TYPO: ...Clearly I have no authority to make Alice do X, Y or Z.

[alice_in_wonderland]

Originally posted by Measure for MeasureThe only bizarre part is mistakenly conflating my opinion with any notion of "permission". Clearly, I have no authority to make Alice to X, Y or Z. I can enforce certain ethical norms only to the extent that I draw inferences about Alice's character on the basis of her behavior.

I want to step in here for a moment - for the record, I was out of town on a 3 day skiing holiday - I'm sure folks will have an opinion on that as well. Ahem.

Measure for Measure - I actually find your stance on this issue to be morally and ethically bankrupt, and I'm going to try to explain why. It's possible that I'm actually too tired to do this now, but your comments need responding to.

It is impossible for you to ever know all there is to know about another person's circumstances. Any judgement you make about another person’s worth or moral fortitude, based on one or two pieces of information about that person, is suspect. I would go so far as to say that it's immoral for you, not knowing all the facts, to condemn another person as a non-ethical human being based on such an absence of facts. What on earth make you think that you have the right to pass such a judgement? Your argument is absurd - because you believe an action to be unethical, or a purchase to be excessive, that makes it so? That's totally ridiculous.

You know nothing about the poor sap in the OP except that he has expensive clothing and donates a lot of money to charity. According to my moral compass the fella gets a pass so far because him wearing an expensive outfit hurts no one, and him donating to charity helps many - however, I can conclude nothing about his character with only these two facts. Perhaps he's a total beast who kicks puppies. Perhaps he's in line to receive the Nobel Peace Prize - perhaps both. Without all the information, any inference I could draw is meaningless and to stake a person's character on such a conclusion is morally and ethically flawed, IMHO.

[artemis]

My understanding is that the Oscars are a spectacle watched by literally billions of people.

Who are turning in to see an awards ceremony, not simply to ogle at the Beautiful People. Most of the audience is interested primarily in who wins what; if all they were interested in was looking at the stars, the show would be a hell of a lot shorter.

The are entertainment and they are a promotional vehicle. I am not surprised that actors and actresses arrange stylish outfits for themselve during it, but I see their fashion choices as being essentially business decisions

Basically, I disagree with artimis's characterization: the clothing worn by the participants in the show (including those in the audience) will affect their level of exposure in the media. Their level of exposure, in turn, can affect their careers in non-trivial ways: for this reason, I think of these garments as business-wear more than party-wear.

And how can you in good conscience defend "business-wear" that costs tens of thousands of dollars? We're not talking some sort of specialized gear like a biohazard suit, but merely an ordinary man's evening suit or a lady's dress. Would Cate Blanchett suddenly look like a cow if she dressed in a $500 outfit rather than a $20,000 one?

Whether you want to call it business wear or party wear, it's more expensive than it needs to be for the purpose at hand. Logically you can't defend such a "waste of resources" if you want to be consistent in your stance.

[Measure for Measure]

Hold on gang, let me post this first:

Trying to collect my thoughts....

The OP was primarily about cluelessnes, which hasn't spawned much controversy. Among sub-issues, I don't have much problem condemning the $12,000 gift of pant-shoes & shirt, partly because my leading hypothesis is that it never occurred. Also, the hypothetical purchase seems sorta pointless, exorbitant and indicative of poor stewardship of financial resources in this narrow instance.

Of course, expressing moral judgments without grace or tact can be counterproductive. And frankly, if I knew Mr. Rich, I'd probably have bigger fish to fry. If I knew him well enough to exchange fashion tips, I might want to consider saving my rhetorical ammo for something that I consider important, such as third world development.

Specifically, I would want Mr. Rich to allocate a certain amount of attention and resources towards effective charitable endeavors. These endeavors might include the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (http://www.vaccinealliance.org/home/index.php), Doctors Without Borders (http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/), Accion International (http://www.accion.org/default.asp) and of course the Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository (http://www.asstr.org/donations.html).

However, before pulling out his wallet, he should consider the quality of the NGO's management. That can be found here (http://www.charitywatch.org/), here (http://www.guidestar.org/) and here (http://www.give.org/).

In practice, of course, I doubt whether any of these conversations would actually take place.

[Measure for Measure]

Measure for Measure - I actually find your stance on this issue to be morally and ethically bankrupt, and I'm going to try to explain why. It's possible that I'm actually too tired to do this now, but your comments need responding to.

It is impossible for you to ever know all there is to know about another person's circumstances. Any judgement you make about another person’s worth or moral fortitude, based on one or two pieces of information about that person, is suspect. I would go so far as to say that it's immoral for you, not knowing all the facts, to condemn another person as a non-ethical human being based on such an absence of facts. What on earth make you think that you have the right to pass such a judgement? Your argument is absurd - because you believe an action to be unethical, or a purchase to be excessive, that makes it so? That's totally ridiculous.

You know nothing about the poor sap in the OP except that he has expensive clothing and donates a lot of money to charity. According to my moral compass the fella gets a pass so far because him wearing an expensive outfit hurts no one, and him donating to charity helps many - however, I can conclude nothing about his character with only these two facts. Perhaps he's a total beast who kicks puppies. Perhaps he's in line to receive the Nobel Peace Prize - perhaps both. Without all the information, any inference I could draw is meaningless and to stake a person's character on such a conclusion is morally and ethically flawed, IMHO.1) Please note that I explicitly did not judge Alice, specifically because of a lack of information.

2) Alice: Please show me the quote where I condemned the OP's friend unilaterally as, "An unethical human being". (I'm not claiming here that I didn't say something harsh about the poor (ha!) fellow. I merely want to be pointed towards the exact statement I made that I should defend.)

3) Well, I know the guy is socially clueless. I know his family has given some money to the Children's Hospital. The evidence indicates that he has a poor grasp of the cost of his garments in relation to other garments.

4) More to the point, I feel rather comfortable in condemning wasteful expenditure. Furthermore, I believe this to be fully compatible with traditional conservatism. And I believe that one's actions reflect one's character, and that we are all imperfect beings.

[Measure for Measure]

Who are turning in to see an awards ceremony, not simply to ogle at the Beautiful People. Most of the audience is interested primarily in who wins what; if all they were interested in was looking at the stars, the show would be a hell of a lot shorter. If people were merely interested in who wins what, they would just read about it in the newspaper. That sort of information content can be summarized in a single table.

Furthermore, even if people just wanted the facts ma'am, the actors/actresses --who make there living on the basis of appearance-- would _still_ want to appear fashionable, since they have a huge worldwide TV audience watching them.And how can you in good conscience defend "business-wear" that costs tens of thousands of dollars? In many cases, it's given to the actresses free. For the donating fashion house, it's like an advertisement, a rather inexpensive one actually.

None of these points are new to this thread.

Now, as to whether Cate Blanchet should buy a $500 dress or a $5000 dress for the awards ceremony (assuming she gets no offers from the fashion-houses), I'd leave that to her agent. Still, I would say that if the dress gets a photo of her in People Magazine the next week, then $4500 is a fairly cheap promotional expense.

---- Whether you want to call it business wear or party wear, it's more expensive than it needs to be for the purpose at hand.

Just to summarize: that is an empirical claim which needs to be demonstrated. Disclaimer: I have no special knowledge of Hollywood. I have read an article about the fashion industry in the Economist this year.

[yosemite]

If people were merely interested in who wins what, they would just read about it in the newspaper. That sort of information content can be summarized in a single table.
So can a sporting event. But yet people watch sports, enjoy watching sports, and yet the atheletes don't need to wear $12,000 uniforms.

Furthermore, even if people just wanted the facts ma'am, the actors/actresses --who make there living on the basis of appearance-- would _still_ want to appear fashionable, since they have a huge worldwide TV audience watching them.
And they could appear just as fashionable if they wore some nice, affordable outfit designed by a local design school graduate. L.A. has several excellent colleges that crank out talented designers. (I went to one. But I didn't study fashion.)
In many cases, it's given to the actresses free. For the donating fashion house, it's like an advertisement, a rather inexpensive one actually.And it's promoting the hoity-toity "beautiful people" extravagant, expensive, "wasteful" lifestyle.

Now, as to whether Cate Blanchet should buy a $500 dress or a $5000 dress for the awards ceremony (assuming she gets no offers from the fashion-houses), I'd leave that to her agent.What? You mean you'll give her "permission"? :rolleyes:

Just to summarize: that is an empirical claim which needs to be demonstrated. Disclaimer: I have no special knowledge of Hollywood. I have read an article about the fashion industry in the Economist this year.
I do not claim to have any special knowledge of Hollywood either. But I was born and raised in S. California, went to a local design school (where I rubbed elbows with design students and did take a few fashion illustration classes) and I also had a friend who worked on the costumes for the Oscars and for a multitude of TV shows and movies. (Unfortunately, he's passed away, otherwise I'd ask him for more information about the Oscars.) All I can say is that most people won't know a "big name" fashion dress if they see it. The wearing of an expensive Big Name designer dress is not going to enhance the Oscar experience for the vast majority of viewers. The wearing of a pretty, elegant dress is part of the whole Oscar ceremony, but any good design school grad (or just anyone who has proven themselves to have an ability for fashionable design) could design a lovely but affordable dress.

Or, the actress could just buy something lovely and flattering off the rack. Most people would not know the difference.

[Measure for Measure]

Here's the dialogue, concerning Alice

yosemitebabe: People may buy many things for various reasons. Alice in Wonderland here is one of those people. Do you mean to say that you know she is immoral? Are you condemning her because she owns some expensive clothes? Are you not going to give her a "free pass"?

M4M: Separate issue. I haven't passed judgment on Alice, because 1) I haven't gotten enough background info and 2) her behavior is not off-the-charts extreme. (Unlike the alleged $12,000 pants-shirt-shoes-socks purchase.) <<I trust that Alice is breathing an enormous sigh of relief right now.>>Emphasis added. Note that I explicitly address the information issue. yosemitebabe: And you think you've got enough background info on all the other people who have spent thousands on luxury items? Really?

M4M: No, but I think I have enough background on Richy in the OP. Let's face it, there's virtually no issue of defamation, legal or moral, since nobody here (with the small exception of his friend) knows his identity. So we're on pretty solid ground discussing this case that, after all, is largely hypothetical for the purposes of this discussion. When, pray tell, did I judge "all the other people who have spent thousands..."? I merely gave myself the option of judging them.

yosemitebabe:Wait a minute. She spends (if memory serves) something like $5,000 on individual outfits. Do you seriously think that many people here will agree that this is not a whole helluva lot to spend on an outfit? Wow.....
I think Alice in Wonderland spent a whole helluva lot of money on her outfits and to me, it doesn't seem that much less extreme than Mr. Rich Guy in the OP. Not that I am condemning Alice or thinking that I have any right to tell her how she should spend her money and I wouldn't be surprised if she's far more wise with her spending than I am. But to me, (and I suppose, many others), $5,000 is a shitload. But it's not "extreme" enough for you? Fine.

M4M:I didn't say it wasn't extreme enough for me. I said that I would withhold judgment. Big difference. Empirically, there are a fair number of women who may own one garment or piece of jewelry that exceeds $5000 in value. Again, I'm neither supporting nor condemning that behavior. (Gender ignorance plays a role here, among other reasons).Bolding added. Again, I address the knowledge issue.

At the same time, if there is a specific comment that I made about anyone that Alice believes was overly harsh, please let me know.

[Measure for Measure]

Yosemite:

I am a little disappointed that you snipped at the side-issue with artemis. IMHO, you have not addressed my substantive responses.

I should also note that it is unclear to me how many starlets pay what sort of money for designer dresses going to the Oscars.

Furthermore, yosemitebabe's reference to sport stars is pretty sorry, IMHO. She noted herself that fancy dresses are part of the Oscar experience. The same cannot remotely be said about sporting events. She appears to be reacting to my comments rather reflexively.

And the "permission" bit is just getting silly. To quote myself, "In sum, I reserve the right to form opinions --or reserve judgment-- on the basis of what I observe. Big deal."

IMHO, yosemitebabe has been dodging more than Evil Captor has. After all, I myself had addressed the Oscar issue, before she started sniping at Evil for this alleged hypocracy.

Again, a disappointing peformance.

[Measure for Measure]

The wearing of an expensive Big Name designer dress is not going to enhance the Oscar experience for the vast majority of viewers.Whatever. The business issue is whether Cate wearing a bizarro designer dress will get her extra press coverage. If so, it may be a reasonable investment.

Previous disclaimers regarding Hollywood apply.

[yosemite]

Yosemite:

I am a little disappointed that you snipped at the side-issue with artemis. IMHO, you have not addressed my substantive responses.
You just think they're substantive.

Furthermore, yosemitebabe's reference to sport stars is pretty sorry, IMHO. She noted herself that fancy dresses are part of the Oscar experience.
Fancy dresses that don't have to be super-expensive, as I think I've illustrated. And my point about sporting events is spot-on. You said that one could read the results of the Oscars (who won, etc.) in the newspaper. Same can be said about a sporting event, right? How is that not comparable? People don't have to view either to learn of the outcome. And yet they enjoy viewing. Why? To find out who wins, as it happens.

And the "permission" bit is just getting silly.
Honeychild, it's called sarcasm. :rolleyes:

IMHO, yosemitebabe has been dodging more than Evil Captor has. After all, I myself had addressed the Oscar issue,
You think you've addressed it well enough. I don't think you have. Just because you ramble and ramble and crank out multiple posts doesn't mean you've given a "substantive" post, you know.

Whatever. The business issue is whether Cate wearing a bizarro designer dress will get her extra press coverage. If so, it may be a reasonable investment.
And you mean that Rachel Smith, recent graduate of Otis School of Design, can't create a "bizarro" design, if that is Cate's wish? Or that very capable but-yet-unknown designer who has a boutique in a trendy area of LA can't design a snazzy outfit, if that's what is called for?

That's news to me. I saw many a flamoyant, bizarro design being worn by fellow students when I went to school. And I saw some pretty stylish stuff as well. And the fabrics available down in the garment district (where I shopped occasionally) can be pretty inexpensive. Good quality, but inexpensive.

[Measure for Measure]

You just think they're substantive.The point: You didn't respond to my post that replied to you. Instead, you chose to discuss the Oscars. To each his own, I guess.Fancy dresses that don't have to be super-expensive, as I think I've illustrated.Terrific. But we still have a shortage of facts. I haven't seen an example of a starlet who has purchased a Dior dress (say) and has turned down an equivalent (and less expensive) one from an unknown. Find me such an example and.... following Artemis I would say that's a wasteful expenditure.

It's just that there are a lot of ancillary issues to deal with when you jump from Mr. Rich wearing $12,000 casual outfit to Demi Moore (say) making a promotional appearance at the Oscars. Ones that distract us from the topic at hand. And my point about sporting events is spot-on. You said that one could read the results of the Oscars (who won, etc.) in the newspaper. Same can be said about a sporting event, right? How is that not comparable? People don't have to view either to learn of the outcome. And yet they enjoy viewing. Why? To find out who wins, as it happens. Too bad you didn't say that.

It appears that we agree: People watch sporting events and the Oscars because they are spectacles. Which is what I said to begin with. IF it was MERELY the outcome that people cared about, they wouldn't bother seeing the show or display of athletic prowess. ....and yet the athletes don't need to wear $12,000 uniforms.Silly.

------- Honeychild, it's called sarcasm.

It's called, "Ducking my response".

--------- You think you've addressed it well enough. I don't think you have.

Fine, then respond to it, and don't pretend that point has never been brought up when you accuse Evil of ducking the issue (and hypocrisy no less!). What's the next characterization, shamelessness?

------------- Just because you ramble and ramble and crank out multiple posts doesn't mean you've given a "substantive" post, you know.

Ramble. Oh. Pot, kettle, black: is this your anthem?

I have tried to reach for the central issues in this thread, perhaps without success. Let me summarize. To the extent that actions have consequences, they have a moral quality to them, among others. I will draw conclusions about a person's character on the basis of their behavior, giving due consideration to my information set. Although I recognize that tact, discretion and diplomacy are virtues, I will not make blanket prohibitions (eg. "People should keep their yaps shut regarding...") against expressing certain specified opinions, particularly ones regarding public morality.

I acknowledge that others may disagree.
-----

One last thing: Notwithstanding the snarls, barbs and frustrations expressed above, I did find yosemitebabe's comments about fashion and apparel interesting and helpful. (And, admittedlly, her snippiness wasn't exactly unprovoked.)

[alice_in_wonderland]

Here's the dialogue, concerning Alice



I know that you didn't condemn me personally - I wouldn't actually be that concerned if you had. As I stated previously, I'm totally comfortable with how and where I spend my money, what amount I give to charity, what amount of my time I spend volunteering, and what amount of cash I use to treat myself sometimes. Your approval is not request or required. :)

My objection to your line of logic is that you're condemning (IMHO) people based on insufficient information. Assume that Jr. DOES have a $12,000 outfit - it doesn't strike me as that unbelievable - it's not going to be off the peg stuff, but without too much effort a person could get such an outfit. Perhaps mom attended the Hugo Boss or Gucci show and bought an outfit for Jr. off the model. It happens. It's expensive. Whatever.

So, assuming Jr. has the outfit - so what? If he has a $12,000 outfit, but donates $120,000 to charities - perhaps the charities that you listed - I think he and his mom are probably in the clear from a karmic point of view. Suggesting that owning such an outfit is immoral is ridiculous. Furthermore, suggesting that spending $12,000 on an outfit is wasteful is totally unfair - I can appreciate the fact that most people have a limited knowledge or interest in clothing - fine. However, there are those of us in the world (myself, mom of Jr. in the OP) to whom clothing is a luxury item - for some of us, the only luxury item we indulge in. Obviously Jr. is unimpressed with his clothing - but perhaps his mom enjoyed buying it for him. Perhaps she enjoys knowing that her son is dressed best. This is obviously not a priority for you, but why do you think you can condemn or judge her because it's a priority for her? Have you never spent money on something frivolous, just because you liked it? Did you buy the most simple basic auto available, with no AC and no radio and no cushy seats because it was the most practical, or did you splurge for some extra goodies?

Assuming you're not a Tibetan monk (and if you are, what the heck are you doing on the Dope?!?!) or a devout Buddhist, I'm guessing that you've purchased something that wasn't an absolute necessity in your life. That being the case, for you to dismiss a non-necessity clothing purchase, based on the dollar amount, which to you is excessive, but to Mrs. Rich clearly isn’t, is hypocritical and unfair.

[elbows]

I have very much enjoyed reading all of your thoughts and opinions. I can't say I agree with all that much that has been said here. But I enjoyed the conversation enormously.

I am surprised that no one has addressed what I believe is the core issue here.

It seems to me that no matter where you are on the curve there is always someone else to envy or begrudge their ease and wealth. Equally there are always others who look upon your commonplace spending as extravagant.

I was raised to believe you were doing right only when you were treating a rich man no different than a poor man.

Would this person have dared to stand in judgement of an individual who spent only $12 on his clothes? Certainly not. Would you have read an implied morality into that purchase? Of course not.

Seriously, would it raise your shackels if I saw you buying a $20 CD and I said to you, "I bought my whole outfit for that much!" Sure you'd be shocked ('cause I look so snappy), maybe even appalled, but you wouldn't get your back up in quite this fashion I don't think. Probably you'd have laughed and said, "Well, that's the difference between us, my friend."

When your friend said, "you don't know what it's like to manage this money", I think he was trying to say, it's no more pleasant to be prejudged for being wealthy than to be prejudged for being poor.

Personally what get's my panties in a twist is seeing people drive Hummers, I mean, really now, you need that much car to go to the mall?

The difference is that I know this is MY issue, and I try not to confuse it with my friends who enjoy ease.

It is folly to confuse finacial ease with freedom from difficulties. It's real easy to say, 'yeah, I wish I had those kinds of problems', I for one don't.

Y'know, until you've walked a mile in someone else's shoes and all.

That and being careful what you wish for seem to cover it for me.

That's my two cents,

...we now return you to your much more interesting conversation.....

[artemis]

Measure for Measure, this expression in your earlier post:

To the extent that actions have consequences, they have a moral quality to them, among others. I will draw conclusions about a person's character on the basis of their behavior, giving due consideration to my information set. Although I recognize that tact, discretion and diplomacy are virtues, I will not make blanket prohibitions (eg. "People should keep their yaps shut regarding...") against expressing certain specified opinions, particularly ones regarding public morality.

is fine as long as you recognise that there is no consensus about what is "moral" or "immoral" when it comes to personal spending. There never will be; different people will always value different things, and there will always be at least some variation in people's personal financial situations no matter how egalitarian a society we try to construct. And thus there never will be consensus about what levels of spending are "excessive" or what purchases are "frivolous". Certainly you are free to air your opinion, but you do need to recognise that other people will then feel equally free to openly criticize your own "wasteful and extravagant" spending, and will feel just as righteous about what they're doing as you feel.

So why bother? Instead of arguing that certain types of spending are "wasteful" and "extravagant", why not simply work toward achieving a more equitable societal distribution of wealth (both in our own society and worldwide)? That accomplishes far more in the long run than trying to convince Mr. Rich Friend and Miss Movie Starlet that their personal spending is "wasteful" ever will.

The Federal Income Tax used to be far more progressive than it now is. There's no reason why we can't add additional upper-level tax brackets to the current ones to restore that lost progressivity. Then Mr. Rich (now Mr. Not-Quite-So-Rich) will have to be more careful with his money, since he won't have so much of it. Maybe he'll still decide to buy that $12,000 suit. Maybe he'll decide to skip the suit and put the money toward yacht mantainance instead. Who cares? Either way he's spending less (since he can no longer afford BOTH a $12,000 suit AND the docking fees for his yacht), and more money is now available to fund government programs that aid the poorest people.

Nearly everyone agrees that Americans don't save enough of their personal income. The economist Paul Krugman (http://www.wws.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/) has argued that our society ought to consider implementing a consumption tax in place of our current income tax to combat that trend. Under such a scheme, if Yosemitebabe, Alice in Wonderland, and I all go out on a $3000 shopping spree, we'll all pay tax on our $3000 worth of consumption. No need to argue about whether Yosemitebabe's state-of-the-art Macintosh computer, Alice's custom-made designer outfit, or my own premium 10" telescope do or do not represent "wasteful spending"; they clearly DO represent $3000 worth of spending, and under the consumption tax will be taxed accordingly (assuming that we all actually decide to buy the $3000 items; perhaps the tax might convince one or more of us to settle for a less expensive substitution and put the rest of that money into the bank - in which case the tax has succeeded in its goal of increasing our personal savings rate).

The difference between those sorts of measures and what you and Evil Captor have been doing in this thread is that increased income taxes, luxury taxes, etc., represent a SOCIETAL decision about how much wealth and how much spending is "too much", not merely a personal one. No one's obligated to respect mere personal decisions; the same cannot be said for such a societal consensus. The judgments you and Evil Captor have made in this thread may make you feel all warm and righteous inside, but they alienate other people - including many people who might very well otherwise be allies in your goal of achieving a fairer society. Invoking higher principles of justice and fairness and telling me "we should change things so the wealth in our society is more evenly distributed" will have me working in favor of your proposals and contributing to your causes, even though it will cost me money; telling me "your last $3000 purchase was unnecessary and wasteful" will be more likely to elicit a punch in the nose from me than a contribution to your favorite charity.

[Evil Captor]

Assuming you're not a Tibetan monk (and if you are, what the heck are you doing on the Dope?!?!) or a devout Buddhist, I'm guessing that you've purchased something that wasn't an absolute necessity in your life. That being the case, for you to dismiss a non-necessity clothing purchase, based on the dollar amount, which to you is excessive, but to Mrs. Rich clearly isn’t, is hypocritical and unfair.

Well, here it is, stated explicitly: you've got to be Ghandi to have any standards wrt how people spend their money. It's a very comforting position for those who don't want others judging them, and for those who don't want to be bothered to think about such things and form standards ... but to the rest of us it really is extremely silly. Of COURSE you can look at ridiculously extravagant purchases and mock them. You can develop standards: social utility, overall expense (that is, nobody NEEDS a music CD, but as a music CD costs just ten bucks, by U.S. standards it is a minor purchase that won't have much effect on things one way or the other. It's not a year's income for ANYBODY.) I'm not saying this is my standard, it's just a standard that might be adopted. There are others, like Shaw's notion about productivity vs. consumption.

Now as to the insufficient information notion: this makes no sense as well. No reasonable person meets a person, hears a single fact about that person, then judges them for all time based on that fact even when they learn more abuot them. We change our viewpoints as new information comes along. Frex, if I learned that the popinjay in the OP spent $50,000 a year out of his $250,000 yearly income on worthwhile charities, I would revise my opinion of him upward. I would consider him a very socially responsible person with a flaw: a penchant for ridiculously expensive clothing. (BTW the numbers cited are just stuff I pulled out of the ether, so let's not get into hairsplitting about how much is enough, hmm?)

Frankly, I see this "You cant' judge a person until you have lived with them for several years and gotten to know everyting there is to know about them" idea to be very poor thinking. Once again, you're evading the problem by saying that there's this great golden horde of info we have to access before we can possibly put our brains to work. Nope. Doesn't work that way. We go with what's on the table. The way to counter lack of information is with more information, not with the notion that "We can't do any thinking at all until every last fact is in."

[yosemite]

Now as to the insufficient information notion: this makes no sense as well. No reasonable person meets a person, hears a single fact about that person, then judges them for all time based on that fact even when they learn more abuot them.
Yes, we all do that.

Some of us do it (one might say) a little too much.

Like if we were to find out that someone spent some money on porn, we might tell that person that they are a pervert and a degenerate. We could deem that any money they spend on porn is an extravagant waste, because porn has no redeeming value (because to us it doesn't, see?). Or, we could think that other people have different quirks or priorities than we do, and so perhaps we'd just decide that maybe we'd be better off keeping silent about someone else's personal spending habits, instead being a sanctimonious pain in the ass.

And Alice in Wonderland touched on this before—we could (well, Alice and I could, at least) get all sanctimonious about spending money to consume meat. We could give many reasons why anyone who spends money on meat, and supports the meat industry is worthy of scorn and contempt. Or, once again, we could keep silent and avoid being sanctimonious pains in the ass.

And in this instance, I think artemis has nailed it so much better: rather than trying to cherry pick which of someone else's spending is "wasteful," try to change the government policies or tax laws. Don't make it so personal. Get your nose out of the individual's personal business. People rarely appreciate it and it isn't winning them over to your side.

[Evil Captor]

But previously you said this:
The only mention of gold-plated swimming pools was from the Hearst Castle. So, I can only assume that you meant dumping the Hearst Castle, or perhaps some equally opulent place like it (to be built sometime in the future). And the million dollar paintings? We've discussed them here too. The names Van Gogh, I believe, came up. And you clearly state that it's okay to "dump" the million dollar paintings. You do realize, of course, that most million dollar paintings are by people like Van Gogh. Certainly I don't ever expect to produce a million dollar painting. So which artists' works would we be talking about, exactly? Not mine, that's for damned sure.[/quote]

I said I never expressed a wish. I didn't. I said that if getting rid of that stuff turned out to be how we could make everybody on the planet lead a minimally comfortable lifestyle, that would work for me, but that I didn't really think it would be how we'd wind up going about it. In other words, I said, "We might have to do X in oder to reach goal Y, and that would be acceptable, but I think options z and Q will be more likely to get results." That doesn't constitute EXPRESSING A WISH FOR X TO HAPPEN. I honestly do not think the bling-bling of the rich constitutes more than a very tiny part of the total economy. It's a very small drop in a very large bucket.

And here is artemis's response, which I completely agree with, and which you've repeatedly ignored: (cite) How long are you going to ignore that? Do you have any response to that? Or are you going to (presumably) continue to pretend that it was never written and keep on glossing past it?

Actually, I have addressed this issue directly twice now but I'm going to do it a third time because your general inability to follow my other arguments leads me to believe the issue might actually be one of in comprehension on your part, rather than a cheap debating stratagem.

Let us imagine that the millions who watch the Oscars could in some way be compelled to spend a small sum of money based on how much they enjoyed the costumes. It might amount to very little on an individual basis -- a penny or two per person, because I'm sure for most folks it's just a casual thing: "Look, we get to watch the people wear the fabulous clothes, and imagine what it would feel like to be wearing those clothes, and also to mock the ones who wear the silly clothes and drool over the ones who wear the sexy clothes. It's fun, it's worth a penny."

Spread over hundreds of millions of viewers, this constitutes a nice piece of coin. Value is being gotten for those clothes. The celebrities, in effect, are sharing the clothes with the audience, even if the audience members don't directly get to wear them. The clothes benefit a LOT of people, though most benefit very indirectly from them, there's still a benefit.

Now, when those same celebrities go out and buy a $5,000 pair of jeans and a $1,000 blouse to lounge around the house in, that's wasteful. Nobody benefits from it but the celebrity, and they get very little benefit from it, because I doubt there's all THAT much difference between wearing a $5,000 pair of jeans and a $30 pair of jeans, (though I have to admit I've never worn a $5,000 pair of jeans).
What's more, clothes degrade in value very quickly, for the most part.

I don't know how much more directly I can address this issue, in any event, I will respond further only if you can come up with some new idea.

[yosemite]

I said I never expressed a wish. I didn't. I said that if getting rid of that stuff turned out to be how we could make everybody on the planet lead a minimally comfortable lifestyle, that would work for me, but that I didn't really think it would be how we'd wind up going about it.
Look—you've made it clear that you thought that Hearst Castle was a "waste" (in that Mr. Hearst built it as his own home). You've stated that you'd be okay with dumping the Hearst Castles of the world, and the million dollar paintings. But yet you didn't mean it?

Let us imagine that the millions who watch the Oscars could in some way be compelled to spend a small sum of money based on how much they enjoyed the costumes. It might amount to very little on an individual basis -- a penny or two per person, because I'm sure for most folks it's just a casual thing: "Look, we get to watch the people wear the fabulous clothes, and imagine what it would feel like to be wearing those clothes, and also to mock the ones who wear the silly clothes and drool over the ones who wear the sexy clothes. It's fun, it's worth a penny."

And people couldn't still get that enjoyment from seeing someone wear an elegant, fancy design by Rachel Smith, recent Otis grad? At a fraction of the price spent for the high end designer outfit?

Now, when those same celebrities go out and buy a $5,000 pair of jeans and a $1,000 blouse to lounge around the house in, that's wasteful.
So are a multitude of items you buy. So what is your point?
Nobody benefits from it but the celebrity, and they get very little benefit from it, because I doubt there's all THAT much difference between wearing a $5,000 pair of jeans and a $30 pair of jeans, (though I have to admit I've never worn a $5,000 pair of jeans).
But you don't have any appreciation for elegant clothing design, or that particular designer's designs. And you don't know how much "benefit" these people get from their clothing, how they feel about it, and so forth. You know jack shit. Hell, I don't either. At least not about thousand-dollar clothing. But I'm not about to tell someone else that they shouldn't buy them, just because I wouldn't get anything out of wearing them.

Do you want to explain to Alice in Wonderland how she's not really benefitting from her outfits enough, even though, (presumably) there was something special about them that made her want to buy them in the first place? How is that your call to make? How do you know that she's not benefitting from them enough, or that the other people who have purchased these items haven't benefitted from them enough?

To some people, a cup is a cup. You drink out of them and you can buy them at WalMart for a dollar. To me, because I am into pottery and ceramics, a cup is much more, and I'd easily pay $50 or more for one that I really liked. So, even though you or someone else might not feel the same way about cups as I do, are you going to tell me that I couldn't possibly benefit enough from an expensive cup?

[artemis]

I honestly do not think the bling-bling of the rich constitutes more than a very tiny part of the total economy. It's a very small drop in a very large bucket.

Then why are you making such a big deal out of it? If you are genuinely concerned about the poor, shouldn't you be targeting your ire at things which are of actual importance?

Let us imagine that the millions who watch the Oscars could in some way be compelled to spend a small sum of money based on how much they enjoyed the costumes. It might amount to very little on an individual basis -- a penny or two per person, because I'm sure for most folks it's just a casual thing: "Look, we get to watch the people wear the fabulous clothes, and imagine what it would feel like to be wearing those clothes, and also to mock the ones who wear the silly clothes and drool over the ones who wear the sexy clothes. It's fun, it's worth a penny."

Spread over hundreds of millions of viewers, this constitutes a nice piece of coin. Value is being gotten for those clothes. The celebrities, in effect, are sharing the clothes with the audience, even if the audience members don't directly get to wear them. The clothes benefit a LOT of people, though most benefit very indirectly from them, there's still a benefit.

Very true - IF such a tax existed, those clothes would be providing social utility that would outweigh their cost. We could take that entertainment tax money and channel it toward improving the existence of the large number of desperately people on this planet. But of course such a tax doesn't exist. So, how is the ephemeral "benefit" the audience gets from watching rich people strut their stuff on Oscar night outweigh the fact that some of those outfits cost more than a Third-World family lives on for a year? What RIGHT do we Americans have to entertain ourselves via such lavish spectacles when the money could be used to keep people in Africa from starving to death? No more right, in the end, than Mr. Rich Guy has to buy his $12,000 suit, or the OP caphis has to buy a $12,000 car. Or alternatively, just as MUCH right as Mr. Rich Guy has to buy a $12,000 suit or caphis a $12,000 car.

You can't have it both ways. Societally-sanctioned "wastefulness" is just as evil as the individual "wastefulness" you keep condemning - and it generally has a far bigger overall effect because the dollar amounts involved are so much larger.

(BWT, I think the idea of a small "entertainment tax" to raise money for Third-World development would be an excellent idea, and a fine thing to work toward implementing. A nickel, or even a penny, taken out of every movie ticket and VHS/DVD sale would raise decidedly non-trivial amounts of cash for Third-World development projects - and it would be a far more effective way of aiding those people than yelling at the public "Spending $100 million dollars to make a movie is WASTEFUL! We should be donating that money to Oxfam instead!")

Now, when those same celebrities go out and buy a $5,000 pair of jeans and a $1,000 blouse to lounge around the house in, that's wasteful. Nobody benefits from it but the celebrity...[/QUOTE=Evil Captor]

Only because the way things are structured now, we don't insist on anyone else getting benefit from it (except from whatever benefits funded by the sales taxes paid, of course). But suppose that consumption tax I mentioned in my earlier post was implemented, and Mr. Rich Person's designer jeans purchase is generating additional tax revenue that society could use to aid the poorer and less fortunate? Then someone else besides Mr. Rich Person IS benefitting directly from that purchase. Is it OK now for Mr. Rich to buy his designer duds? If not, why not?

[QUOTE=Evil Captor]...and they get very little benefit from it, because I doubt there's all THAT much difference between wearing a $5,000 pair of jeans and a $30 pair of jeans, (though I have to admit I've never worn a $5,000 pair of jeans).

The only person who can say how much benefit is being derived from that purchase is the purchaser. Obviously Mr. Rich Person DOES think he's getting thousands of dollars of benefit by wearing those clothes, or he would have gone to the Gap instead and bought an ordinary pair of Levi 501s instead.

The same thing is true of expensive paintings - if there was no difference on some level between an original Van Gogh and a poster reproduction of a Van Gogh or an Impressionist-style painting by a lesser-known artist, the art collectors wouldn't spend $20 million dollars on a Van Gogh painting.

I think the problem isn't that there is no benefit being derived - it's that the benefits being derived are not benefits you personally value (such as excellent tailoring to make the clothes fit you perfectly instead of "just well enough") or personally approve of (being able to show the world via your clothing purchases that you're a Person of Great Importance).

What's more, clothes degrade in value very quickly, for the most part.

Only in the same way that the "value" of a brand-new car degrades the moment you drive it off the lot and it becomes an "almost -new" car. The vehicle still works perfectly well, but the owner has just taken a huge depreciation hit because technically the car isn't "new" any more. The same is true of designer clothes - they become less valuable on the resale market as soon as they're worn, but in practical terms they're still quite functional, and they generally wear better and outlast off-the-rack clothing purchased because they're better-constructed and made with better-quality materials.

Telescopes, on the other hand, don't degrade at all. In fact, a really good one with an excellent mirror may actually appreciate in value. The $3000 scope I recently purchased will still be perfectly usable (barring unfortunate accidents, of course) 100 years from now, and it will almost certainly be worth more (in real dollars adjusted for inflation) than it is now. So is my $3000 telescope purchase less "wasteful" than Alice in Wonderland's $3000 clothes purchase, just because my scope won't wear out while her clothes will?

(Bear in mind we both could have spent considerably less money and purchased a "less than custom" alternative. Alice could have bought her clothes at the mall or even a thrift store, and I could have purchased a brand-new mass-produced telescope of a similar design for about $700, or purchased a used mass-produced scope for even less.)

Neither of us, after all, NEEDS those expensive items to survive; we just want them. But then, that's true of most of the purchases everyone in the First World makes. People don't need CDs, books, a cup of espresso, or an evening out at the movies, either. When you try to criticize other people's purchases using the justification that they're "wasteful" and "unneeded", you fall down a very slippery slope indeed.

[Measure for Measure]

Measure for Measure, this expression in your earlier post:
So why bother? Instead of arguing that certain types of spending are "wasteful" and "extravagant", why not simply work toward achieving a more equitable societal distribution of wealth (both in our own society and worldwide)? That accomplishes far more in the long run than trying to convince Mr. Rich Friend and Miss Movie Starlet that their personal spending is "wasteful" ever will.I mostly agree with this, actually.

The "damage" -if you want to call it that- from buying a $12,000 male outfit is rather diffuse, after all. I am actually less outraged by that particular act than by the suggestion that such behavior should be unilaterally off-limits to moral scrutiny. While pushing this POV, I must concede that I probably was somewhat carried away in this thread.

More generally, I usually tend to prefer victories in the policy front: strategically, it often makes sense to cede the pully pulpit to one's ideological adversaries.

As an aside, consumption taxes tend to be regressive, although progressive variants can be imagined.

Alice
------- So, assuming Jr. has the outfit - so what? If he has a $12,000 outfit, but donates $120,000 to charities... I think he and his mom are probably in the clear from a karmic point of view.

I would say that a 10:1 charity/luxury ratio (including all luxuries, perhaps defined within one's country using average consumption data) would be most commendable. To be a stickler, I would hope that such a person would also invest some effort into charity selection, following the examples of Gates, Soros and others.

[alice_in_wonderland]

MforM and Evil Captor, I'm curious...

So, if I admit having spent $5,000 on art, does that make me a better or worse person than if the $5,000 is on clothing? Just curious, you understand.

And while were discussing my spending habits, what about if I mention as a conservationist measure I donated my car to charity and now I walk and take transit. Clearly, I have no automobile expenses - does that mean I get to spend that $$ on luxury items, or do you nosey parkers have a better use for that money?

Furthermore, lets talk about meat. yosemitebabe[/]b seems reluctant to go there, but I will. How can you justify eating meat when there are many other viable sources of protein in the world? Don't you realize that the production of one cow puts a much greater strain on the environment than the production of alternative food sources? Do you realize that the strain limits the amount of foodstuffs available to 3rd world countries?

So - assuming you've eaten a burger in your life, and assuming you plan on eating another one, really where do you get off criticizing MY spending? Or, assuming you drive a car or worse yet, an SUV - where's your logic? Really. I want to hear a justification for your position. Why should I [b]NOT consider you immoral and unethical when you eat meat products when others starve? When you drive an auto, poluting the environment. Pony up fellas. What's your defense?

[Measure for Measure]

*sigh*

First Alice asks, "So, if I admit having spent $5,000 on art, does that make me a better or worse person than if the $5,000 is on clothing? Just curious, you understand."

This implies she wants my opinion.

Then she asks, "So - assuming you've eaten a burger in your life, and assuming you plan on eating another one, really where do you get off criticizing MY spending?"

Um, I might criticize your spending if you asked me to comment on it. Which you just did in the very same post.

But, actually (as it happens) I have not criticized Alice's spending, despite badgering. I have only pointed out that one's consumption has a moral dimension and that moral discourse should not be prohibited (subject to caveats stated earlier). This is really a very very minimalist position, but it seems to deeply upset some folks in this thread.

I suppose another point might be amplified: people size each other up all the time. Smart people make their judgments provisional when the quality of their information is weaker. I would characterize my stance as rather ho-hum.
---------
As an aside, the choice between beef and soybeans is also a moral one. I would be willing to discuss this - in another thread. I commend Alice to the extent that she gives serious thought to resource allocation and the responsibilities in the various spheres of her life. If she is interested in leaving a smaller footprint on the planet, a good guide to effective (as opposed to feel-good) environmental choices is here (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/060980281X/qid=1081720707/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1_xs_stripbooks_i1_xgl14/102-9725472-6581756?v=glance&s=books).

Again, if somebody asked, "Is an omnivorous diet immoral?", I would judge that to be a valid question.
-----

Finally, when you have to repeat the same point 2 or 4 times and your previous arguments go unaddressed, perhaps it's time to find another playground. So I confess that I am in the midst of some personal thread retirement planning.

[Evil Captor]

MforM and Evil Captor, I'm curious...

So, if I admit having spent $5,000 on art, does that make me a better or worse person than if the $5,000 is on clothing? Just curious, you understand.

$5,000 spent on art as investment in hopes of reselling it for $7,500 in a year or is just another way of making capital grow. $5,000 spent on a painting because you love it and want to see it hanging in your home with no intent to resell ever is pretty much the same as a $5,000 casual wear suit. Seems a bit extravagant. Buy a good quality reproduction, wear some nice clothes that don't cost so much -- you'd be surprised how easy it is to put together casual wear that looks good and so forth for just a couple of hundred dollars -- or even much less! if you buy carefully. My wife has made some KILLINGS on Ebay, I tell ya!

And while were discussing my spending habits, what about if I mention as a conservationist measure I donated my car to charity and now I walk and take transit. Clearly, I have no automobile expenses - does that mean I get to spend that $$ on luxury items, or do you nosey parkers have a better use for that money?

Is this kinda like Calvin Trillin's wife's idea that money not spent because an item was bought on sale is found money? Having no auto expenses is a good thing in and of itself -- I know a lot of people who would GLADLY give up their commute to and from work if they could find a way to do it that didn't double or treble their commuting time.

Furthermore, lets talk about meat. [b]yosemitebabe[/]b seems reluctant to go there, but I will. How can you justify eating meat when there are many other viable sources of protein in the world? Don't you realize that the production of one cow puts a much greater strain on the environment than the production of alternative food sources? Do you realize that the strain limits the amount of foodstuffs available to 3rd world countries?

Typically, the problem with 3rd world countries is that the people in charge of their governments would turn the place into a desert and everyone living in it into slaves if it meant they could keep sending their kids to Swiss finishing schools and living in mansions, etc. The hamburger thing is a non-starter in that respect. We'll have to find another solution.

So - assuming you've eaten a burger in your life, and assuming you plan on eating another one, really where do you get off criticizing MY spending?

As I keep saying, I don't have to be Gandhi to criticize your spending. Everyone except starving Third World kids is in a position to criticize and be criticized by others, so for criticism to exist at all, you have to ask: is this criticism reasonable? Does it make sense? Not "Does this person have any right to criticize me?"

It's not that I think I'm a better person than you, it's that I think my ideas are pretty much on target here.

I much prefer chicken over burger, BTW.

[Evil Captor]

Then why are you making such a big deal out of it? If you are genuinely concerned about the poor, shouldn't you be targeting your ire at things which are of actual importance?

Can and do. But why ignore the rich? Shouldn't they benefit from my intellectual largesse as well?

Very true - IF such a tax existed, those clothes would be providing social utility that would outweigh their cost. We could take that entertainment tax money and channel it toward improving the existence of the large number of desperately people on this planet. But of course such a tax doesn't exist. So, how is the ephemeral "benefit" the audience gets from watching rich people strut their stuff on Oscar night outweigh the fact that some of those outfits cost more than a Third-World family lives on for a year? What RIGHT do we Americans have to entertain ourselves via such lavish spectacles when the money could be used to keep people in Africa from starving to death? No more right, in the end, than Mr. Rich Guy has to buy his $12,000 suit, or the OP caphis has to buy a $12,000 car. Or alternatively, just as MUCH right as Mr. Rich Guy has to buy a $12,000 suit or caphis a $12,000 car.

You missed the whole point of my analogy. Whether or not the tax exists, the VALUE is there -- value for millions of people. A $12,000 casual suit has very limited value -- probably only for the owner.

I don't remember any discussion of rights here. Sounds like a hijack, or an attempt to segue out of a losing argument.

You can't have it both ways. Societally-sanctioned "wastefulness" is just as evil as the individual "wastefulness" you keep condemning - and it generally has a far bigger overall effect because the dollar amounts involved are so much larger.

Now you're talking about the utility of various kinds of social spending. Once again, off the trail of relative value.

(BWT, I think the idea of a small "entertainment tax" to raise money for Third-World development would be an excellent idea, and a fine thing to work toward implementing. A nickel, or even a penny, taken out of every movie ticket and VHS/DVD sale would raise decidedly non-trivial amounts of cash for Third-World development projects - and it would be a far more effective way of aiding those people than yelling at the public "Spending $100 million dollars to make a movie is WASTEFUL! We should be donating that money to Oxfam instead!")

I agree. But without addressing issues such as kleptocracies and Third World attitudes about kids, it would be money wasted. We've tossed a lot of money into the Third World already with very little result.

The only person who can say how much benefit is being derived from that purchase is the purchaser. Obviously Mr. Rich Person DOES think he's getting thousands of dollars of benefit by wearing those clothes, or he would have gone to the Gap instead and bought an ordinary pair of Levi 501s instead.

Obviously, but why do I have to agree with him? Especially when I don't.

The same thing is true of expensive paintings - if there was no difference on some level between an original Van Gogh and a poster reproduction of a Van Gogh or an Impressionist-style painting by a lesser-known artist, the art collectors wouldn't spend $20 million dollars on a Van Gogh painting.

The only thing that makes the original "worth" $20 milliion is the hope that it can be resold for $21 million. Frex, I understand that some museums actually hang very high quality reproductions in their public galleries now, to avoid theft and environmental damage to the original. Obviously, very little difference between looking at the reproduction and the original, as an aesthetic experience.

I think the problem isn't that there is no benefit being derived - it's that the benefits being derived are not benefits you personally value (such as excellent tailoring to make the clothes fit you perfectly instead of "just well enough") or personally approve of (being able to show the world via your clothing purchases that you're a Person of Great Importance).

The problem is that I have always worn cheap clothes and have found them quite comfortable and durable, and cannot conceive of tailoring and materials being good enough to make a difference between a $50 outfit and a $12,000 outfit. Perhaps I am just ignorant. But I dont' really think so. There might conceivably be a $500 casual wear outfit that's worth every penny, but ... $12,000? My eyebrows remain raised.

Neither of us, after all, NEEDS those expensive items to survive; we just want them. But then, that's true of most of the purchases everyone in the First World makes. People don't need CDs, books, a cup of espresso, or an evening out at the movies, either. When you try to criticize other people's purchases using the justification that they're "wasteful" and "unneeded", you fall down a very slippery slope indeed.

The issue of widespread poverty is not one that will be solved by getting rid of bling bling. This does not mean that we can't look at ludicrous spending and laugh at it.

[Evil Captor]

Measure for MeasureSo why bother? Instead of arguing that certain types of spending are "wasteful" and "extravagant", why not simply work toward achieving a more equitable societal distribution of wealth (both in our own society and worldwide)? That accomplishes far more in the long run than trying to convince Mr. Rich Friend and Miss Movie Starlet that their personal spending is "wasteful" ever will.

Ultimately, I do it out of respect for the truth. If something is wasteful and extravagant, it may not be all that useful to say it is, but one ought to be able to say it. If I were to go through the streets of Calcutta eating one bite out of a hamburger for every step I take and then incinerate that hamburger to ashes under the eyes of starving Indians lying in the street with barely the strength to lift their eyebrows, I think people should be able to say, "He certainly is wasteful and extravagant" about me. Probably they will say other things as well.

I never proposed that criticizing the lifestyles of the rich and famous will solve economic inequity, but getting people thinking about them might just get them on the track that leads to the more productive sort of thinking you cite in the rest of your thread, hmmm?

[Evil Captor]

Like if we were to find out that someone spent some money on porn, we might tell that person that they are a pervert and a degenerate. We could deem that any money they spend on porn is an extravagant waste, because porn has no redeeming value (because to us it doesn't, see?). Or, we could think that other people have different quirks or priorities than we do, and so perhaps we'd just decide that maybe we'd be better off keeping silent about someone else's personal spending habits, instead being a sanctimonious pain in the ass.

Actually, this is a pretty good point. It should be noted that I have an adult website, which I presume is why Yosemitebabe brought it up. Now, if you knew nothing else about me, you'd assume that it was what I call a "teen sex pussy" site -- one of those annoying sites that clogs your browser with obscene popups whenever you visit it, and whose main content is pornographic photos and videos. You'd also assume that there would be very little content available for guests, just a tour to get you hooked.

You'd be wrong on all counts. No popups on my site. The guest portion consists primarily of essays and movie and hentai reviews (mostly of maisntream movies -- my most recent review was of "Sign of the Cross") and it's huge. There are R-rated images from the movies and some R-rated photos, but no XXX stuff on the guest portion. The member portion consists mainly of fiction and articles. It has XXX illustrations where appropriate. It's very different from your average "porn site" and doesn't make as much money, but I'm comfortable with it and it does bring in some money.

When people hear I have an adult site, they assume it's a teen sex pussy site and I'm OK with that, because it's a reasonable assumption given just that nformation -- most adult sites are teen sexy pussy sites. You'd have to learn more about my site, probably by visiting it to realize how different it is from the others. If you did so and declared it was no different from a teen sex pussy I'd think you were an idiot, but that's about it.

When I hear that a rich person has spent $12,000 on a casual suit and that's all I know abut them, I make certain assumptions. That's natural. If I get to know them and learn they actually are doing great work for the poor, or are enablign great advances in science and technology, I'll reform my opinion of them, just as a reasonable visitor to my site would reform their opinion of my site. If I stick to my original response no matter what, I'm an idiot. But I don't blame myself for my original opinion, just as I don't blame people for raising their eyebrows at an adultl site. People form opinions based on what's on the table -- what else can they do?

[yosemite]

Actually, this is a pretty good point. It should be noted that I have an adult website, which I presume is why Yosemitebabe brought it up.

....
You'd be wrong on all counts. No popups on my site. The guest portion consists primarily of essays and movie and hentai reviews (mostly of maisntream movies -- my most recent review was of "Sign of the Cross") and it's huge. There are R-rated images from the movies and some R-rated photos, but no XXX stuff on the guest portion. The member portion consists mainly of fiction and articles. It has XXX illustrations where appropriate. It's very different from your average "porn site" and doesn't make as much money, but I'm comfortable with it and it does bring in some money.
You are so frickin' deluded, it's not even funny.

You think I don't know what's on your site?

Not that I've uttered a criticism of it, and not that I have anything against it, per se. But if you think you can "rationalize" some of the stuff you've got on that site away by saying that it's not a "teen pussy site," then you're seriously deluded.

Some people, a lot of people, would have a full knowledge of what's on your site, and they'd happily and eagerly condmen it for what it is. They'd feel totally righteous in doing so. They'd KNOW that it was OBVIOUS that your site had content that was pure, unadulterated, USELESS. With no social utility. Not that I'm saying that, mind, because for one thing, I don't care, and for another thing, I was raised better than to assume that everything I don't get or don't agree with (or offends me, as the case may be) is useless to everyone. But you must realize that many, many people would.

But that's okay with you? It must be, because that's precisely what you do with these other people. And you rationalize it away and think that it's so obvious to everyone. When it's not. But you're so blinded you won't see that.

You filter everything through your Evil Captor Bullshit-filter, and assume that it's equally obvious to everyone else why you are righteous and right and your judgments. And that's where you are treading into dangerous hypocritical ground. And you are so unbelievably, pathetically deluded about how people might view your site, (and also your various and sundry spending habits, eating habits, etc.) that it's pretty hilarious.
The problem is that I have always worn cheap clothes and have found them quite comfortable and durable, and cannot conceive of tailoring and materials being good enough to make a difference between a $50 outfit and a $12,000 outfit.
Bolding mine. The crux of it. YOU cannot conceive of it, therefore, no one else should justifiably either.

And YOU cannot concieve that anyone would look at the entirety of your site and deem it useless (and in some cases, even offensive or harmful), so therefore, poof! It's settled and you should be in the clear? Wrong.

Perhaps I am just ignorant. But I dont' really think so.
Yeah, perhaps you're just ignorant. Not that I am defending the $12,000 suit, but then again, I might just be ignorant, so I'll keep my yap shut. Besides, perhaps it's none of my business.
$5,000 spent on a painting because you love it and want to see it hanging in your home with no intent to resell ever is pretty much the same as a $5,000 casual wear suit. Seems a bit extravagant.
That's simply not your call to make.

Buying a $5000 painting may do many things. It may keep that artist in ramen for the year, for one thing. It may give that buyer so much enjoyment, and may give anyone who visits their house so much enjoyment (and later, to the museum that they donate the painting to) that it is several times over worth it. But you judge it as "extravagant" anyway? You know JACK SHIT.

During some of the art sales/shows I participated in, I'd have a lot of sales and I was pretty pleased with my earnings. And I needed the money for a lot of stuff, practical, "socially useful" stuff. But I'd end up pissing sometimes as much as half of my recent earnings on fellow artists' stuff. Why? Because for one thing, I loved their work and I wanted to own it. Not something similar but cheaper, but that specific work. For another thing, as an artist, I knew how important it was to buy artists' work—to support them with cold hard cash. And so that's what I did with my money, even though I really should have spent it far more "usefully" and in a far more "justified" way.

But that apparently is totally beyond your comprehension, so in your mind, it's "extravagant," right? Once again, the world as seen through the Evil Captor Bullshit-filter.

Buy a good quality reproduction, wear some nice clothes that don't cost so much -- you'd be surprised how easy it is to put together casual wear that looks good and so forth for just a couple of hundred dollars -- or even much less!
But not everyone WANTS TO DO THAT. Maybe they'd rather spend their money in a way that supports fine artists and fine tailors. Maybe they see value in supporting artists. Maybe they see the difference in a finely cut, finely tailored outfit that will last them a long time, is made out of fine fabric, and fits them to a tee.

Maybe they'd find that more socially useful to spend money on some artists work and on fine well-designed garments, than to go looking for bargains on eBay and spending time, energy and money on a (in their view) socially USELESS and in some cases, HARMFUL "adult" site.

Hey, it's their money. They get to decide what is the more righteous or useful way to spend it. Not you.
It's not that I think I'm a better person than you, it's that I think my ideas are pretty much on target here.

And this, coming from the (in some people's minds, NOT MINE, I emphasize) the pornographer who spends time and energy and MONEY producing a socially useless and even harmful pornography site. One shouldn't throw stones in glass houses.

[yosemite]

I think this needs to be highlighted specifically: It has XXX illustrations where appropriate.
"Where appropriate"? That's rich. To many people, "XXX" illustrations are NEVER APPROPRIATE. It's completely OBVIOUS to them that XXX is never appropriate.

That's all some people would have to see. That, and the fact that you have images and content that are classified as "bondage." That would be enough, would always be enough, no matter what else you had on the site, no matter how you explained that it wasn't a "teen pussy site," for many people to feel 100% totally righeous in condemning the content you've put on that site, and condemning you as well.

[alice_in_wonderland]

<sigh>

Well yosemetebabe, I give up. Not because I've lost the arguement - becasue the arguement is not worth having.

What's the point in discussing moral behaviour with people who refuse to point their condescending finger at themselves? None - that's what. How easy it is to criticize the habits of others without taking a stern look at your own habits.

I'm sure these folks think that their behaviour is beyond reproach - obviously it's not, but they feel it is. Any further discussion with these two would be a waste of bandwidth.

[Evil Captor]

I think this needs to be highlighted specifically:
"Where appropriate"? That's rich. To many people, "XXX" illustrations are NEVER APPROPRIATE. It's completely OBVIOUS to them that XXX is never appropriate.

That's all some people would have to see. That, and the fact that you have images and content that are classified as "bondage." That would be enough, would always be enough, no matter what else you had on the site, no matter how you explained that it wasn't a "teen pussy site," for many people to feel 100% totally righeous in condemning the content you've put on that site, and condemning you as well.

Ah. This would explain why my offers to the Southern Baptist Conference to host a "Wifely Submission" website for them never get any responses.

[yosemite]

<sigh>
What's the point in discussing moral behaviour with people who refuse to point their condescending finger at themselves? None - that's what. How easy it is to criticize the habits of others without taking a stern look at your own habits.


Very true.

I am sure many people—including many women and femnist groups—would find it highly amusing to know that someone that could be classified as a bondage pornographer is giving sanctimonious morality lectures here! ;)

Pretty funny, actually.

[Evil Captor]

Very true.

I am sure many people—including many women and femnist groups—would find it highly amusing to know that someone that could be classified as a bondage pornographer is giving sanctimonious morality lectures here! ;)

Pretty funny, actually.

Ah, yes ... anyone who's interested in sex can't have any opinions worth knowing.

Where is that truckload o'rolleyes???

[yosemite]

Ah, yes ... anyone who's interested in sex can't have any opinions worth knowing.

Where is that truckload o'rolleyes???
Ah, deluded once again . . . So, bondage porn is just "sex," is it? Sure it is. Just like $12,000 clothes are just "clothes." And you know what else? They are both people's private choices, and ultimately, no one else's business. It's no one's business whether you spend money and energy producing bondage porn (or are a bondage pornographer), and no one's business whether you have expensive clothes. Or not. Depending on who you are, I guess.

You seriously want to pretend that many people (not just uptight fundies) might find some delicious irony in hearing sanctimonious and condescending morality sermons from the pornographer who (in some people's views, like feminists) makes money off the images of women being demeaned and humiliated?

Funny. Very funny.

[Liberal]

I must defend Yosemitebabe here. Morality and immorality do not come from penises and vaginas, but from hearts. The bondage pornographer with a loving heart pleases God infinitely more than the chaste church deacon with a heart full of intolerance and hate.

[alice_in_wonderland]

Where is that truckload o'rolleyes???

I believe they were all used up on you, actually. :D