The NY Times today had an interesting article about the suffering of the rich. It seems that with reduced bonuses, and pay cuts down to only a few million a year, they have to sell the jewelry they never wear to support their personal trainers. Even worse:
I’m sure you are as heartbroken as I am. I suppose if you get a trophy wife by having over $10 million you lose the trophy wife if your worth sinks below $10M. (Why this is a bad thing is beyond me.) Some of them seem to be in debt.
None of these people are in any danger of being foreclosed, or I would feel sorry for them. Just shows that every economic crisis does have a silver lining.
Wow, that’s really heartwrenching. :rolleyes: I may be laughing on the outside, but on the inside, I’m laughing a whole lot louder, with snorting and guffaws.
The inhumanity! Maybe we should hold a benefit for the ultra-rich - and buy them a clue.
Yes, shame on them for not settling with mindless dronery, and instead pushing the buck, providing new jobs for thousands, and working hard to do it.
Instead of rewarding a “welfare system” that makes money for all parties, creates useful products, and and produces technological advances for the future of our race, we should think more highly of the people who think that you should get paid equally whether you sit on your ass or do something useful with your life.
I believe something like more than 3 billion people live on less than $2 a day. Almost every American is rich beyond belief in comparison to many people in the world. Why make fun of only a select portion of the rich? Why is OK to make fun of a guy that is going to lose his wife because he cannot afford the fancy clothes and vacations anymore, but not the guy working two jobs who is about to lose his house to foreclosure?
I wonder where you’re getting the idea that any of the people quoted in this article are actually entrepreneurs who “provide new jobs for thousands”. I’m not seeing it myself. Most of them just sound like employees to me (albeit highly paid ones). Or stay-at-home spouses.
Well…I’m probably more sympathetic than you are, to be sure. I can relate after all…and I can put it in perspective more having been there and done that so to speak.
Well, you are making some possibly unfounded assumptions. To put it in perspective, if you lost something like 60% of your assets (which btw doesn’t mean MONEY…which you seem to think it does based on what you are saying in the OP anyway), then you may sing a different toon, no matter how much money you have. You may THINK that if you had $20 million and you went to a mere $8 million in assets you’d still be sitting pretty…but people tend to spend up to their income even at high levels and tend to not adjust well when their lifestyle is altered so severely…which generally leads to a lot of stress on the family and also tends to make people go from being rich to poor rather quickly unless their fortunes change.
Perhaps you have a completely stable relationship also…but not everyone does. One doesn’t need a ‘trophy wife’ to have marriages stressed to the breaking point with those kinds of losses.
Well…yeah. Do you suppose that if you are ‘rich’ and in debt up to your eyeballs that it’s somehow better? Eventually something has to give…and if your fortunes don’t change what generally gives is that just like working folks you lose your house, car and perhaps family to. I know…no sympathy from you for those rich bastards. Myself, I can relate…just like I can relate to some working class guy who’s company laid him off or went belly up and spilled him without a job. Misery is all relative IMHO…and ‘rich’ people can be miserable to when bad shit happens to em.
None of them? I’d say that if you went from $20 million in assets to $8 million and are taking on debt to try and maintain your old standard of living you are probably headed for bankruptcy…which means foreclosure and all that jazz. You seem to be under the false impression that if you are rich you are guaranteed to stay rich for ever…or that $20 million in assets makes one rich. Such is sadly (or not I suppose in your mind) not always the case.
What might that be, besides some misplaced shadenfraud?
I don’t think the schadenfraude is misplaced at all. xtisme, I don’t know your story, and can’t think of any reason to have anything in particular against you, but the cumulative effect of so many sniffy “they shouldn’t have borrowed money they couldn’t pay back” type comments floating around referring to those on the receiving end of the sub-prime mortgage crisis has had the effect on me of provoking severe gloating laughter at the assholes like poor mister $20m to $8m.
Didn’t this fuckhead, with all the resources in the world - money, education, information, connections - think to plan ahead? I’ll laugh even harder if he winds up on the street for real. Give him some much-needed perspective, it will. Not that that will ever happen; he’ll just be reduced to an “ordinary” house and a “normal” car, and flying coach.
How the heck is it not better? All else being equal, I’d rather be rich and in debt than non-rich and in a proportionally similar amount of debt. The food’s still better, the clothes are still better, the house is still nicer, the area you live in is almost certainly safer and nicer, your car is undoubtedly newer and more reliable, and you have far more options for cutting costs without having to reduce necessities.
I presume he is an asshole because he had a net worth of $20m? AFAICT, all he has done thus far is express his fears of losing his wife to a divorce lawyer, and admit to said lawyer that his lavish net worth is significantly less lavish now.
Who says he didn’t plan ahead? Chances are he’s not going to wind up homeless, the vast vast majority of people, even if they were never uber-rich, don’t wind up homeless. The worst that is going to happen is that he loses his wife and house, but I suppose he really shouldn’t worry about that, because he’ll still be able to move into a nice apartment after selling the really nice house he has now.
Thing is, we can say the exact same thing about most of us. Financial ruin isn’t about being out on the street and scrounging for food in dumpsters, it’s winding up with a crappier house, crappier car, and fewer luxuries than your friends.
Well, some of them fight with their boards or compensation committees because they have “only” an $80,000 company car rather than a $120,000 company car. This argument, when they earn salaries where the extra $40K is pocket change. I had to deal with such during my working career, and one’s heart just bleeds.
The hypocrisy is the very rich who belittle the poor for living on welfare, when they themselves don’t plan ahead. This poor soul whose assets are reduced from $20 million to $8 million, does he berate those on welfare, calling them irresponsible, and blame them for being poor (like it’s their fault)? does he scream about how high his taxes are, and get angry because some of those taxes go to help the lower-economic strata? If so, I hope he loses the rest.
Cry for the rich? How about the editor of the New York Times?
No one is arguing for a wave of sympathy or support for the rich. This is merely an inconsequential puff-piece from the Times on par with their voyeuristic expositions of, “What will $10 M get you in real estate.”
People like observing rich people. We like seeing inside of the Gulfstreams they fly around in when things are going well and hearing about downgrading to the Beech jet when things are not going well. We like to see that type of dogs they buy, the clothes they wear, and whom gets married to whom. This is an article in line with the Time’s titilating but unimportant coverage of, “things that rich people care about.”
The job description of an executive is to maximize shareholder value, period. It isn’t to create jobs, if that’s what you were implying. Sometimes they may be forced to create new jobs in order to gain strategic advantage. But once the advantage is secured, or when times are flat or lean, CEO’s are constantly trying to find ways to reduce salaries, undermine benefits, and eliminate positions by automation or offshoring.
It’s more accurate to say that Fortune 500 executives are tasked with destroying or devaluing jobs rather than creating them.
While in an MBA program, I spent an awful lot of time learning about and hearing about what Fortune 500 execs do. The majority of the people in the program had plans/dreams/hallucinations of becoming one someday.
As Cosmic Relief has already pointed out, they are supposed to maximize shareholder value. If the way to do that involves creation of jobs, then they’ll create jobs. Typically, it doesn’t involve job creation and is mainly about maximizing the amount they get to stuff in their own pockets.
If we are talking about CEO’s, you have a board of directors that is supposed to oversee what goes on. Problem is that the big CEO’s all sit on each other’s board of directors and help each other rather than oversee each other. This is how you end up with a CEO collecting a fat bonus when the company has been downsized, people have been fired, and the value of stock share has gone down. “Imagine how bad it would have been without his fine leadership to steer us through the crisis!” is the justification his butt-buddies on the board will offer. They’ll want him to do the same for them.
Keep that strawman; you might have to burn it for heat next winter.
I’m not gloating about any of this, but it does provide a different perspective, which is always interesting. Starting with different expectations, you have very different emotional reactions to a given situation. I’d gladly change places with the guy who’s been reduced to only $8 million in assets; no matter how that works out, he’ll almost certainly end up with a lot more wealth than I’m ever likely to have.
I understand that some of these folks are in serious financial trouble, but that means something different for them than it would for somebody at my level. None of them are going to have to go through this sequence of thoughts: “Out of food. Have no money to buy food; just as well, since I’ve got no money to put gas in the car to go get food. . . . and how the hell am I going to make the rent, even if I let the power get turned off?”
In a roundabout way, I can find some sympathy for these people (I’m all sympathetic like that). To a rug-maker in India, my life must look fantabulously opulent because I can afford a 3-bedroom house and a car, both with working air conditioning. He would probably think I could have my income cut by 2/3 and still be rich… all I have to do is lose the car, walk to work, wear used clothes, live in a 1-bedroom house, and cancel luxuries like air conditioning, internet service, and cell phones. Easy enough, right?
However, if I do this, fairly soon I’ll start looking and smelling like a homeless person, my health may degrade, I won’t be able to maintain communications except while in the office. This doesn’t mean I’m worthless as a human being anymore, but it does mean I’m no longer up to the professional image or capabilities that my line of work demands. This will make it essentially impossible for me to get a job as an executive. And let’s face it, who’s going to hire an ex- CEO to flip burgers? Who’s going to give me a CEO position if I show up to the interview in a downsized Buick and a secondhand suit?* It can be a long way to fall and a short time to get there, and maintaining appearances is more important at that level.
Take the above as a strong dose of diabolic advocacy… I do believe all these executives make so much money that even moderate saving and planning could smooth out these bumps, and probably half of them don’t do it. I’m just saying everybody has problems, and sometimes by necessity the rich have more expensive problems.
It is, however, very well likely that personal displays of hyper-frugality may well become the new business-cult trend in the coming years, and executives may well strive to outdo one another by being publicly seen using secondhand premium golf clubs, hand-me-down Armani suits, etc.
