[QUOTE=Two and a Half Inches of Fun]
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?
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I’m confused. Are you saying we should equate the guy having trouble making enough to make sure his family isn’t homeless with the guy having trouble making enough to make sure his wife has $1500 haircuts?
[QUOTE=Voyager]
I’m confused. Are you saying we should equate the guy having trouble making enough to make sure his family isn’t homeless with the guy having trouble making enough to make sure his wife has $1500 haircuts?
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I think the point is that from the perspective of a poor person in the third world, a working class guy in the U.S. is in fat city.
Probably there are a lot of people who would be ecstatic to give up everything they own in return for a U.S. birth certificate.
Wow, that’s pretty funny. In a sad way, but still funny.
Not to get even further off-topic, but a friend of a friend experienced some love woes recently. She’s been cheating on her husband for decades now. AFAIK, he works his butt off, but she’s independantly wealthy. Once per year, she meets her lover in Australia for a few weeks, then they go to Thailand for a while to have hot monkey sex. This is all under the guise of doing charity work. She was convinced that someday they’d be together, once he got rid of his wife.
Not long ago, she found out that he was not, as it turns out, being faithful to her. He has yet another lover. She was devastated by that news. She wonders how he could betray her like that.
That story should amuse me, but somehow it just makes me sad.
[QUOTE=Bridget Burke]
Oh, but wifie will get her revenge if kicked to the curb–wth the help of a good divorce lawyer. Although she may have to learn frugality, getting by on half of $8 million.
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[QUOTE=threemae]
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.”
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This was in the Style section, a part of the Times not in any danger of winning a Pulitzer Prize. I put this in the Pit and not GD for a reason, you know. I’d suspect that the reporter on this story, who is not making anywhere near $20 million a year, did enjoy reporting it to a certain extent.
There have been many letters objecting to the wealth porn found in the Times quite often, like photos of $20K dresses next to articles on world hunger.
In this same issue, there was an article from a reporter about her efforts and difficulties in getting out of $15K or so of credit card debt - which she took full responsibility for. She doesn’t have the option of selling a ring she never wears to do that.
[QUOTE=tdn]
What I find troubling is that many of these guys fear losing their wives over this loss of income. While a huge loss can put a strain on a family, either these guys have married extremely shallow and materialistic women, or think that they have. Especially sad is the guy who will go into debt to keep his wife living in a lavish lifestyle. How close can they be if he can’t even tell her about the change in his financial situation? Does he think that she won’t understand? Is it possible that she actually won’t? (In which case he should gladly kick her to the curb.)
It’s really pathetic that these guys have built their entire sexual identity on their wealth.
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I’m wondering about the wives - you can’t get alimony from a rock (and half of $8 million won’t support her to the style in which she’s been accustomed). How many men are out there ripe for the picking to be husband #2?
Well, there are probably a few whose wives left them after their net dropped from $100 mil to $20 million. Might be some stiff competition for them, though.
You know what? This is exactly like my roommate’s family: he came from a poor background, first-generation immigrants. His father once famously put the family in a high degree of debt by buying a huge expensive van that was essentially a show-off for the neighbors. He did the same with a TV that was positioned next to the window so as to be noticeable from the street, etc.
The subjects of the article are doing the same- wherein living an existence within your means becomes less important than what your neighbors think of you.
Both of these examples are laughably pathetic. What is more laughable than pathetic, though, is the refusal to give up something as needlessly luxurious as a private jet so that you won’t lose another double the jet’s value in debt and debt-interest. What is more pathetic than laughable is forcing your family to starve because you spent their food budget on a van for the sole benefit of being better than the Joneses.
[QUOTE=Dangerosa]
I’m wondering about the wives
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Me too.
I have no doubt that many of them are gold-digging materialists, but I’m sure a few of them aren’t. What strikes me is that a lot of these guys put their entire self-worth in their incomes. They’d rather go into deep debt than risk finding out whether their wives fell genuine love for them. That’s a special kind of denial.
[QUOTE=brazil84]
I think the point is that from the perspective of a poor person in the third world, a working class guy in the U.S. is in fat city.
Probably there are a lot of people who would be ecstatic to give up everything they own in return for a U.S. birth certificate.
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Yeah, but this just stupid reverse one-upmanship. Let me play one on you:
Well, I gaurantee you that there are a lot of people who really envy guys who are merely starving and homeless, because they are also starving and homeless and have diseases that leave them grotesquely disfigured and make them smell bad and have 29 kids depending on them all of whom are sweet and loving and mildly retarded, and their wife has a social disease that makes that time of the month all month. So your standard starving and homeless people will get no sympathy from me, because those guys have it a lot worse! Save your pity for them!
That guy gets no sympathy from me. If my wife had that social disease we’d have something to flavor the raw wood pulp and rotten potato peelings which is all we have to eat; and glad to get it, we’d be!
[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
Well, I gaurantee you that there are a lot of people who really envy guys who are merely starving and homeless, because they are also starving and homeless and have diseases that leave them grotesquely disfigured and make them smell bad and have 29 kids depending on them all of whom are sweet and loving and mildly retarded, and their wife has a social disease that makes that time of the month all month. So your standard starving and homeless people will get no sympathy from me, because those guys have it a lot worse! Save your pity for them!
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Ooh, we used to dream of being grossly disfigured.
[QUOTE=Scumpup]
That guy gets no sympathy from me. If my wife had that social disease we’d have something to flavor the raw wood pulp and rotten potato peelings which is all we have to eat; and glad to get it, we’d be!
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[QUOTE=John Mace]
Exactly. I’m afraid the OP is a strawman. The article clearly states that:
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Do you think I was pitting the Times?
I’m not even pitting rich people. I’m pitting people who are now a bit less rich and acting like it is the end of the world. I feel the same way about people complaining that not getting a bonus this year means that they can’t go out to eat every night and must postpone their Hawaii vacation.
[QUOTE=ultrafilter]
Hold on a second. This guy, in addition to whatever his income has dropped to, has lost 60% of his net worth. That’s savings, not income. That kind of loss can really wipe out his family’s sense of financial security. I’m not saying that we should hold a fundraiser for the guy, but to just write him off as wildly irresponsible because he’s having trouble adjusting to a major shock strikes me as a little callous.
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That is one thing I don’t get from the article - how anyone could be so dumb to do that. Now, the CEO of Bear Stearns lost more than that, since he had most of his fortune in Bear Stearns stock, which went to $10. Foolish, but he put his money where his mouth was, and I haven’t heard him whining about it. I respect him, for that at least. But how could anyone on Wall Street who theoretically has some financial smarts be allocated only in the financial sector? My portfolio for retirement has gone down between 5 and 10%, and it isn’t anything I’m living on. I think the article confuses income and assets - I suspect the $20 M -> $8M is income. The bonuses during the good years were pretty gigantic.
[QUOTE=tokaido-hokuriku]
How is the OP wrong: he claims that a ‘poor’ American has a right to complain about loss of income, whereas the ‘rich’ one doesn’t. (sorry this is a rough gloss, but the gist of it is right). I claim that, from the global POV, they are both sitting pretty fucking pretty:
I would guess that the average westerner is closer to the $20m guy in terms of options than he is to the starving African.
In rich European countries even if you lose your job, you get social housing, benefits that get you some solid meals a day and are not time-limited, and free world-beating healthcare.
Though America treats its poor a bit more roughly than this, what you get in the US is still a pretty sucking awesome safety net, from the poor African POV.
t-h
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I’ve lived in Africa, so I know what it is like there. I actually think that the only people who get to complain are those whose home and food is at risk, and more because of the difference between others. Africans in shanty towns should be complaining about the government ministers embezzling millions in foreign aid and sending it to Switzerland. As for non-poor Americans, I don’t have any sympathy for luxury car owners up to their necks in debt either. I don’t know if I can afford a $100K car, but I could afford a $50K one, no sweat. I drive an 11 year old Saturn with 125K miles, and I’m going for 200 K. I don’t have anyone I want to impress, and my wife feels the same way. We have money in the bank and my kids will get out of college debt free. That is a lot more important than a Lexus in the driveway.
[QUOTE=tdn]
What I find troubling is that many of these guys fear losing their wives over this loss of income. While a huge loss can put a strain on a family, either these guys have married extremely shallow and materialistic women, or think that they have. Especially sad is the guy who will go into debt to keep his wife living in a lavish lifestyle. How close can they be if he can’t even tell her about the change in his financial situation? Does he think that she won’t understand? Is it possible that she actually won’t? (In which case he should gladly kick her to the curb.)
It’s really pathetic that these guys have built their entire sexual identity on their wealth.
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Exactly what I meant, and said much better than I could. One therapist said that a lot of marriages were in trouble anyhow, with the problems papered over by money. And nowhere was there evidence the wives would leave, just concern from the husbands. But if something happened to my income, especially if it was not my fault, I wouldn’t have to worry about staying married. We’d deal with it. Just like most people.
[QUOTE=ultrafilter]
Sorry, but this drives me nuts. CMOs have been around since the early 80s (see page 2 of this pdf), and have been used for most of that time without problems. The current crisis was caused by genuine stupidity on the part of investment banks and credit ratings agencies, not exotic derivatives.
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Definitely agree about the stupidity part, but wasn’t some of the liquidity crisis caused by the instruments being so complex that no one knew how to value them? No one cared while the housing market was ok, but it exploded the moment the market went down. But there seems to be plenty of blame to go around. I know the arguments for instruments making a market in stuff that used to be be more or less static, but do you agree that maybe things went a little too far?
[QUOTE=brazil84]
I think the point is that from the perspective of a poor person in the third world, a working class guy in the U.S. is in fat city.
Probably there are a lot of people who would be ecstatic to give up everything they own in return for a U.S. birth certificate.
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And plenty of them do, not for their own birth certificate but for their unborn babies. I lived in Africa across the street from a shanty town without water. I bet even those people would rather not be living in a box under a bridge. But, that said, our guy working two jobs is doing all he can for his home and family, and not whining about having to sell excess baubles.
Do you think I was pitting the Times?