Too Rich or Too Thin -- Part II

So we have established that yes, one can be too thin. The more difficult question is whether it is possible to be too rich. In the third person, the answer is clearly yes. The 99 percent, as most of us were characterized in the Occupy Wall Street protests, can easily see that those in the top 1 percent are too rich (as this video shows). Their wealth has grown; ours has shrunk, and it is easy to blame their growing wealth for our growing poverty and social problems. But when you are too thin, it does not just mean you’re an eyesore for others. It means your own health is compromised and you could die. Is there comparable danger to the person who is too rich? What are the perils of plenty?

Well, there’s the whole “money doesn’t buy happiness” theme, with Richard Cory going home and putting a bullet in his head. And there are the addictions – “sex addiction” not least among them. (Are there happy marriages among the very rich, or is the charismatic power of wealth to attract nubile young women just too much for any man to resist?)

I went online and Googled “rich people’s problems” and found an Atlantic Monthly article from April 2011, titled “Secret Fears of the Super Rich”. In the article, Graeme Wood reports that in a survey of very wealthy donors to charities, "The respondents turn out to be a generally dissatisfied lot, whose money has contributed to deep anxieties involving love, work, and family. Indeed, they are frequently dissatisfied even with their sizable fortunes. Most of them still do not consider themselves financially secure; for that, they say, they would require on average one-quarter more wealth than they currently possess.”

The average net worth of those surveyed was $78 million.

Apparently, according to the article, being financially secure means being “wealthy enough to ensure that in any catastrophe short of Armageddon, they will still be dining on Chateaubriand while the rest of us are spit-roasting rats over trash-can fires.” I suppose $78 million might not be enough for that.

There is a tug of war between necessity, often caused by scarcity, which spurs us to actions (like building a career) that feel fulfilling; and ease, which comes from abundance, but which can make us complacent. You can have too much of either, though apparently most people are much more sympathetic to the woes of necessity than to those of ease. For example, in one of the more than 100 comments following the Atlantic article, Nick Olson wrote:

• To paraphrase Louis C.K., "Rich people don't know what it's like to be poor, they can't even imagine it, but every poor person knows what it's like to be rich. You know why? Because they think about it every second of the day." I'm sorry, the handful of problems of the rich must seem like a lot to them because they can't imagine it any other way, but they should rest assured that they aren't even close the the (sic) problems of the millions of poor in this country and billions of poor in the world. How about going to work every day hurt and sick and coming home without enough money to properly feed your family? Feeling inadequate as a parent? Feeling helpless and out of control of your life? Knowing that if you get sick - really sick - you probably won't fully recover and certainly won't receive adequate treatment and your children will be left in destitution?
• I'm being unkind. No one cares about the problems of the rich - that must be difficult to deal with psychologically. Oh - I forgot, this is America - no one gives a ***t about the problems of the poor either.

Olson proposes a  "****ing Scandinavian-style, progressive income tax" to at least give those on the lower end a chance.

• The truth is that - barring those below the poverty level - everyone in America is rich. If you live in a warm house, sleep in a warm bed, have never gone to sleep hungry, have the time you need to study and rest, but have a ***tty cell phone and out-of-date computer, you are ****ing rich. Once we cover our basic needs, the rest is vanity. Happiness comes from strong personal relationships and a sense of purpose in our occupation, that's it. If the rich can't find these things in their absurd levels of wealth, they can go **** themselves, because it's much harder to find them in soul-crushing poverty.

I agree with Olson that you have enough money when you have food, clothing, shelter, etc. and you don’t want more simply for the sake of being one of the people who has more (eg "the Joneses"). You want more because it is a worthy challenge to increase the ratio of ease to necessity, abundance to scarcity. And perhaps if you can do that in your own life, maybe you can then share some of that abundance with others.

I’m fairly sure that one can be rich enough, though apparently no one above my income bracket seems to agree. I am definitely sure that one can be poor, which could be defined as not being rich enough (just as being fat could be defined as not being thin enough), though maybe there’s some nuance here that I am missing. Again, the problem is with the word “enough”.

Like Olson, I feel like I am rich enough in one sense. I have plenty to eat. I am warm in the winter. We have proper clothing, cars, computers, ice skates, and other stuff. We do have some debt, though, that it would be nice to be rid of. We drive older cars. The tractor we just bought is thirty years old. But we are fine, and moving ahead slowly. Does this mean we are rich enough? Is having all of these bounties equivalent to being rich? I’m sure the Cambodian mother feeding her kids red ant soup cooked over a campfire would say so. But how can I be considered rich when others are so much richer? I know I am thin, because those thinner than I am are edging into starvation, anorexia. But those richer than I am are perfectly healthy (aside from the angst described in the Atlantic), traveling among their many homes in their private jets, yachts, and helicopters…

We outsiders to that world can say they are too rich and that it warps their morals. It’s obvious because they don’t even interact with this world, and they do everything to avoid paying perfectly reasonable taxes. There was even a story last November about how some rich boat owners were going to cancel the annual holiday boat parade they put on for the community because their dock fees were being raised from the absurdly low $100 per year to 52.5 cents per square foot. Clearly they are corrupt, morally bankrupt, heartless. But is this just sour grapes? Wouldn’t I be the same if I had all that money? Don’t I gleefully look forward to tax refunds? (I don't want to give that money to the government either!) Does being rich depend on others being poor? Is the word “rich” only meaningful relative to being not rich, or is there some absolute measure of richness?

One timeworn economic belief is that rich people's vices and overindulgence benefit the economy by providing jobs for the poor – as servants and yacht builders, probably. Economist Simon Patten, however, back in 1885, thought that there was no real reason for the class structure to persist now that there is enough production that everyone can have enough, if those who overindulge now can be persuaded that it is in their interest to slow down and share the wealth. I'm not sure how that could happen (and Ayn Rand would rise from the dead if it did!), but Nick Olson’s “****ing Scandinavian-style, progressive income tax” would certainly be a start.