Don’t doubt it, but that’s not entirely true of the fabulously wealthy in New York, the only city where I can even attempt a judgment on that subject.
Sure, but I see enough praise of the rich on the Forum to believe that they are quite relevant to a lot of posters here.
I actually do have a lot of admiration for some of the wealthy people I know. They have acquired their wealth by doing some really amazing things. One of my good friends made a bundle by working out, in his garage, a way of converting the waste ice cream produced by ice cream manufacturers, into very inexpensive milk solids to put into pet food. The ice cream companies had a hard time getting rid of it before that because lactose is devilishly difficult to break down. He solved the palatability question by trying his formulations on his own dog.
You see, ice cream is manufactured by pushing the formula down refrigerated tubes where it freezes, thence into the boxes. When you change flavors, the most efficient way to do it is to push the new flavor into the already-full tube until it runs “pure”. So you end up with a partial barrel full of mixed-flavor “waste ice cream” every time you change flavors.
I say the guy deserves the money he made doing that.
He also developed a computerized “facial recognition” system and made a bunch of money on that. Among other things, he now operates a “free school and lab” for young computer geeks to work out programs and projects. If they come up with a winner, it’s theirs, and he charges them nothing because he’s already rich.
He grew up milking cows.
Good man.
But since you reminded me of it, I’ll mention when I was a young man and had the obligatory “Rich Girlfriend” from NYC. (Every young man should have one, as well as a Southern Belle Girlfriend and a Nightclub Singer Girlfriend, at least once each.) Her father owned ships and died when she was little. Her mother had one home in that “Great Gatsby” country there and a condominium in Manhattan. She didn’t seem terribly interested in gaining any kind of life skill, and informed me that she had a trust fund and her monthly “draw limit” was $20,000.00 (that was years ago). She sometimes talked about her friends round and about where she lived, and she said they were very wealthy. I asked what they do for a living. She told me they all had degrees, some of them were even doctors and lawyers and economists and such, but that they didn’t actually work. Mostly they sailed and played polo and (her words) “played ‘country set’ during the day and partied in Manhattan at night”.
Now, I would say that was a bit rich for my tastes. Well, not “too rich”, exactly, but “too worthless”. I guess I was a bit of a reverse snob, and figured out that there was no way I could live that way, and that she would ultimately come to resent it if I didn’t. Well, and her maximum expressed family limit was two children, which I found unacceptable. She did express mild surprise and perhaps disappointment that I had never ridden any way but Western, but felt I could learn to ride whatever style they do when playing polo. I’m glad she told me all of that stuff in advance. “Kept man” ran through my mind more than once. Needless to say, we parted at my instance, so perhaps I’m nearly as much a reverse snob as you are, Rich. I think Fitzgerald was at least half right. How did he put it “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me”?
Some rich people, like the Rich Girlfriend are indeed very different, and some, like the ice cream chemist, aren’t.