The Poor Lives of Rich People
"If one thing is clear about rich people, it's not that their lives are any easier than the rest of ours. In fact, if anything, it's hard to have money. Really hard. Bloomberg's Max Abelson recently interviewed a bunch of Wall Street folks who got smaller bonuses this year, and as their comments indicate, more money either really does mean more problems, or it means that a wealthy person's sense of reality is just that much further off. Certainly, the expectation of more money when one is getting less money -- Goldman Sachs and Barclay's, for example, both cut discretionary pay at least 25 percent for 2011 -- really makes rich people say the craziest things!
For example:
* “I feel stuck,” [director of marketing for broker-dealer Euro Pacific Capital Inc. Andrew] Schiff said. “The New York that I wanted to have is still just beyond my reach.” How so? "Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex."
* “People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress,” said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. “Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?”
* “It’s a disaster,” said Ilana Weinstein, chief executive officer of New York-based search firm IDW Group LLC. “The entire construct of compensation has changed.”
"The one thing that might mitigate this would be for rich folks to move to what would seem to be the next human level of thinking: Oh, if I have it bad, someone poorer must have it really bad. It doesn't seem that is happening, at least not here (nor in attempts to say poor people are actually doing great). Maybe that sort of public acknowledgment is too much to hope for, given that rich people also apparently like to take candy from babies. It's psychology, they can't help it! Poor things.
The Poor Lives of Rich People - Entertainment - The Atlantic Wire