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Rohit Singh
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Mon, 06 Aug 2007
Being Rich
I'm not rich. But that won't stop me from pontificating on being rich. NYT is
running a series of articles on the new "Gilded Age" and writing about the
new rich and their attitudes about money, themselves, society and
everything else.
As expected, some of the rich are quite obnoxious, convinced that they walk on water and that their wealth is entirely due to their skills and abilities. Surely their wealth has nothing to do with them being in the right place at the right time or having a great supporting team (members of which get a lot fewer rewards!).
There's a much larger category of people who are what the NYT describes as the working-class millionaires-- people who have a couple million in the bank but don't feel like they are millionaires. This isn't false modesty, necessarily. Some of it is probably situational: if you live in Manhattan or Los Altos and all your neighbors make twice as much, you are bound to feel poor. And I can see the point that a million needn't mean luxurious living: if one of your loved ones has a serious medical problem and insurance won't pay, you could run through a half-million or million very quickly. The high real-estate cost of areas like Silicon Valley only adds to the feeling that a million ain't what is said to be.
Still, it'd be nice if people counted their blessings. If you can take 18 months off from work and fly your entire extended family to Hawaii, you should at least acknowledge you have it better than most.