If We 'Kill the Rich', Don't We Kill the Dream?

My neighbor at dinner, a hedge-fund manager originally from Texas, was emphatic.

"If your only identity is in your job or your money then there is no point living in New York any more," he said. "Anyone who thinks like that will leave."

He had a point. This town seems to have become unhinged by the populist rage against Wall Street and the rich. President Obama has said openly of the AIG bonuses: "I don't want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry. I'm angry." Meanwhile, a livid Congress has demanded a 90 per cent tax on bonuses.

This leaves many New Yorkers feeling dislocated, unsure of themselves. This town is the national epicenter of ostentation and consumerism. Now those qualities are considered tasteless. Wealth has become a dirty word.

Consider the divorce trial between Marie Douglas-David and George David, the head of United Technologies, now on the front pages of the tabloids. She is battling to raise her settlement from $37 million to $100 million -- and says $37 million will only last her 15 years.

While she's not the only woman to squabble over her divorce settlement, she is the first to do so in times when the mantra from Washington seems to be "kill the rich."

Marie Douglas David attracts ire because she precisely fits the stereotype of a rich New York dilettante: she appears spoiled, superficial, disloyal and keen to make a buck off someone else's back.

The problem, of course, is that not all the rich are like this, just as not everyone at AIG deserves no bonus. I know someone who left a top bank for a post at the insurance giant last year, taking a pay cut and no bonus. Now he has received death threats and requires 24-hour security.

So it is we New Yorkers who are caught in today's cultural crossfire. In my orbit last week there was yelling at the television screen from friends who believe Congress is trying to strangle the American dream of meritocracy.

I think the president will eventually find a middle road through this mess -- but it's hard to think clearly when passions run this high. And it's also hard to keep one's bearings living in the city that stands for everything this country currently holds in deep contempt.

This article was originally published by the London Evening Standard

Comments

[jacobomorales]

Nobody said anything about killing the rich, you did. What I think the Obama administration is trying to say is that the rules should be the same for all. Now, they are skewed to help some people more than others and that is wrong. The rules should be the same to all.

[TracySLC]

Wow, you really don't see much else in New York aside from money? No culture, art, fashion? Sucks to be you then.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with making a buck. Hey, if you work at a fortune 100 company that is turning in a hefty profit and let's say...20% annual growth, then yeah...bri­ng on the money.

It is wrong to make several millions in bonuses when you are an executive at a failing company (and you sort helped that ship sink) and your company is taking $80 billion(something like that?) of TAX PAYER'S MONEY.

There's the disconnect from Republican hacks. To translate it for them, let's put it like this:

AIG is on corporate food stamps right now (about , what, $80 billion worth?), yet they're spending it on candy, gum, cheetos, and beer, and they just went out and bought themselves a shiny new car.

[TexasDem0]

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with wealth.
The problem is the Greed Obsessed People.

[SarcasticFringehead]

I don't think most American are mad at "the Rich" in general but at the Wall Street "Masters or the Universe" in particular. This would certainly encompass Hedge Fund Managers who seemed especially gifted at paying-off politicians to get their way for the past eight years.
Take billionaires Warren Buffet and Bill Gate for example. I haven't heard anyone disparage either of these gentlemen even though they are both two of the richest men in America. No, I think you are right that this public ire is directed laser-like at the Wall Street greed-heads who got this country into the financial mess it is in now.

[alkamm]

Buffet has always said he advises the materialists who ask him how to make a lot of money to hold their noses and go to Wall Street. Buffet has a knack for allocating capital, but Gates had a knack for coopting new ideas and organizing a line of substandard software as the standard. Not everyone loves what Microsoft has done to the PC.
New York is not about the greed heads, despite their flocking there. New York is about energy, arts, leadership, and cosmopolitan, urbane people who advance every which way. Americans resent the rich in proportion to the harm done.
When the rich become an aggregate of materialists who hate those below them, imagine they are the only productive people in society, and discount wisdom coming from below, they become worse than irrelevant.

[SarcasticFringehead]

"Gates had a knack for coopting new ideas and organizing a line of substandard software as the standard."
That's what I've always thought. You must be a Mac user too.

[TracySLC]

Well it's real simple, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates EARNED whatever salary and bonuses they've accumulated over the years, that weren't funded by taxpayers.

[reggieb]

I guess my salary classifies me as the "rich" but I don't feel the least bit beleaguered, downtrodden or threatened. I find it difficult to relate to this article. I'm not even sure I get the point of it. The company that I work for awards good bonuses. I guarantee you that if we lost money like AIG and the banks there would be no bonus and heads would roll. You say that your friends believe that "Congress is trying to strangle the American dream of meritocracy" Poppycock. Your friends sound like my 12 year old when she is in full drama queen mode.

[ignrnthllblly]

I feel as if every turn of phrase in this post deserves separate comment. Sufficient comment to the post itself might require...­a new blog. Seriously. Spitting tacks is pretty effete when you feel the need to bite the heads off of ten-pennies and I find this post that disturbing--and on multiple levels.

But if you would allow me to brad down one flapping piece of upholstery: while individual conspicuous consumption might support the economic concept of consumerism, it is hardly the same thing. The confusion is made patent by the pairing with "ostentation," since one rarely damns an economic concept as "tasteless­." It is the implied value of conspicuous consumption--and the erroneous presumption that an aggregate of high-grade (quality) materiel necessarily yields an essential property (quality)--that underlie her apologia for the innocent rich.

Her "qualities" then are not free-floating characteristics in search of an object, but innate virtues of those "in her orbit." Tasteless wouldn't be my characterization.

[sonvolt48]

Huh?

I recognized every word in your post as being English...­but, put together, all I can say is WTF?

[moonchild71]

LOL!!

[joebaggadonuts]

OK, I'll present it again.

The rubber band theory. Rich folk get to make as much as they want, so long as the economic rubber-band between themselves and the lower classes does not break or even stretch too far.

This way, we all go up together.

What happened was that the rubber band tied to the rich was breaking, and at their insistence would have been removed under Bush. Once it breaks, the poor are allowed to do whatever they want to the rich because compassion disappears for the rich folk. They have been known to cut off heads. The rich should be grateful that Obama was elected and support his every move, since that's all that is keeping their heads on their shoulders right now. But do we see that support in the press? No. Cheney says O has made the nation less safe, many of the chattering classes complain that O is pushing Socialism, Michelle Bachman, that loon from Minnesota, is saying that the working classes should revolt against the Obama plans with guns if necessary, and so on. And here is Vicky Ward, challenging us to feel sorry for the rich.

The rubber band. Keeping us together.

[texastrixie]

It is NOT the wealth of the rich that engenders the ire, it is the trickery and selfish way that these immense amounts of wealth were achieved that has the public up in arms.

Even today, business puts out false information about the proposed new rules to certify unions, hoping to block any chance that workers can band together to force fair wages and treatment from companies. They know if they can continue to deal with each worker on an individual basis, few will have the ability to negotiate a fair wage or better benefits.

Wall Street knew it was playing fast and loose with our economic stability, but didn't care if they could get thier's and get out before the bomb burst.

The rich complain about possibly paying more taxes so that everyone might have a minimum of health care, yet expect the military, the fire, and the police to protect them. The entire attitude of the rich these days is that they are due everything, and regular working people are due as little as possible.

[Rockwell]

Here's the point everyone seems to be missing. Its not just the current situation.

It's 30 years of the super-rich getting obscenely rich at the expense of everyone else.

Wages and salaries have stagnated while working conditions have deterioriated. Hourly workers are forced to put in free OT while salaried workers can meet the demands of their jobs unless they put in 10 to 20 hours of free overtime in each week.

Pagers, cell phones, blackberries have made us 24/7 servants of the Corporations.

Healthcare has shrivled in coverage while cost have shot up.

Consumers have had to turned to credit cards to buy healthcare, food and basics. Despite the sneers of the Rich, the little guys isn't always up to their eyes in debt because of lavish spending. Corporations have happily allowed Credit Cards to fill in where their measly wages have left off.

Meanwhile the wealth gaps turns into a chasm. For 30 years this has been building.

And now we have the perfect storm. The middleclass is maxed out and the bloated banks have been caught with their greedy hands in the cookie jar.

So for the first time in 30 years, the Rich are feeling some pressure. Well Boo f**king Hoo. They need to be nervous and they need to be shamed. Sometimes the peasants have to storm the bastille.

And when the dust settles, maybe we'll have a cultural shift where the CEO doesn't make 100,000 times what the work does.

[KillTheMessenger]

How about not being a worker but educating yourself and striving for better? Or at least educating your kids? Nobody has to take poverty for a given. There are ways out. They lead through books, colleges and universities. Not everyone can take those roads. But at least one member of a family usually can. And that family member can help others. Americans, however, have engaged in an anti-intellectual stance that is ruining the country for decades. It wasn't the rich who were looked upon first but the smart. The results are in. I hope you are happy.

[Rockwell]

You've obviously jumped to the classic pompous conclusion that it's the fault of the ignorant masses that they so poor. If they'd just educate themselves they'd all be rich.

That's BS.

The people I know are all college educated, in many cases they have MBAs. As do I.

I agree that its pretty hard to get rich without an education. But an education is hardly a gateway to the good life. Corporations still have the upper hand and have squeezed and squeezed for 30 years until our standard of living is less than our parents.

[LeftRight]

Your ideas sound real good on paper, but yet they fail in real life. Odd how that happens again and again like Marxism compared to Communism.­...

[research]

Mostly a straw man argument. Yeah some people would like to do bad things to Banksters.

It's not rich people I have a problem with, I earned my money creating useful products.

It's the Greatest Fraud in human history that get's me angry.

AIG Securities Fraud, they were found Guilty, but they just paid a fine. Not Jail, like we would face.

Taxing The Rich at say 50% top bracket, income averaged, baseline inflation adjusted, is a fair tribute to the society and governmnet the created the environment that allows us to become rich.

below 25% top tax, actually seems to bring out the crazy greed and crash the economy. It did this time and before the great depression, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/users/profile/research

[KillTheMessenger]

Where is the fraud, research? Nobody had to buy that insurance and nobody had to rely on it. People sometimes do stupid things. This would be one of them. But fraud it ain't by a long shot.

[research]

Fraud: causing people harm by taking their money through deception and trickery.

It does not require any other laws be broken.

Insurance without the money to pay claims is econ 101 straight line to default, and they knew it.

AIG was found guilty and fined "settled" several times.

[TJCole]

"A dream to some, a nightmare to others..!"

Nicol Williamson/ Excalibur.­..

[KillTheMessenger]

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."

- T.H. White "The Once and Future King"

Now that's a book worth reading.

[MsEngineer]

We need to look at our whole society, not just the super rich in the financial institutions. Why as a society do we think it is okay for a baseball player to make $10 million a year? Or a golfer to make $1 million at one tournament? This is happening while teachers are barely scraping by.

Obama wants people to go to engineering school. I look at my last salary and wonder why anyone with the brains of a typical engineer would go through four years of engineering school when they could go to business school instead and make a heck of a lot more money when they get out.

[jdevans]

Meritocracy -- "a system in which the talented are chosen and moved ahead on the basis of their achievement". The "Kill the Rich" populist anger has been aroused because this ISN'T a meritocracy.

The AIG and other executives who caused their companies to need bailouts are getting bonuses. They don't deserve bonuses for a job well done. They deserve to be fired. Bernie Madoff and Charles Stanford don't deserve their wealth from running Ponzi schemes. They deserve jail. Wall Street CEOs say the tax on bonuses is unfair. Well, its unfair that the taxpayers have to bailout their failures.

Now that the taxpayers own AIG, we don't have to put up with their "Let them eat cake" attitude anymore. We can fire them.

[KillTheMessenger]

The tax payer does not own AIG. Where did you get that from?

[LeftRight]

From the fact that we bought enough Preferred Stock to account for more than 80% of the company. Granted, that doesn't mean that we own the company, since Preferred Stock is not voting stock....

However, based on the amount of money that the taxpayers have poured into the company, we DO have a say as to how that money is spent!

[jdevans]

After the bailout the government and us taxpayers own 80% of AIG according to "Time" magazine. Usually, all it takes is owning 51% of a company to be able to call the shots.
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1886275,00.html

[Kent Weed]

Anyway, the dream is already dead, so proceed with killing the rich!

[itmaybetoolate]

george w. b u s h is a fine example of a member of the "moneyed class." He comes from wealth and never earned a legitimate dollar in his life. He had every opportunity someone could have and look how HE turned out. If george w. bush represents the American dream, I'll just be getting a seat on the next flight out of the country.