Sadface: The Tragic Tale Of The Rich Guy Who Didn't 'Feel' Rich
Maybe he should wear more velvet?
On August 5, 2007, the New York Times ran an article about Silicon Valley millionaires who “still don’t feel rich.”
One day later, American Home Mortgage, then the 10th largest mortgage company, filed for bankruptcy, one of many cards to fall around that time. We all know what came after that.
It’s nice to know, sometimes, that while a lot may change in 17 years, some things stay around forever. Things like articles about rich people who don’t feel particularly rich.
This week, Business Insider brought us “Robert” a “Florida Gen Xer who earned over $300,000 secretly working multiple remote jobs” and still does not feel rich.
Oh, the humanity of it all.
For Robert, the income from multiple jobs decision has made it possible for him to travel more. Over the last few years, he estimates he spent between $28,000 and $35,000 in total annual travel expenses. Some of his recent trips included Yellowstone, the Galápagos Islands, and Las Vegas.
"We now spend a lot more time on vacations," he said. "We spend a lot on travel because life is more about experiences and memories than material things."
Still, Robert considers himself to be "far from rich," in part because it takes more than a couple of years with a higher income to ensure financial security in the long term, he said. He experienced several job separations in the past, so he knows his jobs aren't guaranteed to last. Additionally, he said he made some bad decisions when he was younger that set back his finances.
Now, look — I get never feeling fully secure. I do! In the United States, this is a feature, not a bug. Many of our policies, labor and otherwise, are specifically designed so that people never feel fully secure, because the people in charge believe that this is the best way to ensure that people are both productive and willing to put up with a lot of shit. We have at-will employment, we tie our health insurance to our jobs, etc. etc. I get that.
That being said … we did not need this shit in 2007 and we do not need it now.
Robert isn’t a billionaire, but he certainly makes well above the average American income of $71K, at a time when billionaires have tripled their own income thanks to the Trump tax cuts.
What is it that we are all meant to feel upon reading this? What is the takeaway supposed to be? “Boy, I guess it’s just hard out there for everyone, even the guy currently installing a ‘high end hot tub’ on his deck”? Because that is not what comes across. Are we meant to cancel any upcoming class wars, because “Rich People! They’re Just Like Us!”? It’s not entirely clear.
More importantly, what is it that these people need, outside of hot tubs, to make them “feel rich”? Do they need a giant Scrooge McDuck vault filled with gold coins they can swim in?
Perhaps the rest of us could dress up as Victorian street urchins?
Look. I’m sure this guy is fine and that this is primarily a clickbait-y spin on whatever the actual interview was. I get that the story is supposed to be that he makes $300K because he (secretly!) works more than one job. But enough. Enough.
There are many people in this country who are working two, maybe even three jobs who are not currently debating where to put their hot tub. Maybe that is who we need to talk to. Maybe we just don’t need another story about a guy who had to get a slightly less expensive yacht than he had initially hoped for.
We can, actually, do better.
PREVIOUSLY:
Pittsburgh 50 years ago
If you put 35 years in a steel mill you were able to buy a house, spouse didn't have to work, you could buy a car, had paid vacations to take your kids on a nice summer vacation. When you retired you got 80% of your salary for the rest of your life plus health and life insurance paid for.
Then came Reagan to break the unions and Millken to loot the pension funds.
All that went away.
I started working in journalism because it was a way of getting somebody to pay me to continue my education in how the world actually works. This led to some interesting situations.
One I didn’t expect to be interesting was an assignment to write a feature about a store that sold window treatments. The store was in a downmarket neighborhood in a hardscrabble Northeast city and I was not at all excited to complete the assignment.
Then the owner told me that his most well-off clients drop six figures on window treatments.
Over $100,000. In 2002 money. On fucking blinds. Which they would replace every few years.
I learned a lot about people that day.