Few topics of conversation are more emotionally-charged than money. Socially speaking, the sordid details of your financial history — how much you came from, how much you’re making, or how much your trust fund is making for you — are more off-limits than your religious or political inclinations, more taboo even than the most intimate particulars of your sex life. So forgive my vulgarity for a moment as I call out this truth: really, really rich people — there are too many of you out there for your own good.
By any measure, the number of super rich has doubled over the last decade (thank you, Bush administration!). According to Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy, twice as many American households are worth $100 million or more today than at the beginning of the millennium. Shave off a zero and the number of qualifying households skyrockets; in 2004, the last time the Federal Reserve released data, 649,000 American households were worth $10 million or more, an almost 300 percent increase since 1992.
The rich aren’t just getting richer, blogs The Wall Street Journal’s Robert Frank — they are forming their own virtual countries, “increasingly building a self-contained world, with its own healthcare system (concierge doctors), travel system (private jets, destination clubs) and language. (‘Who’s your household manager?’).” Frank calls this “breakaway republic” — wealthier than most nations — “Richistan” and has turned it into a book, Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich.
Savvy entrepreneurs, responding to this emerging market niche, have turned it into an industry — wealth management — providing not only the expected services of asset supervision, estate planning and taxation advice, but the more intangible assistance of consultants to help you come to terms with buying a jet and psychologists to ensure your heirs don’t turn out like Paris Hilton. “We help families conduct discussions about the meaning and long-term vision of their family wealth, and we help individuals develop their own positive identity as wealthy and successful people,” explains the website of Relative Solutions, a wealth management firm specializing in keeping the super rich and their spawn from imploding under the pressure.
Titles of “educational seminars” provided by firms like Relative Solutions (“Challenges of Newly-Created Wealth,” “Talking to Your Children about Money and Wealth,” “Sibling Rivalry and the Quest for an Easy Transition to Leadership”) hint at a historical precedent: Having too much can be as burdensome as having too little. It’s The Poor Little Rich Girl syndrome — first immortalized in the play of the same name in 1917. Fitting then that today’s super rich owe their prosperity (and its attendant neurosis) to what is being called the greatest concentration of wealth since the 1920’s.
When asked to name the issue he thinks is most woefully ignored by the public, Deepak Chopra, our “Conversations” interview for this month, bumped up against this phenomenon. “I would like to hear people talking about economic disparities — really addressing the fact that 50 percent of the world lives on less that $2 per day, 20 percent on less that $1 per day, while we have people who are actually proud to fly private airplanes and display obscene extravagance. It’s already not even politically correct, or won’t be, I hope.” Incidentally the best way to be happy, according to Chopra, is to practice selfless giving, “without attachment or addiction,” but with the explicit intention to leave the world a better place than you found it.
No matter how many decimal points you can lay claim to on paper, that’s key advice. And when you head to the polls on the 5th, celebrate with your sweetie on the 14th, or get started early on your tax returns, February is a great month to spread the love. Which of course, as we hope the stories in every issue remind you, is one of those beautiful paradoxes of being human — a treasure that only grows the more of it you give away.
— Eliza Thomas, Editor in Chief