The author F. Scott Fitzgerald is credited with saying: “The rich are different from you and me.” And Ernest Hemingway, curtly shooting down Fitzgerald's mythologizing the rich, responded: “Yes, they have more money.”
The whole quote from Fitzgerald goes as follows:
“Let me tell you about the rich. They are different from you and me. They posses and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it's very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.”
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I have never known people with that kind of money. That kind of money is Old Money and it's in the billions. Think of Andrew Carnegie or Rockefeller wealth that's so massive it can be invested to keep their descendants not born yet in the pink till 2100 and beyond. It's so old it became “respectable” wealth.
New Money, and there are a few I know of, is disgusting. New Money is filthy. New Money has no pedigree, no claim to a Family Coat of Arms that goes back to Henry V of England. This New Money can never find legitimacy due to the fact Old Money families will never let them in the “good” country clubs and respectably knight them. The Old Money clique is pretty tight. This drives the New Money types crazy to the point where some have tried to marry off their daughters to some penniless but landed British aristocratic earl or duke just to claim a relation. No joke, some did that.
The few New Money types I know aren't even close to those pure bloods, at best, the richest one I knew had around $5 million and none of them would even be invited to a golf game in East Hampton. They'd be arrested at the door if they didn't “kindly leave the premises when asked too.” Again, Old Money does not associate with...”those people.”
So how did they get their money? What did they do with it? Where they happy? Are they different?
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Alan ,who is dead now, inherited his from his Dad who wisely invested in ESSO oil from the 1940's. ESSO became Exxon in time and his Dad kept purchasing that stock till the day he died. There upon Alan took it over and never spent a penny of it nor add to any stock purchases. Alan, instead, just followed a career in government, bought a modest house outside DC and put up with his wife's weekly antique hunts. Since Alan's wife died before him and they never had any kids, we used to bust Alan's balls about him leaving it all to his wife's nieces and nephews who, as far as we could tell, were the type to use the cash to hire a Lear jet, fly to Las Vegas to bet it all on a Black 13 roulette slot.
“Alan! You're gonna leave it to them? Really? You said yourself you can't stand them!”
“Well, who else will I leave it too? They're the only family I have!” And then there is a pause...”Shit...that niece I bought an electric piano for...she's too dumb to learn anything more than 'Chopsticks!' On top of that, I paid for her entire time at UMASS Amherst and she gets a 2.1 GPA? I fear it'll be wasted on all of them!”
Alan died over the summer, and they got it. We can't tell if they've blown through it all yet.
The Exxon stock never did turn Alan into a dick nor heighten his own self worth, but he damn well knew what that kind of money could do for him. All it was was a massive fluffy pillow should his workaday world somehow collapse. His problems with it came to his ungrateful and sort of worthless relations.
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Carl, who I knew for a couple of years before he took off to Phoenix, inherited $2 million. His Dad was this rare engineer who made very specific parts for the Apollo program back in the 60's and certainly charged NASA an arm and a leg for it. NASA paid because this guy was Einstein smart and solved quite a few problems for the space agency. You want good people? You have to pay for them.
Carl, inherited the company when Dad died but since Carl had no clue to this kind of engineering, sold it all off. He didn't inherit his Dad's brains but was no moron either, he just aimlessly tried one occupation after another, trying to fit in with the friends he made. He came off as a trust fund kid you'd see sometimes on skateboards down by Thayer St in Providence. They want to live a “normal” life but eventually were always found out by their poorer friends. Carl's problem, was that he tried to buy friends, in that he'd pay for everything as they hung out. Well, if someone pays for it all, they tend to stick around till the money dries up or are found out. Then poof...they're gone. Carl constantly found out he had nothing but “fair weather” friends and dumped them when he discovered that, but I suspect unconsciously, he'd repeat that process. His main problem was just loneliness. He told me he never could fit in at Moses Brown nor anywhere else and that's what plagued him for years. Even that gold digging bitch he married didn't bring joy for him. He eventually saw her as a high-priced whore. That marriage lasted barely a year and in the end he was glad to pay her to leave.
I haven't seen him in about 20 years and have little idea what he's doing in Arizona, probably the same thing. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
The only bonafied rags to riches story I know of is Kathy. Now she was born to modest means but had this drive...insane drive to achieve and to be rich. She was usually a A+ student, winning awards left and right in school and finally being accepted at Brown due to her intelligence. She had majored in mathematics, high mathematics solving stuff like this:
That was easy stuff for her. She plied that into business math and landed the job as Chief of the Bond Desk at Merrill Lynch in NYC. Her job was to analyze companies on their probabilities of turning a profit. She was good at it (read: $$$$$$) to where she and her husband bought a condo on Central Park Upper East. Big bucks!
The bond desk at Merrill wasn't enough though, she wanted a slot in the top room, the governing board. Well...high finance back then still didn't think women were cut out for this kind of work, even if Kathy could do math in several dimensions in far away galaxy. Her “pushy bitch” demeanor wasn't well liked even if she could bring the company millions in profit. She knew well enough there was a political game involved too and tried her best to work it. She may have succeeded if it weren't for the 2008 recession that killed the Dow by nearly half of it's value.
Merrill Lynch was in danger of being wiped out completely had it not been for having to cave into other more solid finance houses and getting bailed out by the Bush Administration. It survived, barely, but the consternation in the board room and other offices created tons of firings. Kathy was axed.
Being an unemployed millionaire didn't sit well with Kathy. From I heard, that Shangri La condo had quite a few fights between husband and wife over...money. He telling her that it was time to downsize, live within their means and not hope for a recovery anytime soon where they'd be paying for $500 tickets for the “good seats” to shows on Broadway. She held the belief that one day she'd be rehired by Merrill Lynch if and when the economy found stable footing.
Well, the fights didn't abate and the two separated. Merrill Lynch never did hire her back and she had to “settle” for a position at a bank in Stamford, CT for a paltry $225,000 year. The 5th Avenue condo was sold and she and her husband reconciled and moved to a smaller life. From what I hear, they're worth a little over $3 million today. That to me, isn't “bad” but to Kathy, who forever was climbing, achieving...it just wasn't good enough. The problem now is that she is my age and I know that this age does not bring with it a ton of mental or physical energy or drive to make it to the top. However, I have to hand it to her, she came from Pawtucket slime to standing in the world's financial center, moving mountains for a while. She made her pile of cash w/o inheriting it, though she became slightly nutso in doing so.
So are the rich different? Not the New Money types that I can see. They're just as fucked up as any middle class family you can come across. Do they think they're better? I doubt that as they harbor personal failings and that isn't easy to hide. When you become old enough to read faces, it's pretty damn evident what they're really thinking about. One fact will slip or a quick lack of eye contact which betrays the entire story. It shows too easily.
Are they happier than the rest?
Here's what I know of people. Whatever situation you find yourself in, large or small, you tend to fill and occupy it's confines to the fullest. You live in every inch of that acreage, wide or narrow. I know of retirees whose lives have shrunk to watching tv, shopping for food and walking the dog. That's it. Within that world, they find something to bitch about. There are a few I know of who can rent an entire floor at Bretton Woods in NH and their worlds are larger, spacious and yet...still yet they bitch about what doesn't go right. Or like one of their kids flipping the Escalade and now are facing DWI charges (ongoing story that is!).
I've yet to find anyone who was ever satisfied for long. Kathy, the bond desk girl once said, “After a while it's not about the condo, the clothing, the best vacations, it's about forever chasing the numbers, making new kills, ever increasing the pot...that becomes your reason to be alive, happy..for a bit..when it wears off and I have to find a new 'hunt' to chase down.” As for the retiree I know, it's about finding programs on the TV that interest him, keeping the fridge stocked, but that requires him to have to wander into the world he has little patience for now, to replenish, constantly.
None of the joy lasts. It's all transitory. You chase down a dream, fill up on it, then it passes and you chase another.
Are the rich different? I tend to agree with Hemingway, no they are not. They just have more money is all. But they live life, it's wins and losses, more stylishly. I on the other hand, will wipe my nose with my sleeve if no one's looking. I was always Shanty Irish and the nobler, better Lace Curtain Irish will never accept my kind.
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