"For the Love of Money" Sam Polk nails the real problem with the super wealthy.

[LJ_Reloaded]

"For the Love of Money" Sam Polk nails the real problem with the super wealthy.

What grabbed me most about this is that this dude went from rags to riches very quickly in the financial sector... which was exactly our household's life story. Now I came to accept that "enough money is enough" is considered nutjob thinking in this insane shithole of a world already. It doesn't bother me much that such an attitude is more than sufficient ammo for forum trolls to claim that I lie when I say I can buy a new souped up computer - my most favoritest toy ever - and I could buy it every day forever, on residual income alone. The whole world says only poor people say "enough money is enough." Only poor people rail against Plutocrats: it's the undying creed of the ignorant. Accept it and move on.

Well, unlike me, this guy has actually come out of the shadows with this message. Not only does he have tons of money, not only does he PUBLICLY say enough money is enough, but he also explains why, with crystal clarity. He's not like Warren Buffet who continues to act like an ultra heavyweight wealth addict.

Another even bigger example of someone who has signed onto "enough money is enough" is JK Rowling. I don't hear much about her among liberal circles which suggests that she is highly underrated as an anti-Plutocrat and an anti wealth addict. She went from supporting a kid while living off £70 a week ($115.97 USD as of now) from welfare, to being a fucking Billionaire. And what the hell did she do with that? She openly, consciously opted to stay in England and pay British fucking taxes and went on TV to say she thought poorly of people who struck it rich and then fled the country. Weighing in the sheer magnitude of her charitable donations, if putting one's money into the war on sociopathic rich folks is naked aggression, JK Rowling is a heavyweight pugilist. She even dropped herself out of the billionaire's club and didn't bat a fucking eyelash.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/opinion/sunday/for-the-love-of-money.html?_r=4
(Excerpt)

Wealth addiction was described by the late sociologist and playwright Philip Slater in a 1980 book, but addiction researchers have paid the concept little attention. Like alcoholics driving drunk, wealth addiction imperils everyone. Wealth addicts are, more than anybody, specifically responsible for the ever widening rift that is tearing apart our once great country. Wealth addicts are responsible for the vast and toxic disparity between the rich and the poor and the annihilation of the middle class. Only a wealth addict would feel justified in receiving $14 million in compensation — including an $8.5 million bonus — as the McDonald’s C.E.O., Don Thompson, did in 2012, while his company then published a brochure for its work force on how to survive on their low wages. Only a wealth addict would earn hundreds of millions as a hedge-fund manager, and then lobby to maintain a tax loophole that gave him a lower tax rate than his secretary.

DESPITE my realizations, it was incredibly difficult to leave. I was terrified of running out of money and of forgoing future bonuses. More than anything, I was afraid that five or 10 years down the road, I’d feel like an idiot for walking away from my one chance to be really important. What made it harder was that people thought I was crazy for thinking about leaving. In 2010, in a final paroxysm of my withering addiction, I demanded $8 million instead of $3.6 million. My bosses said they’d raise my bonus if I agreed to stay several more years. Instead, I walked away.

The first year was really hard. I went through what I can only describe as withdrawal — waking up at nights panicked about running out of money, scouring the headlines to see which of my old co-workers had gotten promoted. Over time it got easier — I started to realize that I had enough money, and if I needed to make more, I could. But my wealth addiction still hasn’t gone completely away. Sometimes I still buy lottery tickets.

In the three years since I left, I’ve married, spoken in jails and juvenile detention centers about getting sober, taught a writing class to girls in the foster system, and started a nonprofit called Groceryships to help poor families struggling with obesity and food addiction. I am much happier. I feel as if I’m making a real contribution. And as time passes, the distortion lessens. I see Wall Street’s mantra — “We’re smarter and work harder than everyone else, so we deserve all this money” — for what it is: the rationalization of addicts. From a distance I can see what I couldn’t see then — that Wall Street is a toxic culture that encourages the grandiosity of people who are desperately trying to feel powerful.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

I really love this subject and I like to see and I also respect, what others have to say about it.

My own problem or 'issue' is that I respect people but on the whole I don't actually 'like' them - or most of them. Sure I've certainly seen what can be termed 'wealth addiction' and of course I understand what is meant by it. For me I have a problem coming to terms with what most people are defining as 'wealth...' They can't mean plain numerical money, because the word 'wealth' possesses a far broader meaning than that: maybe they mean 'a LOT of money so that one might purchase a LOT of things.'

But even that fails to describe actual wealth to me. Okay though let's just refer to them as 'wealth addicts' because most of us know what that broadly implies. These 'wealth addicts' acquire for example, wine cellars of thousands, nay HUNDREDS of thousands of bottles almost none of which they can ever actually drink themselves... So what are they meant to be enjoying? It is definitely a reiterative proving of some mysterious point to themselves, that appears to be going on, yet at the same time I think I observe that certain types of these individuals are beyond just extroverts, they NEED to constantly engage with other people and endlessly go from one to the next testing their Rolodex propaganda method of communicating with people!

And THESE are the types of people who end up with mountains of trinkets and samples and offers and summonses too - and wine bottles and cars and all kinds of other junk, including stocks and shares and dollars. It's almost a side-effect of an insane and hyperactive annoying nature with acquiring an endless amount of Rolodex 'contacts' that have to be managed and maintained.

The enjoyment of power money riches culture music sex and material items is something I myself could say I pursue, but only if it is 'at depth/in dimensions.'

To really enjoy things at depth and in the fullnesses of the dimensions of those 'things' whatever they are, you need time, experience, understanding, sensitivity - a lot of people who are said to make fantastic sums of money rarely possess any of these prerequisites.

The psychological self-deceit of saying, 'one day I WILL' makes these sorts of people never reach that day and they only have Tantalus's treasure - it's there but they cannot use it/never do use it.

Never never would I give lectures or speeches or give advice or even help to other people.

(THIS is not advice here either, it is just a comment).

Because I am far too busy personally enjoying whatever I am engaged in right now. I don't enjoy teaching and I never would.

It is a great bitter-sweet thing to me that there seem to be SO MANY people who 'might/could/would like' to benefit from me sharing things with them - sweet in that it is thrilling to hope and to imagine the potential of deep and full human sharing, and bitter in that I don't want to try even, to engineer such a thing into happening.

Shadows of intelligent and beautiful women flit at the corners of my eye during some passages and moments of my years.

The Angelus Bordeaux costs about $20, and the Petrus of the same year about $2,000. The Angelus is monumentally better. To understand WHY it is better, and so to have not even the slightest of doubts on account of the judgement of the money, is a seriously great personal victory to me about my own life.

But you cannot sell the Angelus for $2,000 - and therein sits one of the high secrets of money and of wealth: pearls of great price are often in fields of great cost, but pearls of great value are seldom in fields at all... People are not rich or wealthy who have the $2,000 for the Petrus - they are enraptured by mistaken belief... And trade backwards and forwards over an overextended sum that bankrupts their understanding. Buffet understands nothing, Gates understands nothing. But they HAVE hands on the tillers over the Stygian River of dead money. It's dead. Same as the bodies in graveyards; there are lots of them.

The man who can MAKE you have a belief, and especially a mistaken belief, IS the pearl of wealth. He is ALIVE.

And the biggest mistake of all is to think that you can never be tricked or deceived. The biggest mistakes are made by the biggest fools, the biggest egos, the biggest big-heads, the 'most powerful' this, the 'most learned' that.

If I wandered into Davos this week, my first consideration is to wonder whether there were any others like me there. And I would be careful.

Since I am not in Davos this week, however, I am quite relaxed right now.

D.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

I only have a limited list of icons so I stuck a : ) in there.

But it really means a green face thingy with the sticky-out tongue.

 

[dan_c00000]

You replied to one of LT's threads in a serious manner.

You can't do that.

It makes him think he is relevant here.

Please edit and put a in it.

Thank you,
The Management.

Wait let's take this post seriously for a second and consider the following:

1. LJ claims he is rich.
2. LJ claims he can't get girls.
3. If this guy can get a girl how come LJ can't?
4. If that guy can use his money to get a girl why can't LJ?

Only logical conclusion: LJ is J. Howard Marshall and faked his death.

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

About the Angelus Bordeaux vs Petrus bullshit - that's a common thing among wealth addicts. They always have to have their bling - their overpriced art and collectibles, their mansions, the Bentleys, all that crap. I've met people who own private jets and they're always on about comparing themselves with the other yacht-owning Joneses. You nailed it on the wall with the comment about expensive trinkets.

What the fuck is it worth?

I'm thinking Polk & Rowlings don't collect a lot of that. I betcha if Rowlings could go back and become anonymous and avoid the foot traffic at her door, she would.

This is her take on wealth:

But as she told an interviewer recently: 'I've got a mental amount I can't spend beyond. I limit myself to what I think I would be justified in spending on frivolity.' The amount, it seems, is around £500.

For although her life is comfortable and she allows herself some 'treats', in truth Jo Rowling lives not much better than the wife of say, an averagely successful City banker. She does not have, a la Posh, a dozen diamond-encrusted watches - actually she barely ever wears one and the most expensive in her collection is a fairly simple £300 number from Gucci.

She would be quite horrified by the idea of buying, as Victoria has done, an expensive designer watch worth several thousand pounds for one of her three children (Jessica, from her first marriage, is 11, David is three and Mackenzie, her baby daughter, one).

Mind you, she has been known to take $100,000 vacations and her house is gated... but that's because people won't leave her and her child the fuck alone. (There's always the fear of a repeat of the Charles Lindbergh Jr. tragedy, for instance.)

I wonder how many more sky-high rollers like her are out there?