THE MONEY CULTURE

Daniel Gross

To The Rich, From America

We feel your pain. But that's no reason to stop spending. Stagnant wages haven't stopped us.

From the magazine issue dated Jan 28, 2008

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When the Gulfstream V lands in St. Bart's, can you have your assistant set up a call? We have to talk. Look, we've had a pretty good deal these past several years. We gave you pretty much everything you wanted. Massive reductions in the top income-tax rates? Happy to oblige. Cuts on the levies on dividends and capital gains, which overwhelmingly benefit the upper crust? No problem. Placing the estate tax—excuse me, the death tax—on the road to extinction? You got it. We've even overlooked the fact that private-equity and hedge-fund managers pay only a 15 percent tax rate.

We've looked the other way at the gaucherie of extreme consumption, spawned by the greatest concentration of wealth since the 1920s. (The share of national income taken down by the wealthiest 1 percent rose from 14.6 percent in 2003 to 17.4 percent in 2005, according to Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley.) We sit patiently on JetBlue and Southwest as your private jets clog up the airspace and runways. We continue to bust our butts, defend the borders and uphold the rule of law—all to protect your fortunes and property.

All we've asked in return is that you do a couple of things you're really good at: spend and invest that money close to home. Hire us, and keep the cash registers ringing, the asset managers managing and all the service providers providing the many services you so richly deserve.

Generally speaking, you've lived up to your end of the bargain, buying second homes, splurging on third marriages and fourth cars, throwing expensive, self-aggrandizing parties (like Blackstone Group chairman Steve Schwarzman's $3 million 60th-birthday bash) and funding medical research. America's top 20 percent of earners spend more in any given year than the bottom 60 percent.

You've also been investing locally, which we appreciate. Americans possess what stock-market types dub an enormous "home bias," or overexposure to the domestic market. At the end of 2006, says Jeff Applegate, chief investment officer of Citi Global Wealth Management, American investors had more than 80 percent of their stock portfolios in U.S. equities, even though U.S. stock markets accounted for well under half the global supply. Leo Grohowski, chief investment officer at BNY Mellon Wealth Management, notes that high-net-worth investors (people with $2 million to $200 million) have a paltry five to 20 portfolios allocated to non-U.S. stocks. "U.S. investors are generally woefully underexposed to opportunities that exist outside the United States," he says. As a result, our companies can draw from deep pools of local capital.

But lately, worrisome signs indicate that you might not be living up to your end of the bargain. It's now becoming clear that the Christmas season was tough on everyone—and not just Wal-Mart and Target, where the masses shop. Like its flagship store at the corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York, the Valhalla of extreme consumption, Tiffany & Co. was thought to be impregnable to forces of nature. Its sales held up even as exhausted consumers pooped out. But last week the chain reported that same-store sales slumped in the United States in December. Lexus sales were off 7.2 percent in December from the year before.

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Posted By: John Luma @ 01/26/2008 11:56:14 AM

To protest the law requiring everyone to identify themselves honestly before voting is ridiculous. Voting is a right for citizens only, yet there are many today who would like to extend this right to foreigners for political reasons. Who want to allow illegals who are not citizens, to vote. Asking someone to show a photo ID is hardly fascist or a sign of hating democracy. It is a way of preserving citizenship and the meaning of citizenship. It is a legal requirement much as writing a check at the grocery store or showing photo ID at the entrance to private property. If you want to live in a non-photo ID world I'd advise moving to an Arabian desert or deep in an African jungle. No need to prove who you are at all.
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Posted By: John Luma @ 01/26/2008 11:36:01 AM

Bravo, thanks for a finger pointing that needs to be pointed. When F.Scott Fitzgerald looked in awe at the lifestyles of the wealthy and said, "The rich aren't like you and I," Hemingway retorted, "Yeah, they've got more money." Both were true and it's still true 80 years later. Money doesn't guarantee happiness, but you don't see rich people giving it all away and going back to middle-class living. That's because everyone knows that wealth protects us from the harsh realities of life -- it affords us greater freedom of choice, better health care, better schools, and the emotional safety net of nicer homes, better food and the status of fashion, cars and great vacations. But it's time the wealthy step up to the responsibilities of their higher position in life and support the ambitions of the poor and middle class in Education, Job training and Mentoring programs, so others can learn their steps to success. We need the wealthy, those who have multiplied opportunities for so many already, to lead with the positive moral force only they can give.
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Posted By: Mwalimu @ 01/24/2008 4:15:13 PM

One of the most insidious legacies of the coddling rich is their assault on democracy. In Indiana, their henchmen, the Republican legislature, passed a law requiring all voters to a photo ID such as a passport or a drivers license in order to vote. Supposedly the Indiana legislature fears voter fraud, but exhaustive studies conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University debunk prove that voter fraud is virtually non-existent (I invite any one to check out these reports on their website.) The Republican legislature is simply trying to restrict voting to people who can afford to buy a car or people who can afford a Mediterranean cruise. The Republican party plans to instigate similar laws in other states. The voter ID law is merely a thinly disguised version of the poll tax, but the Supreme Court, packed with reactionary justices is likely to uphold the Indiana law. The passage of the restrictive voter ID law in Indiana by the Republican governor and legislature proves that the wealthy hate democracy - They wish to replace our democratic government with a neo-fascist so-called ???Federalist??? republic.