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the down side to being super-rich...for the rich and for the rest of us [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2024-09-15
What am I, the worlds most dedicated fiction reading doing giving 5 stars to a non-fiction essay in book form about wealth in America in particular but world wide as well? Well, it is certainly not a reaction to all that the details available in the book but rather the sense of what a convolulated system we have regarding wealth.
A lot of the book details how the "money buys happiness" attitude worlds. Rich people who are afraid of violence to the point of having panic rooms inside their panic rooms and security that would almost rival that of a nation abound. Unhappiness caused by the knowledge that many, if not most of one's "friends" are in their lives because of the money is also a theme that makes people that are super-rich feel isolated and alone even in their huge homes and all their private yachts and airplanes.
I had a scarcity of sympathy for those people, I have to admit. Why would I feel sorry for someone that could buy and sell me a hundred times over and still be able to ignore me and make my life miserable with their policies, often ones that they support to protect their previlege. Even many, a high percentage in fact, of the "acts of charity" amount to excuses to accept their position of superiority in our society and their elite positions in general. Why else would a super-rich donor give to a place like Carnagie Hall, or some other place that MANY Americans could never afford to go to...even on a tour? What good does that do the rank and file citizen? Very little.
And, as the book points out, it gets even worse. How? Well, "charitable" organizations are required to give something like 5 percent of their expenditures to the good cause they are advocating and that convention they have in that glamorous hotel or resort is often considered as part of the 5 percent. That helps nobody at all except the amount of entertainment and luxury the super-rich "donors" get for their "donation." This is addition to their good press they get for "being so giving". That's not to mention that many "Chartable" organizations actively work to make the lives of others worse; anti-LGBQT so called "charities" or those investing in the very issue they pretect to be fighting. Like an "clear environment" organization investing in fossil fuel.
But, the good news is that SOME rich people actually go so far as to give their money away. Part of them want to see if they can "win it back" while a relative few actually want to fight the system and make society a closer to even playing field.
It is that last group that the book ends on which makes me feel like the book deserves 5 stars. Yes, it ends being a good feeling but also a tiny hope for actual justice in the years to come.
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