Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Rich

This week,

Anne Kadet

visited my apartment to interview me about what it’s like to be wealthy and live in New York City. The interview will be published this Monday on Anne’s terrific and popular Substack,

CAFÉ ANNE

Anne’s interview method is to be her authentic lovely, friendly, curious self. Diabolical. Two hours passed quickly. I was putty in her hands.

As I said goodbye to my friend Anne, I realized just how much of an expert interviewer she is. I’d revealed far more than I’d intended.  

One of Anne’s questions can be roughly summarized as “why do you think most people hate the rich?” You’ll have to read the interview to hear my reply.

But Anne’s question took me back to an essay I wrote at the beginning of last summer called “The Despicable Rich.” Here’s my revised version.

The Despicable Rich

It is a truth universally acknowledged that anyone in possession of a great fortune must be despicable in one way or another. At least that’s how the fictional rich are portrayed in movies, television, and novels. As for the actual rich, there are enough bad actors among us to provide an endless stream of media stories demonstrating human nature at its worst.

While I see no conspiracy, I do suspect an implicit “deal.” Great inequality causes less outrage when blunted by the idea that being rich comes with a complement of the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, wrath, lust, gluttony, sloth, and even envy, e.g., of the billionaire for the multi-billionaire.

In other words, a sufficient incidence of screwed up lives, whether in real life or in fiction.

It’s a transmutation of envy into schadenfreude.

This is not a new idea. In Greek mythology, King Midas is granted his wish that everything he touches turns to gold. He forgets to ask for exceptions, so anything he tries to eat or drink turns to gold as does his beloved daughter. Midas starves to death, heartbroken. ¹

Closer to our own era, Ebeneezer Scrooge, the rich miser of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, refuses to help the poor who’d rather starve than go to London’s wretched workhouses. Scrooge approves:

“If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”  

Only the intercession of a time travelling ghost who shows Scrooge his lonely, unloved end can shock Scrooge from his heartless ways.

“Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, Ebenezer Scrooge”

In our modern era, the TV show Succession is a worthy heir of reveling in the misery of the rich. Despite their billions, no one in the dysfunctional Roy family is happy. Succession is a masterful ode to how a self-made patriarch––Logan Roy––uses his wealth and power to crush the self-esteem of his four children. ²

The Hamptons in Emma Cline’s The Guest

I wrote my original Despicable Rich post after I’d read and thoroughly enjoyed Emma Cline’s The Guest. It’s set in the Hamptons and follows Alex, a 22 year-old call girl, scratching and clawing to survive to the end of a Hamptons summer. It’s Labor Day week, and like a twisted version of Odysseus, Alex must use her wiles to confront a cavalcade of vapid, foolish, unhappy rich people.

Of course while reading about these awful rich people, I kept thinking, “thank goodness, that’s not me!”

However.

Cline mocks the overwhelming boredom of conversations at certain Hamptons dinner parties. Alex wonders how many times people can repeat the Hamptons mantra, “It’s so beautiful out here.” Or, the same thing with a veneer of culture, “Ah, the special quality of the light. No wonder artists like Pollack came here to paint.”

I’m guilty of having uttered those same, self-satisfied clichés.

I like to admire our backyard, an enclave of smooth lawn, mature trees, hedges, and flowers, and listen to the sweet birdsong. But then the moment is ruined by the loud whir and whoosh of lawn mowers and leaf blowers. Added to the ruckus is the incessant barking of Sophie whose job it is to let us know, repeatedly, whenever someone is on the property.

Cline nails this:

“So much effort and noise required to cultivate…a landscape meant to invoke peace and quiet. The appearance of calm demanded an endless campaign of violent intervention.”

Finally, there’s the two-faced nature of Hamptons’ real estate. Properties are meant to be lived in and enjoyed but also serve as statements of wealth and power and, sometimes, taste.

I love our house but I’m not immune to admiring and envying aspects our property lacks––a view of the ocean or a vast graveled courtyard perfectly centered on a geometric entrance, recalling to mind the approach to a grand French chateau.

Here's Alex at one of those magical places next to the ocean.

“The envy acted like adrenaline in Alex’s body, a swift and enlivening rush to the head. It was better, sometimes, to never know certain things existed.”

The rest of the characters in Cline’s novel are familiar tropes of awful rich-people:

• The late middle-aged men who use young girls as arm-candy.

• The mostly absent father and his resentful son.

• The personal assistants appended at the whip-end of the whims of their masters and mistresses.

• The aging women with obsessively exercised slim legs struggling to appear decades younger (at least from a distance).

• The house-sharing, declasse twenty-somethings.

• The unsupervised, privileged teenagers doing drugs and hooking up. 

Revolt against the rich

The depictions of the wealthy behaving badly, whether in The Guest or in Succession, are rooted in true anecdotes. But it would be wrong to assume that most or even many wealthy people act with such flagrant entitlement.

That said, it would also be wrong to minimize the current atmosphere of general rancor against rich people. The statistics and the current zeitgeist agree––there is excessive and corrosive economic inequality in America.

Historically, extremes of inequality have reverted to a mean. In the past the corrective mechanism has been government action whether through changes in the tax code or the provision of large-scale benefit programs such as Social Security or Medicaid.

My concern is that if corrective action is not taken, inequality will become so stretched that something will break and reform will become revolt. Then the bread and circuses of telling tales of miserable rich people will seem irrelevant. Maybe they already are.  

The truth is that the modern rich are as equally good or bad, equally kind or mean, equally generous or stingy, as any other class of people.  

But that equality of behavior is wholly insufficient, wholly unacceptable. Because for the most part, wealth provides great advantages. And not enough wealthy people pause to consider what they will do with their one wealthy and precious life.

How will they represent their class? Will they be like Logan Roy of Succession and adopt an attitude of “f*ck em” to every person at every turn?

Or to use a real life, outrageous example, behave like the Sackler family of Oxycontin infamy who made their billions by dealing death and misery to so many Americans. ³

No. The correct alternative is to recognize that wealth imposes an added responsibility of good behavior. When you can afford to behave generously, it is sinful not to do so.

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Question for the comments: When you think of the wealthy, which person, real or fictional, comes first to mind and why?

1. I’ve taken the liberty of simplifying the myth of King Midas. In many versions King Midas repents and his golden curse is lifted.

And of course I think of the original (and best) James Bond played by Sean Connery battling his gold-obsessed nemesis Auric Goldfinger.

2. I love Succession. My three children gave me the gift of this Cameo video of Brian Cox in his Logan Roy role giving me a salty birthday greeting.

3. I don’t understand why no member of the Sackler family has been criminally indicted. It’s a titanic failure of the pursuit of justice.