Daddy Warbucks

This is a tough question. A friend of mine often reminds me me "retirement is a financial state, not an age."

Whenever I buy something I don't really, really need, or even donate to charity, a little voice in the back of my head says "every dollar you're spending or giving away is adding minutes onto your work life. Or it's a dollar that you won't have when a family member is in crisis." That always depresses me. I'd love to have enough money that I could give it away without thinking things like that.

If I had enough money to buy an $85M house, I wouldn't. I'd decide how much I was going to keep for myself and my family, give the rest away, buy a little house on a lake and a Toyota Corolla, and be happy. Maybe I would go boating a lot. Maybe I would write another book. Maybe I would build some cool software. Maybe I would read to my heart's content. Maybe I would even be philanthropic on occasion. I can certainly tell you I would be a very happy rich person.

 

If I had the money to buy an 85m house, and experience as much financial distress from that purchase as I currently would from buying a new cell phone? Fuck it, I'd have five of them. So I could host parties in New York, London, San Fran, Tokyo and Sydney - Depending on where I was following the summer good weather. I'd still probably have a pretty modest and chilled lifestyle - but it'd be modest and chilled in some pretty amazing places.

I think the life view of someone who finds wealth without having to work for it, in their thirties with a family and friends and loved ones and a lifestyle built around modest/upper middle class income is very, very different to that of someone who finds wealth without having to work for it before they learn how to count to twenty. I think we all want something nicer than what we have. I could take my friends and family into wealth and be happy. I think a rich kid wants to find friends and family despite wealth, but they still have a very different base understanding of 'normal' to ours.

 

In the context of the world as a whole and history, we are all immensely wealthy. The majority of us live in first world countries in an era of never before seen wealth. We should never lose sight of this.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the whole spending money=bad while donating money=good isn't really accurate. Every time we spend money we are also doing good by means of helping businesses grow who will in turn hire workers(hopefully). Likewise, not all charity is beneficial. If you're trying to do the right thing, just giving money away may be a waste. It's important to research charities and think about how to get the most bang for your buck. If you don't want to do all that research, then the best thing to do may just be to blow as much money as you can on all the things that make you happy.

A final thing to keep in mind is that giving charity has been shown time and time again to be one of the best ways of increasing your own happiness.

All these points serve only really to muddy the debate even further, but they are important nonetheless.

 

I've heard it said that money does not change you but that it turns you into more of who you really are.

Whoever that person is doesn't owe anyone a damned thing, let alone an explanation of what they do with their money, if it was produced by off their own back or if they got it from being shat out of the right spam purse. Its completely between them and their own conscience. Sure we'd love for them to be altruistic and helpful to humanity but if they're not? Um, thats their prerogative.

 

It's more people that fall into "new money" through business etc who go around behaving like they have to prove something, shamelessly try to climb the ladder of social status and have to flash their money on fancy cars etc that shit me.

The truly megarich like Petra Ecclestone I could not really care less about and to expect the likes of her to contribute or "change the world" ... phleeeeeze , what a simpleminded scapegoat.

What is the likes of the IMF, World Bank, United Nations etc doing?

What about all the millions and billions that developed countries donate as foreign aid? What happens to that money? Where does it go?

As if giving more is going to make the difference.

An excerpt from “Fiddling while Africa Starves” by P. J. O’Rourke, about Live Aid concerts for Africa: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.freewebs.com/meganmain/Fiddling%20while%20Africa%20Starves.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.freewebs.com/meganmain/Fiddl ... arves.html</a>

 

Couldn't agree more with this, in our country you can have your own apartment with, heat, electricity, drinkable water, not have to share a bathroom with the rest of your community and STILL be considered poor. The top guy 5,000 years ago was still sharing a cave with everyone else.

As for miss richy pants, let her do her own thing, she won the genetic lottery, good for her. It sounds like she's doing a good amount for charity as it is anyways, not only that, but at least the $85 million is going into an investment, not something frivolous like a caviar and champagne party. We all spend a lot of money on stupid shit we don't need instead of giving it to starving people, just because she does it on a much larger scale doesn't mean she should be chastised for it any more than anyone else.

Here's a random thought though, in a way I honestly feel bad for people like her that are born into money. Everything is relative, her average day today is much more luxurious than anything we will ever experience, but that's still her average day, buying a yacht for her doesn't feel any more special than going on a boat feels ride for an average person. Furthermore, people like her have nothing to strive for, she's already at the top and nothing she does will have a meaningful impact on anyone she cares about. Seriously, she could start a company from the ground up and get it to be worth $2 billion dollars and no one in her family would give a shit, it would be like picking up a couple hours of babysitting or something for us.

People like to bitch endlessly about their 9-5 but there is always that hope of things getting better, there is something to strive for, if you get a big raise or big promotion the lifestyle of your family can be better than it was yesterday. It can certainly be tedious but it instills us with a sense of purpose. With her, there's no hope, she's already at the top and her life is just beginning, there is really not much she can do to improve her life at this point, everything was done for her and she has nothing to work towards, no meaningful goals or aspirations.

That said, I'd take her money in a fucking heartbeat.

 

I find this absolutely insane:

Billion dollar house.

For the sole reason that this is equivalent to having 20 million dollar homes. In every state. Maybe that wouldn't go so far in California, but in Missouri? You'd be balling out of control.

 

I adopt Warren Buffett's feelings on inheritance, "enough for them to do anything, but not enough to do nothing".

At the very least, billionaires owe it to society to produce valuable members of society.

Apparently the Hiltons' idea of value are sex tapes.

 

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this stuff, and I've come to believe that you can judge a man by the value he places on civil society. And, similarly, you can judge a society as w whole on the value it places on fostering that civil society.

I don't think anyone has a moral obligation to make the world a better place. But, I think those that go above and beyond to do so can be judged objectively better than those that don't. As long as your hierarchy of needs are being met, there is no reason to believe you can't do it. I mean, fuck, my income is less than $20,000 a year and I still find time to volunteer in a productive way.

I also don't think that donating a couple bucks is going to make a difference. Volunteered time is the strongest capital for making the world a better place.

But, if you have the money to build a new foundation from scratch, or suddenly solve the immediate financial needs of a cause, there's no question it can make a difference. It has to be done intelligently, but it can be done. Here's an good example—this guy spent a lot of time researching how to best put his donations to good use, and found an effective way to do it. You can't just throw money at a problem and expect it to go away (see: UNICEF), but there's no question financial capital has a large effect on the effectiveness of these kinds of causes.

 

To me, privileged is living in a house like that with your family. Spoiled is your dad buying you one so you have a 10,000 sq ft closet for your shoe collection. Money cannot buy class. Or taste. $85 million for a gaudy, French chateau rip off smack dab in reputedly the most obnoxious city in America. Fantastic. I hope she turns around and puts that right back on the market. You could buy a castle with a winery for half that in REAL France.

From above, A BILLION for a house? It's your money to do with as you please, but decency makes me question a person like this. What the fuck can you do with a billion dollar house you can't do with a half billion dollar house? That fucking place better be able to fly. I remember a $100 million house in London, but it was the size of a city block. Do you know how far a $100 million takes cancer and AIDS research? Even $50 million? He better be moving in every person he has ever known into a place like that.

It's not his duty. He has no responsibility to the poor. He could set on fire in front of a starving family, it's HIS to do with as he pleases. But that guy could cure malaria in a significant chunk of impoverished Africa for a fraction of that house's cost. I couldn't blow that kind of money on a masturbation project; unconscionable.

So what I'm talking about is that line between decency and self fulfillment. How much is too much. You can do whatever you want with $20 billion as you can with $40 billion. You can't spend all that. Do something with it.

 

I dunno, dude. A $50 million masturbation project would probably provide invaluable research and service to mankind. Premiering next week on TLC, "The Masturbation Project: Right Hand Man" starring Black Jesus.

You're probably right, but I would think there are some economists and smart folks out there, that could demonstrate the "trickle down" impact of spending that other $20 billion; and, whether or not the wider influence of all that expenditure to the people employed by it would be more to the greater good than towards malaria.

 

Not to get too deep concerning the crowd, but a bright lady once said, "Those that are fit to inherit money are those that don't need to." (paraphrase). It goes back to that other phrase, "Something given has no value." For someone to appreciate anything, they need to have earned it. They need to remember those weeks and weeks (or years) it took of hard work to earn that Guitar, or that Boat.

Free Boats have no value to the owner because they never worked for it beforehand.


That's not to say we should have a 100% death tax. A lot of people get rich off of trust fund kiddy's idiocy, and the rest of us are incredibly entertained in the process.

 

If you're browsing an internet forum right now you're closer to being as spoiled as this rich chick than you are to someone unsure of their next meal in a third world country.

$8 or $8 billion... all a bunch of nonsense.

My thoughts on money have changed quite a bit in the last couple years. Money is worth nothing outside of any economic/societal construct besides what exists right now. Pretty risky if that's what you're assuming will exist for the entirety of your life.

 

There's a moderator on this forum that would strongly disagree with you.

 

Money's a tool. You use it to get what you want. Some people have tools well within reach, others have to work to get their hands on the tool. I'm part of the second group, unfortunately.

And, the uber rich don't owe me anything. Do I think they spend their money is stupid stupid ways? For sure. But, that's their money. As long as they're not harming me or mine, I don't care.

 

I agree. If Soulja Boy wants to drop $55,000,000 on a plane instead of rebuilding the ghetto, then that's his deal. I don't like when someone tells me what I do with my piddly amount of money is a waste, how could I say Mr Richdude should help Africa with all his money?

 

I think I probably agree with this, but something seems off that people respond very differently to these two situations, from a moral perspective:

A) Someone is on fire, and might die. You have some water that you don't really need. Sure, it'd be nice if you used some of that water to help them, but you don't have an obligation to do so.

B) Someone is living in extreme poverty, and might die. You have some money that you don't really need. Sure, it'd be nice if you used some of that money to help them, but you don't have an obligation to do so.


It's not entirely clear to me what the substantial difference between the two is, but people act as if there is one. For arguments sake, let's say you just got that water from a well, and therefore "work hard to get the water you have." Still seems like that first situation is unconscionable, but the second one we would merely shrug at.