Being Rich Can Be A Hassle

Saw this article on line.  http://biz.yahoo.com/special/luxury083106_article1.html

Here are the highlights, or lowlights, depending on your perspective.  Seems a couple of researchers (shouldn't they have something better to do?) researched private jet owners and found they have an average income of $9.2 million and a net worth within bragging rights of $100 million.

They spend $30,000 a year on alcohol which is a lot of beer no matter what anybody says.  Essential travel, whatever that is, takes up $98,000 a year.  Hotels and restaurants eat up (sorry) $157,000 a year and spas cost over $100,000.

It gets worse.  $147,000 on watches, $117,000 on clothes, etc. etc. etc.

How can you spend anything near that on watches and clothes? 

One interesting statistic is that the average ultra rich person (how can a ultra rich person be average?) is 57 years old.  I better get going.

Enough to want to make you a communist or a socialist or a Democrat.  No justice, no peace.  Up against the wall.

Well, not really.  I could care less about these people.  And somebody has to keep those watch and alcohol people in business.  I could care less about these people but I am not going to try and stop them or tax them or have them give to charity (most probably do) because social engineering through taxes doesn't work.  The prime example is the luxury tax.  Can't remember exactly which president came up with this disaster but I am leaning heavily toward Jimmy Carter.  Somebody got the bright idea to tax yachts and luxury cars priced above some level.  Yep, the yacht people went out of business and the car sales went in the tank. 

Do I care about the yacht industry?  Not really but a surprising number of people lost their jobs and some south Florida communities really got clobbered. 

The real reason I am not going to go too hard on these folks is that they pay the taxes in this country along, of course, with most people with fairly good paying jobs.  A statistic I remember from somewhere is that 5% of the population pays 55% of the taxes.  That means a lot of people are not paying taxes which means they have no desire for tax reform.  I am in favor of tax reform so if everybody paid taxes then they would be mad as well so we would get tax reform but we won't so we are stuck with this insidious systm that no one understands.

OK, here is the real reason I don't care about these people.  I don't want that much money.  What a hassle.  Money will not buy happiness (there's an original thought) but it will get rid of a lot of problems.  But too much money brings it own problems so I will be a Goldilocks here and tell you to strive for just enough but not too much.

Comments

[vodkaSpy]

Good Article... getting new art is nice :)

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