54th book of 2020: Rich People Problems.
Since 2000, the number of wealthy people in the united states has exploded. Millionaire isn’t much of a distinction, with >9m millionaires in the country at the eve of the great recession. Sure the financial crisis took a bite out of the most wealthy, but with another 10 years of bull market behind us, inequality, and thus the ranks of the rich are on the march.
It’s easy to gaze at Mt. Olympus and lump all ‘the rich’ together, but as every book on inequality will tell you the strata higher than our own include multiple gradations that we just can’t tell apart. In Frank’s telling, there are three classes within Richistan:
- Lower Richistan: ~8m households. Net worth $1-$10m, with a primary residence worth ~$1m and who spend about $5k a year on spa services.
- Middle Richistan: ~2m households. $10-$100m. Often business owners, primary residence is now more like $~4m
- Upper Richistan: 1000’s of households. $100m-$1b. Primary residence $16.2m.
As Frank points out, for each of these classes, the amount of money needed to feel ‘secure’ is about 2x whatever the participant in the survey currently has. (read also: the hedonic treadmill). For the rest of the book, the author abandons any statistical framework for an attempt at fun anecdotes of rich people problems.
- Learning how to deal with a household staff of 100 when they profess to want a ‘simple life’.
- Nouveau riche competing with old money in the charity balls of palm springs.
- A dramatic reading of the family P&L for rich therapy groups.
- Becoming social entrepreneurs, or getting into politics.
- Teaching kids the lessons of insane wealth (and how to ensure that SOs get a prenup)
This s the pre-recession, American version of Billionaire Raj. Someday we’ll get a more considered study of the class but for now, this journalistic rendition will have to do.