A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.
Ground Rules
- Remember that we're all just Internet randos. Don't bet your life savings on a hot tip from this thread.
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Notes -
""When I think of a really rich man," says a Boston blue-collar, "I think of one of those estates where you can't see the house from the road." Hence the name of the top class, which could just as well be called "the class in hiding." Their houses are never seen from the street or road. They like to hide away deep in the hills or way off on Greek or Caribbean islands (which they tend to own), safe, for the moment, from envy and its ultimate attendants, confiscatory taxation and finally expropriation. It was the Great Depression, Vance Packard speculates, that badly frightened the very rich, teaching them to be "discreet, almost reticent, in exhibiting their wealth." From the 1930s dates the flight of money from such exhibitionistic venues as the mansions of upper Fifth Avenue to hideways in Virginia, upper New York State, Connecticut, Long Island, and New Jersey. The situation now is very different from the one in the 1890s satirized by Thorstein Veblen in The Theory of the Leisure Class. In his day the rich delighted to exhibit themselves conspicuously, with costly retainers and attendants much in evidence. Now they hide, not merely from envy and revenge but from expose journalism, much advanced in cunning and ferocity since Veblen's time, and from an even worse threat, virtually unknown to Veblen, foundation mendicancy, with its hordes of beggars in threepiece suits constantly badgering the well-to-do. Showing off used to be the main satisfaction of being very rich in America. Now the rich must skulk and hide."
Paul Fussell, "Class: A Guide through the American Status System", 1983
I wonder how much of this is ignoring the effect of changing crime rates. The NYC homicide rate nearly doubled during the Great Depression, and although it came down again, any families scared out of their Fifth Avenue mansions could have felt pretty smug when homicide nearly quintupled in the 60s.
Other crimes you might have wanted to hide from, if you could afford it:
"Efforts to address the increase in prostitution, especially by juveniles, were derailed by the arrival of crack cocaine to Times Square in 1986. As a result, crime rates spiked and continued to increase through 1989. The addictiveness of crack made it an especially insidious drug, as users focused their energy and resources on scoring the next ‘hit’. Crack dealers, junkies, and the cardboard encampments of the homeless took over the streets."
(from the Times Square Official Website - imagine how an anti-NYC-biased description looks!)
I also wonder how much of Fussell's analysis has now been obsoleted by further changing crime rates. NYC homicide rates plummeted rapidly, back to "at least no worse than the Great Depression" levels, in the 90s, and then dropped back to the previous baseline in the 2010s. I've never been acquainted with more than a couple high-paid New Yorkers, but I get the impression that having a second home out in the countryside is now just a way to better enjoy days off with the kids, not a desperate attempt to hide wealth out of sight.
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