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photography from Guatemala, Maryland, Italy and elsewhere by Doug Terry |
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VISIT DC? AN ESSAY ON WHY EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN SHOULD VISIT |
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News, analysis, commentary, social trends, culture, politics, government, books, movies, travel, cycling and other stuff |
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T H E T E R R Y R E P O R T 2012 |
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Facts first, logic always, truth before everything |
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MITT ROMNEY’S MILLIONS RAISE A QUESTION: WHAT IS THE VALUE OF MONEY AFTER YOU HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED? |
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We’re adults, right? We like money. We like money, sex and cookies. Or maybe a good, thick steak. Good food. Whatever. Money is right up there, near the top of the list. For some people, it is the only thing on their list. For most of us, family comes first, but you need money to keep the family afloat. Most people probably figure they could get by very, very well on 200 to 400 thousand a year. A beautiful house. Couple of grand, sleek cars that cost north of 40 thousand. College for the kids, anywhere they want to go and can get in. Then, there’s room left aside maybe for a vacation place, occasional trips to Europe or the islands. The good life. It is great to have enough money to take care of a parent who suddenly needs day by day care or even more. The same applies to helping out a relative or a very close friend. Money creates its own problems, but, man, can it solve a lot of them, too, easily and quickly. A lot of heads go to sleep at night thinking, “My kids will never have to worry”, or “My dad can have the best care, not just be warehoused.” Beyond these things, which are the dreams of millions of people in the world who can never afford them, what good is money? What good does it do to have 100 million or 200 million or more? What do you do with it after you’ve got it besides worry about losing it? Ask any really rich guy and he’ll tell you the biggest perk of money is to have a jet, or a share of a jet, that can take you to places really fast. Breakfast in Miami, lunch in Atlanta, home in New Jersey by nightfall. Sweet. Once someone goes into that range of wealth, and once they have told themselves that the purpose of their money is to make themselves and their families happy (and almost nothing else), there is no end to how much money one can need or how much one can use. The desires and the demands are endless. The guys who started Google have their own motherbear 747, the same size plane that carries the president of the United States around the world and the same type plane that is used for the “doomsday” aircraft that the president would use in the event of nuclear or other disaster. Don’t worry, the Google guys have other planes at their disposal, too. They don’t always have to take the big one. So, if you want to live like a king, money can, in fact, exceed that. You can fly around the world on your own magic carpet. You can stay in $5,000 a night hotel suites. You can buy your wife $50,000 diamonds. The daughter of a Russian billionaire bought an 88 million dollar apartment in New York recently, the highest price ever paid in that city for personal real estate. Whatever you want, you can have. Once one has money and has bought everything, and more than you will ever need, what’s next? To my mind, the answer is this: nothing. Unless you are engaged with the world in some way beyond your business interests, money starts not just to lose its meaning, it starts to be a burden. Some people live to eat. Other people live to manage their money. As the quote went in the first Wall Street movie, how many yachts can you ski behind? Mitt Romney, trying to be casual, told an interviewer he had “somewhere” between 100 million and 240 million dollars. He was using the evasive parameters of his required financial disclosures or at least those generally filed by members of Congress, who give ranges, not specific figures. This amount of money will not endear him to average voters, but it is not surprising that some people get very, very rich in our society. We have 300 million plus people. Just capturing a small percentage of the purchases and financial transactions in which we are involved can make one wealthy. What is surprising, however, is what the wealthy do with their money. For the most part, they keep it. They plan to live long, well satisfied lives and pass along as much as possible to their children. Near the end of their lives, usually in their late ‘60s or early ‘70s, many wealthy people set up charities or give big amounts to other charities or colleges. Bill Gates, one of the top five richest people on the planet, had to be convinced by his wife and his parents to set up a foundation and, if the reports are correct, he put up considerable resistance. Most people when they get older finally come to terms with the fact that they will not live to be 140 and, therefore, realize, as in the old cliche, that they can’t take it with them. So, they start giving it away in ways designed to make themselves look good: see, I wasn’t actually so greedy after all, I did it for my foundation. Yeah, sure. I will concede that Mitt Romney is probably a good guy, more or less. He probably wouldn’t be a bad neighbor (his house would be so far back from the road, however, I might never get to say hello). It doesn’t concern me that he has a lot of money (what money does to the mind and to one’s perception of the world does concern me, however). While I am sure he and his wife have given to many charities over the years, what has he actually done with his money? If he had taken 10 or 20 million and done something significant for the world, that would impress me. If he had gotten rid of money of his “excessive” wealth (money he couldn’t spend in five lifetimes), that would have impressed the voters. In fact. his wealth wouldn’t be an issue in the campaign, most likely. Instead, he has behaved like a normal, selfish multi-millionaire (the way others would do, if they had it). Like most wealthy people, he sat on his money, giving off dribs and drabs here and there, all the while buying five houses (why does anyone ever need five houses?) and buying expensive gifts for his wife. Beyond that, I have no idea what he’s done with his money. At the time he was piling up millions at Bain Capital he told associates that he wished he could afford an expensive sports car. It looks like he’s done nothing of any real significance with his money. This doesn’t make him a bad person. It makes him a rich guy who wants to be president. We had one of those for eight years in G.W. Bush and it didn’t work out too well. To the poor, the middle class or the merely well off, having lots of money would seem like a dream come true. Think what you could do! There is something about money, however, that turns the attention toward the money itself and away from all the things about which you once dreamed. Poor guys have ideas and big plans, rich guys have all the money and few ideas. To many in the media and to a lot of voters, Romney looks like a guy who has no core values, no fundamental things he believes in besides his family and his rather strange church. That’s to be expected. People who wallow in money lose their perspective on life. They tend to float above it, all the while looking to take care of the money they’ve made above all else. Doug Terry, 2.2.12 |
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