An income of $2,800,000 places you in the country’s top one per cent of its top one percent of earners (effectively the top .01%). But does it make you fabulously wealthy?
Blump! Smash! Kabomp! Skeeeerudge! Baron Rockefeller von Nettingsworth rounds the corner of his living room in his vintage Jeep Wagoneer. Squack! Bugawk! Shubububububuthwack! He’s in hot pursuit of a brood of pheasants let loose moments before. Armed with a 102mm Combat Magnum, Nettingsworth has three minutes to shoot at least six pheasants, or a group of East Asian sociocrats hiding in his basement will be obliged to murder a kidnapped loans officer.
“It’s a game developed purely for my amusement,” the Baron tells me over a post-festivities BBQ in his 700-acre backyard, “but I’ll show you something that’s not amusing—the bill.”
I look down at the creased piece of paper in Nettingsworth’s hand, a list of discretionary and legal expenditures totaling nearly $50,000. Yowzah!
“It may look like I make a lot of money,” says a naked man ensconced in silk getting fed grapes by a Russian model, “but I pay a lot out in bribes.”
“And that’s just for one afternoon’s fun,” he adds with a sarcastic smile.
It’s a truth spoken in hushed voices, in the cloistered, cigar-fueled dens of only the most exclusive social gatherings: being fabulously, absurdly, dangerously, ridiculously wealthy has gotten to be—well—expensive.
“Time was you could really let your obsessions run unchecked,” says Rich Uncle Pennybags, the literal monopoly man. “Nowadays we disgustingly rich folk are forced to feed only our most consuming addictions.”
The average multi-multi-multi-millionaire can afford to spend at most $60,000 to $70,000 a day, a number which, adjusted for inflation, is well below the ‘Hughes Limit’ for indiscretionary expenditude.
And that money can run out fast! When you factor out jet-delivered brunches from San Francisco, Illuminati membership fees, and numerous out of court settlements, there really isn’t all that much dough left to roll around your bed with.
“It may look like I make a lot of money,” says a naked man ensconced in silk getting fed grapes by a Russian model, “but I pay a lot out in bribes.”
Many uber-rich will readily admit their lifestyle is a far cry from the robber baron ideal to which they aspire. The Schwabs, the Carnegies, the Vanderbilts—those guys were wheeling and dealing. Nowadays most moguls are forced to choose between one or the other.
Still, not all rich people are grounding their yachts over the high cost of caviar-infused champagne. Charles Whitmore, a real estate developer who takes home upwards of $190,000 annually, feels torn between the social unrest on both sides of the economic spectrum.
“You can imagine how weird it feels for me,” says Whitmore. “On the one hand you’ve got the 99% saying I make too much money. And on the other hand you have the .01%, effectively my 1%, saying they don’t make enough. I don’t know if I should feel pity or anger towards the middle class. When I listen to billionaire fat-cats complaining like this, I feel like I understand the rest of the nation’s frustration.”
Whitmore is founder of #occupywellfleet, a grassroots political movement driven by a dip in development costs in the coastal town of Wellfleet, Cape Cod. “#occupywellfleet is essentially a planned community on the inner shore of one of North America’s most idyllic summer getaways. We’re offering competitive buy-ins and a host of affordable marina services for families interested in getting in on the ground floor. We’re the 99th percent—it’s time we started living like it.”
How They Spend It:
Rich Uncle Pennybags
Household Income: $40,000,000
Monthly Expenses: Hotels: $1,500,000. (I keep landing on them.) Luxury Tax and Water Works: $300,000. Chance: $200,000. Community Chest: $100,000. Property wax: $10,000. Monocles: $80,000. (You drop quite a few reading the business pages these days!) Keeping my platinum-plated Roles Royce in fine working condition: $90,000. Gold doubloons to hock at poor: $20,000.
Baron Rockefeller von Nettingsworth
Household Income: $17,000,000
Monthly Expenses: Poker: $800,000. Dice: $200,000. (Hoo-wee!) Black Jack: $30,000. (Let it ride baby.) Pre-chewed Cuban cigars: $80,000. Solid oak swimming pool filled with the finest Kentucky bourbon, maintained by the finest Kentucky drunks: $40,000. Human Meat: $120,000. (But don’t print that!) Various Settlements: $600,000.
Sultan Abdul Mughni Asik
Household Income: untold riches
Monthly Expenses: Love: $230,000. Happiness: $940,000. A yacht powered by smaller yachts: $6,000,000. Assorted fineries: $1,400,000. The entire cast of The Love Boat: $700,000. Princely sums: $2,000,000. Transitions eyeglasses: $120.
Greetings fellow snackers. I regret to inform you that my once cherished blow-up chair has now completely deflated. The leak in the right armrest I noted last week had spread, as I feared, to the front base. At first this resulted in nothing more than a slight repositioning of the chair’s axis. As the week wore on however, I began to pitch ever forward at an imperceptibly slow rate, till my face was virtually drowning in the cheese dip resting before me. I ask you, is this any way for a man to snack?!
