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What happened to the wealthy? They used to keep these things amongst themselves rather than announce everything to the public. They used to use hidden signals
by mc32 5y ago
What happened to the wealthy?
They used to keep these things amongst themselves rather than announce everything to the public.
They used to use hidden signals of wealth to show themselves to each other but not reveal themselves to the public —but now it’s a contest for crass popularity.
I guess Robin Leach opened the crack and Instagram et al opened the floodgates. It’s a bit pathetic.
What the hell happened to the “millionaire next door” types? Someone who had wealth but you’d never know it?
- newsclues 5y agoMy theory is that too many of the “wrong” people got rich, so the luxury industry and media worked together to increase consumption and funnel the nouveau rich money to the “right” wealthy people.
- DocTomoe 5y agoThe real wealthy folks still are hush about their capital. The folks you see flinging cash and status around are - and always have been - the nouveau riche.
- mc32 5y agoPerhaps but Bezos, Branson, Ma, Musk, etc, aren’t the quietest bunch regarding their monies. We even have those who are wealthy but need to tell us how unwealthylike they live such as Dorsey. Just be.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- coldtea 5y ago>Perhaps but Bezos, Branson, Ma, Musk, etc, aren’t the quietest bunch regarding their monies. Well, those are also crude nouveaux riches. Heck, they even had to somehow work for their money (even those of them that got some hefty support from their parents). As opposed to several generations of old money.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago>the nouveau riche I'm not even sure that many are really rich. I recently read that the average net worth of a Ferrari owner is less than one million pounds and that most Ferraris are financed. Real wealth is what you don't spend.
- coldtea 5y agoReal wealth is what you get to enjoy.
- astrange 5y agoNet worth isn’t a good measure of being rich; high negative net worth means you’re rich too. All the average people are in the middle.
- lukas099 5y agoCan you explain what you mean by this?
- astrange 5y agoLow net worth includes people with $0, but also people worth negative millions because they have a lot of debt. The only way to get that much debt is if you’re rich. It’s better to look at assets excluding debt. This also shows the problem with student loan relief, which is it mostly benefits dentists.
- tonyedgecombe 5y agoNot really, wealth is usually a measure of assets rather than income. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/wealth.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/wealth.asp
- Kye 5y agoHow would you know they aren't still majority? There were always conspicuously wealthy people, but now there are more wealthy people in general. It's inevitable both the quiet and noisy segments would grow even without other changes.
- retrac 5y agoI certainly agree society has gotten a lot more ostentatious, to the negative. But there's still a bit of a "kids these days" vibe to this comment; people (by which I mean the long-established aristocrats) have been decrying the tasteless, crass vulgarity of the nouveau riche since at least the late Roman Republic.
- tsunamifury 5y agoWhile mostly being angry they can’t display the crassness of the new even richer class. The Guilded Age on HBO right now is a great show about this.
- saltminer 5y agoAnyone who read The Great Gatsby in high school should be familiar with the disdain for the nouveau rich amongst old money. The movie Caddyshack also does a good job at depicting this.
- t-3 5y ago> What the hell happened to the “millionaire next door” types? Someone who had wealth but you’d never know it? They're still around, and people still don't know it. Some of those older people you see working at the grocery store have been "retired" from executive positions and need something to do until they reach retirement age. Lots of diligent people working normal jobs and without vices manage to become quite wealthy while living unremarkable lives.
- belval 5y agoThese people will always be interesting to me. They "won" the game, they accumulated wealth and made a comfortable life for themselves. Yet they usually live frugally and die with several millions just because they never actually spent the money. Some of my relatives were like that. Lots of money in the banks, 70 years old, yet his wife would chastise him for buying a small $16k Mazda truck to replace his +10 years old $12k Ford truck.
- zozbot234 5y agoThat's how "new money" turns into "old money". Low time preference on a generational scale is all it takes.
- oh_sigh 5y agoOnly if you inculcated the same standards into your children, which is definitely not a given. If you were just a miser and your children didn't understand your reasoning, I would expect them to blow their entire inheritance and leave a pittance to their children.
- tejohnso 5y agoCouldn't this be addressed with some kind of legal entity like a generational trust where the children don't have direct access to the principle?
- 5y ago
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago> They used to keep these things amongst themselves rather than announce everything to the public. When did this happen? Do you mean the gilded age where the wealthy had giant, showy mansions built now used for various museums, or funded massive libraries and stuff in their name? Do you mean when the wealthy hung up painted portraits of themselves everywhere? Do you mean when the wealthy were building literal castles and starting literal wars on their name? Do you mean when royalty proclaimed to be a royal was to be divine?? I don’t think the wealthy have ever stfu’d about their money…
- dionidium 5y ago> What the hell happened to the “millionaire next door” types? Someone who had wealth but you’d never know it? Remember your audience here. You're surrounded by them.
- Frost1x 5y agoI think you have a valid point, although I think it should probably be the "decimillionaire next door" to keep up with inflation and retain its original meaning. This is a case where the floor dropped out and the ceiling is falling, when a "millionaire" doesn't really mean what it meant many years ago. In 1904, $1M inflation adjusted is $31M now. In 1956, it's $9.9M. Seems to have peeked at 2007/8. The uptick to "billionaire" started around 1982 which is about $2.79M. Words are very discrete bins and usage lag. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Millionaire%2C+billionaire&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2CMillionaire%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cbillionaire%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Millionaire%2C... While there is a very valid point that many who frequent this site may be considered millionaires and by some, considered wealthy relative to the median in current times, that isn't to say the median hasn't been falling in terms of the sheer scale of wealth these days.
- wikibob 5y ago> What happened to the wealthy? They used to keep these things amongst themselves rather than announce everything to the public. Still happens. See this $600 hat which is sold out, used as a wealth signaling mechanism. And also as an aspirational luxury good now that the masses are aware. https://www.wsj.com/articles/succession-morning-show-luxury-baseball-caps-11639583315 https://www.wsj.com/articles/succession-morning-show-luxury-...
- bitwize 5y agoThey've been replaced with nouveaux riches who want to show off to their poor friends (and enemies) that they've "made it". The "millionaire next door" also has low time preference, which is how they made their money. They don't spend extravagantly but reinvest that money into their business, stocks, real estate, etc. That's also why they're stealth rich.
- groby_b 5y agoIf we even accept the premise (and it's a doubtful one, obscene wealth was always visible), it's worth pointing out that a lot of wealth is generated simply by being in the public eye. Cynically put, the not-wealthy like having a look at the things they'll never have enough to hand over money for it. As for "millionaire next door", they're still around. The US has 20 million of them. But most of the "next door" wealth is achieved through doing a "normal" job. (I.e. jobs that most other people can relate to, and could possibly achieve working in) Ostentatious wealth is requiring arbitrage of some form, at scale. Celebrities arbitrage fame. And it's a smart business, because part of their payment is more fame. Hence the "crass popularity" contests. People pay them for that popularity and make them more popular.
- saltminer 5y agoThere have always been rich people who flaunt their wealth and crave attention, just as there are those who are, as you say, the "millionaires next door". The difference is now, I can easily check in on the lives of the ones who crave attention anywhere in the world. We no longer have "local celebrities" like we used to, as their fame is rarely only covered by the local papers. People always seem intrigued by the lives of the rich and famous, and tabloids have been milking that for generations. Before the internet, that was the best way to keep up to date on celebrity gossip, and it was a lucrative market (see also: MTV Cribs). It just seems like the rich are so much worse these days because it's so easy for them to get attention. Some have even turned it into an art form, knowing how effective ragebait is at getting clicks. (Remember Logan Paul's Japanese forest video?) Combine that with the reduction in our media landscape and increase in outlets which just report on drama, many of which get reposted with only minor rewording on more general outlets, and it's much more difficult to escape this stuff today. All this said, I would agree that the rich generally are worse today, but that's a byproduct of capital coalescing in new forms to lobby for awful laws spurring greater inequality, and it would have happened without the internet. They were also bad in the past, but unless you went out of your way, it was difficult to get a grasp on how wealth multiplies and the horrendous practices of many large corporations. The popularity contest becoming inescapable, on the other hand, is a direct result of our hyper-connected world.
- rayiner 5y ago> What happened to the wealthy? I wonder the same thing, especially with respect to the lower rung of wealth. I'm shocked at how much of the top 1% views themselves as victims of higher rungs of the top 1% instead of having attitudes commensurate with their wealth, privilege, and social status.