The Great Capitalist Heist: How Paris Hilton's Dogs Ended Up Better Off Than You

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/156143/the_great_capitalist_heist%3A_how_paris_hilton%27s_dogs_ended_up_better_off_than_you_/

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Summer 2009. Unemployment is soaring. Across America, millions of terrified people are facing foreclosure and getting kicked to the curb. Meanwhile in sunny California, the hotel-heiress Paris Hilton is investing $350,000 of her $100 million fortune in a two-story house for her dogs. A Pepto Bismol-colored replica of Paris’ own Beverly Hills home, the backyard doghouse provides her precious pooches with two floors of luxury living, complete with abundant closet space and central air.

By the standards of America’s rich these days, Paris’ dogs are roughing it. In a 2006 article, Vanity Fair’s Nina Munk described the luxe residences of America’s new financial elite. Compared with the 2,405 square feet of the average new American home, the abodes of Greenwich Connecticut hedge-fund managers clock in at 15,000 square feet, about the size of a typical industrial warehouse. Many come with pool houses of over 3,000 square feet.

Steven Cohen of SAC Capital is a typical product of the New Gilded Age. He paid $14.8 million for his Greenwich home, which he stuffed with a personal art collection that boasts Van Gogh's Peasant Woman Against a Background of Wheat (priced at $100 million); Gauguin's Bathers ($50 million); a Jackson Pollock drip painting (also $50 million); and Andy Warhol's Superman ($75 million). Not satisfied, Cohen spent millions renovating and expanding, adding a massage room, exercise and media rooms, a full-size indoor basketball court, an enclosed swimming pool, a hairdressing salon, and a 6,734-square-foot ice-skating rink. The rink, of course, needs a Zamboni ice-resurfacer which Cohen houses in a 720-square-foot shingle cottage. Munk quotes a visitor to the estate who assured her, “You'd be happy to live in the Zamboni house.”

So would some of the over 650,000 Americans sleeping in shelters or under highway overpasses.

[Vinca]

1. Is there any way I can convince Paris I'm a cute little dog she needs to adopt?

A $350,000 dog house? That's a person with too much money. Got to go . . . still searching for that elusive Picasso at yard sales. Anyone got Steve Cohen's number?

[fasttense]

2. And some soulless millionaires make their dogs ride on top of the car

even after they throw up.

But really? Wasting all that money on dog houses while children go hungry? The excesses of the filthy rich are worse than in France in 1792.

[HughBeaumont]

3. K & R. And believe me, I'll be spreading this far and wide this afternoon.

The American people seriously need to wake the fuck up and fast. The "Have Too Littles" are not your problem, Faux Watcher.

When you're so wealthy there's nothing left to buy but the government and the media (oh, and dog mansions and personal ice rinks), it's time for more FDR-era regulations to be put in place. FAST.

[Ikonoklast]

4. You're just a jealous Prole. Shut up and pay your taxes.

Because if you work for a living, you and everyone like you is subsidizing Paris Hilton's lifestyle...she pays less in taxes percentage-wise than anyone who earns a paycheck.

[marmar]

5. k/r.......A society this unequal is taking its last gasps.

nt

[KurtNYC]

6. Her dogs aren't better off than I am -- I have love

I am not a fashion accessory or fodder for yet another 'Paris Hilton is so freaking rich' tabloid article. And as a human being I don't need to spend money I shouldn't have on things that no one needs to impress other miserable rich people.

I have love, real love (and so do my dogs).