Travails of the Super-Rich: "their dogs following in a second private jet."

[Karmadillo]

I feel bad that I've been so harsh on these people over the years.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/01/3562/

<edit>

That’s a side issue, though. The real point, which the CEOs and their usual defenders are strangely reticent to make, is that it’s damn expensive to be rich, and extravagantly expensive to be super-rich. Before you start playing your air violins, consider the costs of maintaining as many as five different homes, some of them as large as 45,000 square feet, most with swimming pools, tennis courts, guest houses and wine cellars requiring constant supervision.

The poor whine about having no home at all, or maybe a two-bedroom apartment for a family of six. They should just think for one moment of the tribulations involved in running four or more mansions, each with its own full-time staff. There’s the problem of getting between them, for example. A friend of mine, of very modest means himself, consults for a billionaire couple who commute between London and Los Angeles by private jet, with their dogs following in a second private jet.

But much of what we know about the extreme costs of wealth comes from Wall Street Journal columnist Robert Frank’s recent book Richistan. The ultra-rich, drawn largely from the CEO class, require staffs of about forty to fifty people, including not only cooks, maids and nannies but “lifestyle managers” (to set up the entertainment schedule) and–in a throwback to the original Gilded Age–butlers. It’s the butler’s job, among other things, to deal with any issues that may arise from the proliferation of homes. For example, if the boss is in Palm Beach, Frank reports, “and wants to send his jet to New York to pick up a Chateau LaTour from his South Hampton cellar, the butler makes it happen, no questions asked.”

Nor are the ultra-rich in a position to cut back on their expenses–by, say, running down to the supermarket for a $12 bottle of Chardonnay. If they were to do so, their friends would despise them. As Frank explains, the Richistani word “affluent,” meaning someone with less than $10 million in assets, translates into English roughly as “scum.”

<edit>

[alarimer]

1. Boo fucking hoo

God I hate rich people like this.

They can't change their wasteful ways because their friends will hate them?

Tax the shit out of these people; they deserve it.

[hlthe2b]

2. Getting past the wanton insanity of this...

Why have a dog, if you don't want to be with it? I can not imagine, if I were a person of such "means" not wanting to have my pets travel with me. Of course, how many of them have their kids housed in a separate floor or wing, to be raised by the "help." :eyes:

[Selatius]

4. Why would a slave master want to travel in the same cabin with his slaves?

To the elite who own and operate this country, not even pets can escape such treatment. Dogs pee and crap. We can't have that smell on the same plane, obviously. While we're at it, the servants can also fly in the same plane, with the dogs. :sarcasm:

[hlthe2b]

6. So sad...

They don't even reap the value of having these wonderful "beings".... To me, there is nothing more wonderful than to share the physical space of my doggies. That connection and trust that is gained when they come to you for reassurance or comfort when they are fearful, or come to your aid when they sense YOU are coming under threat, or are sad, or lonely and need of comfort yourself--simply amazing. My close relationships with all my dogs have been priceless, treasured experiences.

So sad, with all this money they don't realize that simple pleasure.

[undergroundpanther]

19. relationships are not thier pleasure

owning, taking, controlling, domination and elitism is what pleasures them. relationships they could care less but they like to appear like they relate and care, but all they care about is them self....narcissists are like that.

[undergroundpanther]

15. narcissism is like that

and the wealthy are consummated narcissists.

[KittyWampus]

18. they have a gaping hole in their psyche which they try desperately to fill with material things

[Warpy]

3. The staff either travel with the dogs

or are sent ahead via commercial flights. The only people left at the unoccupied pleasure palace while the family is elsewhere are the caretaker and garden staff.

Why fully staff a house when one is not in it? A couple of maids sent ahead can remove all the dust. The cook, butler, chauffeur, personal assistants, and valet can travel with the dogs after they've secured the last house once the owners are gone. The personal assistants might even be allowed to travel with the family if scheduling, menus and other arrangements need to be made in flight.

Such are the logistics of keeping one's surroundings pleasant wherever one is.

[stillcool]

5. From the book...

"The Rich and the Super-rich", by Ferdinand Lundberg...available for free down-load from the following link due to the expiration of it's copyright.

http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0303critic/0303socialcriticism.html

Four

THE INHERITORS: I


What I term super-wealth is prominently, although not completely, represented on this list. Super-wealth simply consists of a very large generic fortune that may or may not be split into several parts. It has other characteristics: First, it generally controls and revolves around one or more important banks. It absolutely controls or has a controlling ownership stake in from one to three or more of the largest industrial corporations. It has established and controls through the family one to three or four or more super foundations designed to achieve a variety of stated worthy purposes as well as confer vast industrial control through stock ownership and extend patronage-influence over wide areas. It has established or principally supports one or several major universities or leading polytechnic institutes. It is a constant heavy political contributor, invariably to the Republican Party, the political projection of super-wealth, It has extremely heavy property holdings abroad so that national, foreign and military policy is of particular interest to it. And it has vast indirect popular cultural influence because of the huge amount of advertising its corporations place in the mass media.

Critics mistakenly blame a shadowy entity called "Madison Avenue" for the culturally stultifying quality as well as intrusiveness of most advertising. But here it should be noticed that Madison Avenue can produce only what is approved by its clients, the big corporations. If these latter ordered Elizabethan verse, Greek drama and great pictorial art, Madison Avenue would supply them with alacrity.

Beyond this, the dependence upon corporate advertising of the mass media--newspapers, magazines, radio and television--makes them editorially subservient, without in any way being prompted, to points of view known or thought to be favored by the big property owners. Sometimes, of course, as the record abundantly shows, they have been prompted and even coerced to alter attitudes. But the willing subservience shows itself most generally, apart from specific acts of omission or commission, in an easy blandness on the part of the mass media toward serious social problems. These are all treated, when treated at all, as part of a diverting kaleidoscopic spectacle, the modern Roman circus of tele-communication. As Professor J. Kenneth Galbraith aptly remarked, in the United States it is a case of the bland leading the bland. No doubt it would be bad for trade if there was serious stress on the problematic side of affairs. It would disturb "confidence."

On this Fortune list, valuable in its way, we find among the super-wealthy, among others less prominent, the Du Ponts, Mellons, Rockefellers and Fords as well as the Pews. The primary but not exclusive sources of their wealth have been E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, the Aluminum Corporation of America, the Standard Oil group of companies and the Ford Motor Company. Each of these companies has many times been formally adjudicated in violation of the laws, the first three repeatedly named in crucial successful prosecutions charging vast monopolies. Aluminum, Standard Oil and Du Pont achieved their positions precisely through monopoly, as formally determined by the courts.

[undergroundpanther]

17. Bookmarked the site

Dayum good stuff there!

[stillcool]

20. Third World Traveler....

has a couple of other articles along the same subject...
Reviewing Ferdinand Lundberg's "Cracks in the Constitution"
by Stephen Lendman
August 2007
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Stephen_Lendman/LundbergCracksConstitution.html


The Mysterious Establishment
excerpted from the book
Friendly Fascism
The New Face of Power in America
by Bertram Gross
South End Press, 1980, paper

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Mysterious_Establish_FF.html

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ruling_Elites/Ruling_Elites.html

[Karmadillo]

21. This is a great site. Thank you for posting it.

nt

[fasttense]

7. The Lord commonly gives riches to foolish people, to whom he gives nothing else. Martin Luther. n/t

[undergroundpanther]

13. The lord is an asshole

The lord is no lord I recognize.
The lord that gives wealth to fools is a fool.

And the thing that makes life tolerable for the less than wealthy is the coveting, for if we covet to have decent health care like the rich and covet it enough to organize and demand it we will take it away from the foolish and defy the idiot lords and help ourselves and help each other.

That determined coveting of some is the path to social sanity,the very thing condemned and feared by rich religionists that want to dominate, and by those born of wealth who want to plunder for more and most of all social sanity is feared by the self declared lords who want to rule and own it all.

[undergroundpanther]

8. Wealth gluttons

Are acceptable in this country but fat people get hated. Why is this so?
Fat people are often fat because of poverty, can't afford good food, a gym or a trainer or diet pills or anything..But rich people can afford to be perfectly thin and toned and they never suffer compared to we who LET our wealth of our civilization we all made be gluttonized and destroyed by rich decadent useless domineering manipulating evil hearted selfish debutante,parasitic, vain skinny rich pigs..who because of their stolen money and hoarded wealth will never feel pain like you and I .

I'd rather have more fat people some may find'offending'with a social conscience and a capacity to love someone other than themselves ,than these pathetic snotty rich people who may spend their bucks to look pretty but have no social awareness beyond their own kind, no heart or empathy.

I think it is time WE told the rich flying their pooches in private jets they have taken and have ENOUGH.EAT THE RICH.

I HATE the spoiled rich.They have

no right


to have private jets while people in America go hungry and work for long long hours and still cannot afford to get sick! They have

NO RIGHT TO HAVE TOO MUCH and still want more !!!
WE have to LIMIT how much they can take and have for they will not stop feeding and plundering until they have used everything up.Including us.

For their effortless lives and insane wealth ..it happens for THEM because it is taken out of the days of our own lives we spend on making THEM wealthy.

Irreplaceable days of our one and only life,we spend feeding their companies our talents , time and labor for peanuts that shrink ever smaller,

The end results are we do not have time to develop our minds or see our families or rest and relax,

The rich have their leisure

The rich got rich for they have stolen our freedom and chances at self actualization, atomized our communities into something so very difficult to mobilize and create the only thing we have to limit them with, our SOLIDARITY and our collected focus on the source of our pain, the greedy wealthy..

The wealthiest parasites have destroyed our connections, our social cohesion, due to their fears of the plebeians uniting to limit them,

They have hurt humanity in their lust to expand, grab more and take.

The rich WANT to demoralize us, and make us fear each other they create isolated suburbias,or"garden cities" to do this,. The wealthy have shredded our social safety nets, made us'consumers' instead of human beings,ruined our health, both mental and physical, they destroy the environment,and they have made the systematic and deliberate narrowing of our options for pursuing our happiness happen without us realizing what they have taken from us..

When is enough ENOUGH? When will we gather together to take it all back? We need to form unions and quit bashing poor people the homeless,and the fat poor, to form enough of a force with a clear voice of outrage and enough numbers to make the changes WE need,and to take the wealth away from the wasteful elitist rich people that never suffer and do not care we suffer so they live without suffering.. The rich will not stop taking..Until WE stop their systemic plunder of humanity and the world..in any way that works. Taxes seem to be undermined, so,The Guillotine and storming the wealth's gated community(the Bastille)worked before..if it comes to that, it will work again.
Either way the wealthy do not know when they have enough ,So it is time we made and imposed a limit on how much they can take and have!
So none of us go without food,shelter health care, rest, and time to live our lives in our own pursuit of happiness .

[tanyev]

9. Or they could take a tip from Mitt and just strap a dog carrier to the top of the jet.

[valerief]

10. LOL!

[undergroundpanther]

11. why not

strap the wealthy snot and thier damn dog both to the top of the jet and crash it into the ocean?

[Peregrine Took]

12. We can only take comfort knowing how much their employees loathe them

and laugh at them behind their backs.

[undergroundpanther]

14. that does not help us

for these people do not care what we think.If they did care they wouldn't be flying their dog in a separate jet.No we need to take the obscene wealth away from them and help people that need help with it..The rich need no help except to be told they have enough and to force them to pull their greedy heads out of the trough or die.

[alarimer]

16. They clearly do not pay enough taxes

I think a 75% tax rate sounds about right.

[QC]

22. Robespierre is never around when you need him. n/t