YES, YOU CAN BE TOO RICH OR TOO THIN

“You can never be too rich or too thin”

-       Attributed to Wallis Simpson, among others.

 

I beg to differ, Wallis.

Some time ago, I found myself alone in an airport with a few hours to kill before my next flight.  Looking for a mindless way to pass the time, I went to a newsstand and bought a couple of magazines.  Upon opening one, I was confronted with a familiar sight -- the first ten or so pages consisted entirely of photos of emaciated young models, wearing frowns (they never smile), and posing their puny bodies in aid of selling one thing or another.  

Without hesitation, I sat down on a bench and proceeded to tear out said pages.  As I was energetically tearing, a woman unknown to me came over to cheer me on.

"Don't those pictures drive you crazy," she asked.

"Yes," said I, ripping with ever greater enthusiasm.

I was on a roll.

Of course, my ripping out the pages was not going to change long-standing advertising strategies.  Still, I refuse to spend time looking at these images.  It infuriates me to have our daughters (and ourselves) presented with images of dangerously underweight women as if this were something to aspire to.  

We don't have to buy into this, do we?

Let me assure you that this is not the sour grapes of a woman with a large body. I have always been naturally thin.  (At least until menopause when, I gained a bit around my middle). My weight, however, is not a sign of virtue or of any particular effort on my part.  And I certainly don't aspire to look like those models.  In fact, at my age, too much weight loss is a sign of either illness or drug addiction.

Indeed, I suspect there are drugs involved in keeping those models so painfully thin.  

But, maybe it isn’t the models I need to concern myself with.  After all, if young people are reading magazines at all, they are probably reading them online, where ads can be skipped over.  Maybe I should be turning my attention to social media “influencers” bent on convincing average-sized young girls that they need to lose weight.  Down that road lie anorexia and self-loathing.  

I sure don’t want that to be the future for my toddler granddaughters.

So, yes, Wallis, it is possible to be too thin, and to create unhappiness by urging people in that direction.

And what of the notion that one can never be too rich?

I know there are plenty of people in this world who would conclude that I--sitting in my comfortable house, with a car in the garage, and a bit of disposable income--am too rich.  But for purposes of this post, I am confining myself to the filthy rich, the one percent.

Elon Musk’s wealth is estimated at $221.4 billion.  Jeff Bezos’ net worth is $210.2 billion, while Bill Gates comes in at $133.3 billion.  These are big numbers, and when we put them in perspective, they look even more alarming. A quick Google search revealed that the top one percent of Americans control more wealth than the entire middle class combined, with the middle class defined as the middle 60 percent of households by income.  

Okay.  That was wealth.  Let’s look at income for a minute. Social security data reveals that the average annual wage of the bottom 90 percent is $40,928; the average wage of those in the 90^th to 99^th percentile is $187,609; and the average wage of the top one percentile is $916,928.  Parsing things even further, the top .1 percentile earns an average of $3.7 million. 

One more figure:  CEOs were paid 399 times as much as a typical worker in 2021.

Enough with the numbers.***  It is clear that a few people control most of the wealth in this country, and that a great swath of our citizenry is scraping by, while their bosses get richer and richer. 

So, yes, I would argue it is possible to be too rich. Embarrassingly rich. And yet I suspect that the mega rich, cocooned in their bubbles of wealth, are not embarrassed.  (Asking for a friend – Do they not realize that if our way of life topples under the weight of their wealth, they will not be spared the fallout?  Do they not see that if their greed overcomes environmental concerns, their children will inherit a dying planet? That income and wealth inequity lead to social unrest?)

It is said that power corrupts.  So, I think, does great wealth. And they usually go together.  On that note, I will leave you with this suggestion. If you want an example of how power and money corrupt, get yourself a copy of Empire of Pain:  The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe. There you will read of the corruption, not only of a family, but of the lawyers and doctors they drew into their web, along with the FDA and the DEA.  As this book demonstrates, very few are immune to the twin siren calls of money and power. 

One last thing.  Perhaps it is time to update the adage with which I began this post.  How about this?  You can’t be too kind or too healthy.  

 

                                                     Photo by Mathieu Stern on Unsplash

*** Different studies turn up different numbers, but all demonstrate great income and wealth inequality.