Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Addicted to Wealth: Why More Is Never Enough

Do you ever wonder about the super rich? Not the everyday, "ordinary" rich making salaries of $500,000 a year, but the super rich? The ones making millions per year and the ones with net worths in the $$$billions?

Why do they fight so hard to hang on to their 15% tax rates when it wouldn't even make a dent in their lifestyle if they had to pay 50%?

An eye-opening column in the NYT today provides insight into the psychology of the super rich. It's written by one who knows--an ex-trader who used to make those multi-million dollar bonuses.

He's says he's a recovering "money addict". And he recognizes the harm that money addiction does to our economy. http://www.nytimes.com/...

You should read the whole article, but here are a couple of gems.

Like alcoholics driving drunk, wealth addiction imperils everyone. Wealth addicts are, more than anybody, specifically responsible for the ever widening rift that is tearing apart our once great country. Wealth addicts are responsible for the vast and toxic disparity between the rich and the poor and the annihilation of the middle class.
Only a wealth addict would feel justified in receiving $14 million in compensation — including an $8.5 million bonus — as the McDonald’s C.E.O., Don Thompson, did in 2012, while his company then published a brochure for its work force on how to survive on their low wages. Only a wealth addict would earn hundreds of millions as a hedge-fund manager, and then lobby to maintain a tax loophole that gave him a lower tax rate than his secretary.

The op-ed writer, Sam Polk, originally wanted to be like the billionaires in his office, but he gradually grew disillusioned with them and the emptiness of his and their contributions in life.
He started a non-profit organization called "Groceryships" which provides grocery "scholarships" to help needy people eat healthy diets with fruits and vegetables instead of a diet of cheap junk foods.

Polk doesn't think all rich people are addicts. His yardstick is whether a rich person can see that they have enough.

But for the addict, no amount of money is enough!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/19/1271034/-Addicted-to-Wealth-Why-More-Is-Never-Enough