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It’s a tough life up here
With the billionaires
of TheColumnists.com
I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I spend my time day and night worrying. They won’t let me do my gardening or drive my car. They won’t let me near the controls of my private jet. Being a billionaire these days is the pits.
Now the last straw. Forbes listed 946 of
us around the world and somehow overlooked me. How could this
happen? I joined the country club. I play golf. I subscribe to
The Wall Street Journal. I’m on all the charity mailing
lists. But I’m not even being treated as an equal, much
less getting respect from the 9 million sniveling American millionaires
beneath me.
It was some comfort to me that Bill Gates got knocked off of
the top spot this year by Omaha investor Warren Buffett, who
is said to be worth $60 billion, slightly ahead of Mexican telecom
mogul Carlos Slim Helú and $2 billion ahead of Gates.
Is Gates finally coming unraveled? Call it schadenfreude but
I enjoy seeing him tank.
A friend predicts that there are so many of us now that we qualify as a special interest group. I’m pushing for new legislation to protect us from the usual predators --the bond salesmen, the solicitors for charities, the tax collectors, the psychiatrists. We need to get “protected species” status or we won’t last. I plan to donate generously to the campaigns of John McCain and the Democrat if they ever decide which one they want.
I can’t get over my lack of recognition, though. Last week I bought “Richistan”, the inside story of our super-rich class, and went right to the index. There’s Jamie Johnson of Johnson & Johnson. There’s Abigail Johnson, daughter of the founder of Fidelity Investments. That’s it for the Johnsons.
My doctor says to relax, I only have a bad case of affluenza--that achey feeling that comes from knowing there is something wrong about hoarding so much cash and yet being powerless to stop wanting more. There is no cure other than to give it all away, and that’s not going to happen.
I wish I had the optimism of a Russian mafioso I met on the Riviera recently. “We have possibility to do all what we want,” he said. He had that porcine look of the overfed Slav about him, and on his arm was a gorgeous blonde with bangles everywhere. I know what he wants.
The worst thing about being a billionaire, at least in my experience, is the constant worry about seeing it all evaporate, *poof*. I don’t keep it in a box in my basement where I can watch it. That would be sick. I only see it on my daily financial statements. But I admit sometimes I have this urge to scoop up handfuls of large-denomination coins and hear them tinkle into a big pile on the floor.
One Seattle billionaire I know got in trouble a couple of years ago and had to sell his yacht and his private island to avoid sliding into relative poverty--the high hundreds of millions. We all watched with horror, wondering when our turn would come. “Richistan” quotes one of my fellow billionaires as saying we are all afflicted by a combination of greed and fear--but there’s a bright side. “If people stay worried, it’s part of what motivates them. We’re always worried,” he said. Amen.
However obscene our bottom line, it’s never enough. A consultant friend of mine who used to work with Nelson Rockefeller remembers hearing him complain of bouts of insecurity. Rockefeller’s personal net worth was about $3 billion. “How much would you need?” my friend asked. “Four billion ought to do it,” Rockefeller said. He died insecure.
Sometimes I feel the end is already in sight for me, too. I did what my idiot financial adviser said. I put most of it in the stock market. In the last dip, I finished with a small fortune, which would be okay except that I started with a large fortune. He says not to worry, it will bounce back. But in my lifetime? I’m such a wreck I can hardly get up in the morning to check my Blackberry for messages from my broker. I keep it right under my pillow, in case my holdings recover while I’m sleeping.
Besides suffering from constant fear, we billionaires also are guilty of envy. So what if I have 37 people on my household staff? That’s still not as many as he guy whose phony château looms over my spread. He has 107, including his team of masseurs. He also has a yacht in Cannes, a villa in Provence, and he owns about one-third of Montana. I feel so small.
Even the people below me in the pecking order seem to look down their noses at me. I can’t stand the smirks on the faces of the middle class guys who live in their wooden matchstick McMansions down the hill.
What’s wrong with being a billionaire anyway?
©2008 by Michael Johnson. The illustration is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted March 17, 2008.
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extravagant salary that other columnists on this web site enjoy. He has simple tastes and does not throw money about in a profligate manner. You will note he has not even purchased a hair supplement nor had a cosmetic makeover, preferring to greet the world, "humbly, as I truly am." |
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