Is it jealousy? Is it envy?
Is it a wide awake daydream in which suddenly you can afford whatever comes to mind?
Average people are fascinated by the why the "other half" live.
The "other half" is only about 2% of us.
But when a person doing all right goes to see how poor people live, they are accused of "slumming"
(I don't believe that the rich and famous do much of this, more of a upper middle class thing--usually as a young person in rebellion)
I've never met anyone that knew what being poor was like, AND actually wanted to become poor. More like they wanted to have to struggle a little and feel as if they succeeded on their own, walk around anonymously for a while, or maybe feel less like a pampered joke.
But those without love to imagine what being rich would be like.
When the homes of the wealthy are opened to anyone, people show up just to gawk.
And when regular folks took their kids on vacation, it was never to regular places, but to tour the homes of wealthy, famous, historical (but not poor) people.
There have always been sites preserved for the future that showed regular life or a poor but great persons birthplace, last home or workplace, but instead we go look at the fancy stuff. It's our chance to peek.
I can't pretend not to want to have more money--it's why a get my weekly lottery ticket.
But I don't want a McMansion so I can pretend to be rich.
I don't want to spend more than 3/4 of my money on a mortgage so the neighbors and family can think I'm doing better than them.
But when a relative says, "so and so is getting a 1/2 million dollar house", I want to see it. I want to see what that looks like.
I don't get jealous.
I'm getting up there in years and have lost the imagination and desire to decorate rooms I don't need.
My collection of clutter, filled with memories and sentimental value and just plain oddness, would never fit in a half a million dollar McMansion.
I'm more of a farmhouse or bungalow woman.
These days, many feel, not so much jealousy as self-hate; that they can't do that well, that they can't buy that for their children. They are losers, incompetent, poor providers, ne'er-do-wells.
We were all sold the old standard "you can be whatever you choose to be", so apparently most of us chose to be ordinary folks with jobs and little homes and little families.
We chose to struggle to make ends meet.
We chose to live lives without wealth, fame, or power.
Perhaps, that whole "choice" thing was over-stated.
Yes, the child of a wealthy family can choose to be wealthy or can walk away and choose an ordinary, regular life.
And I've heard some of them have.
Mostly, I've heard of the children of the upper middle class that thought they were rich ending up in ordinary, regular lives.
They thought their parents were rich, then discovered that their parents were living at their own maximum level and while they provided a good education and a great starter car, they couldn't actually hand them a small million dollar loan to get started and won't be leaving them 50 million plus property when they die.
So these kids, that thought they were rich now have a degree in something, or not, a job, or not, and a lifestyle like their parents, or not.
Now, lets have a moment of reality.
The average salary in 2016 went up to $59,039.00.
The median net take home that same time was $30,533.31.
The average net was $46,640.94
The difference between average which is the total of all salaries for the year divided by the number of people with a salary, while the median is the point where 50% of the population makes more than than and 50% makes less.
Those are important differences to understand. A CEO making 30 million and a company where 80% make minimum wage that employees 1000 people will have a median wage of about $16,000/year, but an average wage of $53,660 even if none of the 20% making more than minimum wage make over $25 dollars an hour. That 0.1% of employees making 30 million raised the average to much higher than the median.
Only about 64% of the population owns or is buying a home these days. In 2009 that was 69%.
The average home price in 2017 was $240,000. The average square foot was 2426 square foot.
If you measure the homes in any 1920's neighborhood, most of those clapboard bungalows were considered huge if they were bigger than 1800 square feet.
http://www.newser.com/story/225645/average-size-of-us-homes-decade-by-decade.html
If you look closely at most of us average joe's, you will find that we are not so average about what matters.
Some of us have learned very well how to be happy with a home where everyone has a place to sleep, food to eat, loving interactions with family and friends. We might play the lottery, but know the actual odds. We don't try to push our children into living our dreams or pulling us into the society of the rich and/or famous.
Some of us don't get that being famous for performing in sports or entertaining or even politics, even though the income is amazingly high, will never pull us into that 0.1% of the population that runs the world. If you make it to that level, see how well you are accepted at their tables and into their families. The Forbes 400 don't meet their standards for old money and elite class.
https://www.therichest.com/rich-list/old-money-families-that-have-been-richest-the-longest/
So.
Now.
Have you been trying to keep up with the Jones' family? (nevermind the Gates' or Besos's, and forget completely about the Rothschilds and Rockefellers and Roosevelts.)
Do you spend more than you can afford on your home, your car, your child's wardrobe, your interior decorating?
Have you declined into a hoarder of bric-a-brac, books, washed and folded aluminum foil?
Do you struggle with depression because you will never be as rich as you want, have the best house in the city, the most tweets to go viral?
Do you check yourself in the mirror repeatedly to make sure you appear to be: a fashion model? A princess? A successful business man or woman? or whatever image you feel the need to project.
If you are feeling inferior due to averageness, remember these old clichés. (clichés aren't necessarily wrong, frequent repetition makes it unoriginal not erroneous)
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/rich-and-poor
“[W]hat is always overlooked is that although the poor want to be rich, it does not follow that they either like the rich or that they in any way want to emulate their characters which, in fact, they despise. Both the poor and the rich have always found precisely the same grounds on which to complain about each other. Each feels the other has no manners, is disloyal, corrupt, insensitive - and has never put in an honest day's work in its life.”
― Elaine Dundy, Elvis and Gladys
“Rich people always had someone to call who could arrange something that the average guy couldn't get done, no matter how right or wrong. The only call the poor man could make was to Jesus. If Jesus didn't answer, Smith and Wesson always did.”
― James Anderson, The Never-Open Desert Diner
“They would have liked to be rich. They believed they would have been up to it. They would have known how to dress, how to look and how to smile like rich people. They would have had the requisite tact and discretion. They would have forgotten they were rich, would have grasped how not to flaunt their wealth. They wouldn't have taken pride in it. They would have drunk it into themselves. Their pleasures would have been intense. They would have liked to wander, to dawdle, to choose, to savour. They would have liked to live. Their lives would have been an art of living.
But such things are far from easy.”
― Georges Perec
The point is not that rich people are right and poor people are wrong.
The point is not that rich people are evil and poor people are good---or the other way around.
The point is not that being rich is easy or being poor is easy.
The point is---we are all humans, and what all humans have in common is they are alive. They have a right to be alive. They have a right to feel their feelings, to follow their dreams, to have friends and family, to love, to create, to live their lives in such a manner that they feel times of happiness, of grief, of hope, of elation and of self-satisfaction.
And none of them have a right to do any of those things at the expense of any other, at the detriment of any other, or at the exclusion of any other human.
Know what you have, appreciate what you have, and never think that anyone else is better than you or more entitled to live their life to their fullest.
Be rich in your love and happiness and gratitude.
You are already famous (or infamous) to those that know you.
Never put your life on hold till you become rich and famous.
It's not really money that rules.
IT"S TIME!
