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Why We Need People Who Have ‘Too Much Money’
Friday night I heard the Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. They were wonderful, although less warm-sounding than I remember them being under Dohnanyi and Boulez. They played the Mahler Fifth Symphony, written while the composer was music director at the Vienna Royal Opera. The VRO was financed by the Emperor. Carnegie Hall was given by Andrew Carnegie, a wealthy industrialist.
This, after four pleasant and placid hours spent enjoying Holbein and Rembrandt paintings at the Frick collection, which I visited instead of the Cloisters because I could just walk or use the subway and not have to move my car. The Frick Collection was given by Henry Clay Frick and the Cloisters, by John D. Rockefeller, both of whom were wealthy industrialists.
Is there any aspect of high culture that is not dependent on the generosity of the super-rich? I’ll trade all of leftist politics for one Beethoven string quartet or Vermeer interior.
This is true in other aspects of life, too. The hospital for which I work was founded on the bequest of a wealthy local industrialist in 1883 and remains solvent largely through the generosity of a wealthy university town. I’ll trade all of leftist politics for one life saved by a laparoscopic appendectomy.
Published in Economics
Oh that? That’s word-face. My generations equivalent to totally-face, right on-face, far out-face, even boss-face. And don’t worry about me going full Nazi. I saw that movie with the Maria lady and her seven little people, singing classics like “ABC easy as 123” high up in the mountains. The Nazis were the bad guys in that. Count me out!
They’re still among the richest countries and still grow slightly. It’s not doing well, it can’t because government run things eventually fail, but given the role their government plays they do pretty well. They have us and the Brits to compete with the way children compete with each other, or rival schools. If we fail to continue to outpace them and if they continue to import hostile culture, they’ll fail faster.
Having too much money is simply a matter of degree. Meaning I have some discretionary income to spend on things I want to – a yacht, an extra bowling ball, a donation to a non-profit animal shelter.
By the “too much” way of thinking, all of anything that might be charitably donated is privilege, yet how many local support agencies of all kinds would *poof* disappear, without all of that support from just yer local Joe Schmo throwing 20 bucks into a hat outside the grocery store.
Also: Half the country pays no net income taxes. Of the half that does pay income taxes, the top 50% of that crew pays 97% of all income taxes.
In other words, the people with the most money pay, overwhelmingly, the bulk of federal income taxes. It’s not like 51%. It’s almost all of it.
So everything the crybabies complain about is stupid, idiotic, on its face, since someone else is almost literally paying for everything, in terms of the gov’t.
Growing up in Pittsburgh, my town was home to every ethnicity you could think of. I went to school with a mixed bag and no one thought beans about it. In my local public grade school, we went on many field trips which included The Carnegie Museum (my favorite parts were the mummies and the giant Viking ship, and the dinosaurs), to Phipps Conservatory where I fell in love with plants, to Heinz Hall where I fell in love with classical music, to the Carnegie Library every week for story time (read by one of the librarians – no drag queens) and to check out books, to Heinz pickle factory (where I learned to love pickles?) to Frick Park where my dad took us to play. We were exposed to art, science, reading and music at a young age, and encouraged in these areas, which made a big difference in the lives of ordinary kids. It took money to create these wonderful places.
Wealth isn’t the enemy – sin is. Money can build a hospital or you can be a Jeffrey Epstein.
Almost all of us, particularly those of us in the United States, have what people throughout history, and around the world today, would say is “too much money” because we do have enough to spend on discretionary things. We even have enough money to spend a few dollars a month to belong to a club (website) in which we can discuss big ideas (and trivia if we want).
Ok, try this.
The “He shall reign” quotation is the core of the symphony. It opens the piece in d minor, on piccolo and oboe over 7 octaves of A’s. D is the key of the Hallelujah Chorus. The first theme, although taken from the Songs of a Wayfarer, emphasizes the interval of a fourth, which opens the HSR motif. The opening of the second movement is HSR inverted with one note left out. The Jewish theme, by not entering until the third movement, is made subservient to the Christian material. It is scalar like the Frere Jacques melody rather than arpeggiated like HSR and thus associates with death. And of course the piece ends with extra brass players tolling HE SHALL REIGN! Mahler’s first symphony, written in 1888-89, is thus a testimony to his adopting Christianity in 1897.
(Btw, the only things I looked up were the dates in the last sentence)
Bravo! Especially for not calling the final movement the last movement, in case there were any Blumine purists in the room.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/uw-medicine-receives-50-million-donation-to-start-brain-institute-that-will-study-addiction-alzheimers-and-other-brain-disorders/
$50M ain’t chump change.
The Blumine was not last. It followed the opening movement, before the Scherzo. Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra will be playing it at my concert #3, in Symphony Hall in Boston, October 29. Be there or be square!
I was imprecise, writing in haste; I meant not calling the last movement the Fourth. It would be the Fifth, in the same sense Bruckner’s 9th is the 11th, sort of.
I will be in Boston the week before. Dang!
A government by and of the people with anti-elitist, quota-driven, and iconoclastic streaks such as ours cannot possibly maintain quality museums over the long haul.
Yeah, but they still have discretionary income left over and we want that too.
So shall I be. Lunch?
Wealthy people don’t act like Scrooge McDuck. They don’t keep their money in a big vault and go down sometimes to play with it.
They have their money invested in all kinds of enterprises. This results in growth of the economy and job creation.
Sure, they might invest it in foreign companies. They might invest it foolishly. But when they aren’t wise with it they are punished severely — they lose it.
Better that capital be in the hands of those who know how to use it; this benefits the whole society.
The bottom line is the super wealthy are just like you and me: a family living in a house (albeit a big one) with all the worries about problem kids, health issues and dogs or other pets and what to have for dinner tonight.
Yep. It’s funny how the bills seem to scale up with your income.
This idea that “job creation” is a social benefit of saving and investment (the modern version of Bastiat’s “Broken Windows Fallacy”) is a main weapon of socialism. Socialism is the perfect solution to the “problem” of “job creation”. Once all saving and investment is done by the State, everyone immediately has a job.
It is a nonsensical idea, as basic economics proves, but one which the majority of Ricocheteers seem to have accepted.
I often stop to watch old, unwanted houses being torn down where I live. The most obvious thing about it is that it requires time, labor, special equipment, and thus, it costs money and creates jobs.
Bastiat’s Broken Windows argument rests on the fact that the window was valued by its owner and he had no intention of replacing it. It was broken by accident or in an act of vandalism.
Buying land and tearing down an existing house to replace it with a new one is a simple case of a property owner acting upon his subjective valuation of the building. The owner values the old house and the cost of disposing of it less than he values the new house and the cost of building it. That is his right. Your subjective valuation of his actions (or mine) have nothing to do with it, and rightly so.
If an arsonist had burned down the old house (or it was wiped out by a tsunami) which the new owner had intended to keep, then the Broken Windows Fallacy would apply.
Our subjective evaluation of his actions has nothing to do with his decision or his right to make it, and rightly so. But our subjective evaluation does have something to do with a post about subjective evaluation of the uses to which rich people put their excess money.
I am very comfortable with other people’s wasteful conspicuous consumption in general, considering the alternatives. My lifestyle surely constitutes wasteful conspicuous consumption from somebody’s perspective. But still sometimes you have to shake your head.
Doesn’t invalidate the point of the original post. I also am grateful somebody supports cultural treasures that I enjoy but could never fund.
Your interpretation of Bastiat and mine are opposites.