Synopsis
Itâ s never easy being rich: endless tax avoidance, the Sisyphean search for reliable domestic staff, the never-ending burden of surly stares from the Great Sea of the Unwashed as one goes about oneâ s rightful business. Toughest of all is simply keeping track of everything one owns. Thereâ s so much of it. And personal possessions are just the beginning.
You must keep a gimlet eye, too, on the myriad people and institutions that safeguard your gilded status: politicians, newspapers, financial instruments, branches of government. They all belong to you. But staying on top of what theyâ re up to is a full time job. Whatâ s an overstretched gazillionaire to do?
Now, with the publication of Rich People Things, the problems of our over-classes are, well, over. In a concise, easy-to-use guide, Chris Lehmann catalogs the fortifications that shelter the opulent from the resentments of the hoi polloi. From ideological stanchions such as the Free Market and the Prosperity Gospel, through the castellation of media, including The New York Times, Wired Magazine and Reality Television, to burly gatekeepers such as David Brooks, Steve Forbes and Alan Greenspan, the well-to-do will find, in these pages, a comforting and comprehensive array of the protections that allow them to sleep sound at night.
For the rest of us, Lehmannâ s sparkling prose, at the same time pointed and whimsical, together with the clever, teasing illustrations of Peter Arkle, can at least provide a diverting glimpse into how the top one percent maintains an iron grip on almost half of Americaâ s financial wealth.
From Publishers Weekly
Lehmann began his economic blog inspired by "the omission of real economic conditions from the accounting of the republic's collective life." Now in book form, and helped by Peter Arkle's drawings, Lehmann illustrates the ideas, institutions, and individuals he sees as tools for the rich to keep themselves rich—or make themselves richer. The list of offenders includes the U.S. Constitution, the iPad, Reality TV, and The New York Times (in particular, columnist David Brooks). The author explores meritocracy, class warfare, the "powerful intellectual opiate" called the free market, and other "hoary American myths." Chapters include a description of Atlas Shrugged as a "doorstop-sized digest of ideological boilerplate disguised as fictional dialogue, plotting, and character development" and memoirs, or "memoirs," (James Frey makes the list) that allow affluent readers to "cast one's fellow citizens as monolithically soulful, suffering, and exoticized others." Lehmann concludes his wholly entertaining effort with a particularly astute explanation of how the myth of the middle class has left Americans with an inadequate vocabulary to discuss economic woes; instead, "we are committed to the dogmatic belief that we are all affluent entrepreneurs waiting to happen." Brutal. (Oct. 15)
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