Letters to the Editor
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Pretty in Pink
same thing 80's style
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Wow, Cary!
You're so right in your answer because the issues are always about: SEX, MONEY, and POWER!
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Just Reenact Trading Places
1) Try to steal your fiance's brief case.
2) Hook up with his wealthy conniving parents.
3) Plant drugs on your fiance and send him to jail. Also hire a hooker to help him look sleazy.
4) Get hired by the wealthy parents who rely on your "street wisdom" for advice on things like pork belly futures. Become fabulously wealthy.
5) Throw a giant party in the mansion and realize that your old friends are now just using you.
6) Have the hooker, who really has a heart of gold, fall for your fiance.
7) Hook back up with the fiance, platonically, and try to sink the wealthy parents in a nefarious commodities scheme involving orange futures. Be sure to involve a gay gorilla.
8) Use the wise butler copiously.
9) Celebrate when you realize that we are all the same!
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Resources for the rich
So the headline is ironic (who has more resources than the rich?) but the truth is that the rich need resources to help them understand their privileges, develop authentic and meaningful relationships wherein they don't have to hide their privileges, and work out what they're going to do with their money so as to HELP others and not screw them over.
Here are some such resources:
-Resource Generation is an organization that helps young people (I guess that's supposed to mean anyone below 30?)with wealth unlearn their class privilege and distribute their money for good causes. http://www.resourcegeneration.org/home.html
-_Class Matters_ by Betty Leondar-Wright is a great resource for people of all classes - it takes its title seriously, and is full of compassionate and challenging advice for people who are keen to develop deep cross-class relationships. They put on a conference every year called "Making Money Make Change".
-_Classified_ by Karen Pittelman is a fun, easy read about people with wealth coming to deep understandings about class and wealth
(both the books have lots of excercises you can do by yourself or together to help work through your ideas about class)
I'm a middle-class person in a long-term relationship with a wealthy person. The only way we could possibly have gotten this far is through a WHOLE lot of conversation about money--what it means, how we are going to use it, and how we are going to give it away. What will matter most is whether your money values are aligned nowadays.
I suspect that if this is the first you're hearing about your fiance's wealth, he probably feels ashamed or awkward about it. Money and class are very taboo subjects in our society, so I could understand why. My guess is that he has strong feelings about money as well, and that as he learns to deal with them, he will become more open and honest about money.
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The frog and the prince...
Any time you meet a man who is an only child of middle class parents, it stands to reason that at a minimum he stands to inherit, eventually, a home and its contents, and probably some money too.
Whether this happens early in life or late in life may affect his whole future. (Compare Queen Elizabeth II of England and her son Prince Charles.)
Surely hooking up with an heir is better than hooking up with some guy who has no prospects of anything other than what he can save out of salary, or earn by his own business activities. At the very least it provides a safety net for the LW's future children if times get hard.
In fairy tales, when the unkissed frog turns out to be a prince-in-waiting, that is generally considered a desirable outcome.
My own girlfriend, alas, is no heiress except to my estate, but she makes it up to me in other ways.
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It seems like the rich can't win.
reading these letters has been a real shock to me. I can't believe how hostile some people are about something that people can do nothing about. Did you choose your parents? When you were in the womb, did you say "I'm only coming out if it's to a couple of hard working, solidly middle class midwestern Americans who live in a weathered, 6 room ranch house in Indiana, who will teach me the value of a dollar and make me learn responsibility at a young age and make me finance my own college education." Well, I mean really. did you? How can one be responsible for the circumstances of one's parents?
And then, for these awful people who made the stunningly bad choice to be born to wealthy parents, they can't win. If they try and hide their wealth (so people like the lw and other posters won't hate them) then they're "poseurs" and "slumming it". If they act like they don't have to worry about money, then they're worse than Satan himself. What do you want people with wealthy parents to do? At 7, should they have refused to go on vacation with their families, because other American families couldn't afford to? Do you want them to punish themselves, or constantly apologize for their financial circumstances? And how much apologizing is enough?
the whole thing is making me angry. do you hate professional athletes because they were born with talents you don't have? Do you hate models because they're more beautiful than you? Life's not fair, but you can't just adopt a policy of hating those that fortune has blessed. that way lies bitterness.
and lastly, the lw writes that because her fiancee grew up wealthy he never faced any hardship in life or something to that effect. That's a shockingly ignorant statement. some of the most f-ed up families in the world have plenty of money to burn.
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Truth in Stereotypes
I've been on both sides of this, and LW has a point.
I have dated someone richer than me whose sense of entitlement made me cringe. I have also dated someone substantially poorer than me who rightfully felt I couldn't truly understand some of the hardships that had limited their life.
In fact, many of my friends in El Salvador perceived me a certain way because I was a privileged American. It would be silly to deny that they had a point.