Wealth

"All true wealth is biological" -- Aral Vorkosigan.

I grew up in New York City (not the tough, gritty part, though the area of my youth now is on the tough, gritty side; we drove through there several years ago, and I was reluctant to even roll down the windows, let alone stop). Playland at Rye Beach was the preferred destination for the annual outing of altar boys at our church. This was a Big Deal, as it was much nicer than anything I would routinely see. My father once delighted me by taking us us there, much to my surprise. Years later, I mentioned to my mother how astonished I was when I found out that that was where we were going, and she was surprised, since, apparently, I was so quiet on the trip, they thought I knew that's where we were going, and just wasn't particularly moved. Kids.

Playland is in Westchester County, just north of New York City, and is famous for being the home of moderately wealthy people. Nannies are common, Beamers and Jaguars not exceptional, and trophy wives abound. ( I wonder: if we ever get to the point of having women routinely in the executive suite, will 'trophy husbands' become common?) I didn't realize any of this at the time, though I knew that there was something different about that area; for one thing, it was so damn green! (Shortly after we bought our house here, I heard a local ad for 'the Fresh Air Fund', and realized to my surprise that I was now living where the FAF used to ship inner city New York kids every summer. How about that!)

This past weekend, the Washington Post had an article titled Squeaking By On $300,000 a year. I read the first paragraph, and thought I'm not going to read this, it's just people moaning about not being able to afford the finer things in life quite so easily. But, as it turns out, I did read it, swearing to stop the moment I hit complaints about diminished self-indulgence ability, and it turned out to be a pretty interesting article. The woman who's squeaking by and I have nothing in common - she's a divorced mother living with her children and a live-in nanny in a large (4,000 square feet) house on several acres of manicured land. She earns $150,000 a year, and has access to that much more, from alimony and investments. Still, there's spilled milk on the carpet, and she has to personally sew the scouting patches onto her son's shirt. Her surroundings are more elegant than mine, but she doesn't have an easy life. , The message of the article is, primarily, that what's true for her is true for many of the people in those huge houses. They're not suffering; some may not even be aware of the recession, or only mildly so -- but not all. Some are selling their homes, their possessions, simply to pay bills. Some truly are squeaking by.

This morning, I was making breakfast, slicing up some bread for French Toast, taking out cantaloupe, starting the coffee maker, and I stopped between tasks to look at the green fields visible from the kitchen nook's windows, seeing the early morning light reflecting on the polished wood of the room's cabinets, hearing the soft sounds of jazz from the CD player in the living room. For just a moment, I thought I have a pretty good life, too.

An article from the Wall Street Journal blogs about the phenomenon of diminishment in the quality of life for the monied classes of Westchester and elsewhere, which includes a link to the WaPo article, can be found here.