MetaFilter posts tagged with wealth

Nails Goes to Wall Street

reenum — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:54:21 -0800

Lenny Dykstra was lauded for his heroics with the Mets and Philles. After his career, Dykstra became well-known as a post-career athlete success story. Then the truth started coming out... Dykstra's post career exploits included making stock picks and starting a high end magazine targeted towards athletes. Then, in April of this year, it all came crashing down. In separate articles from GQ and ESPN, Dykstra's financial empire was revealed to be a house of cards. Dykstra subsequently filed bankruptcy in July. For a copy of Lenny's petition, you can go here (Warning: This link is a PDF). Lenny only sees these events as a minor speedbump, and promises to be back on top in no time.

I'd buy that for a $1M

Brandon Blatcher — Sat, 16 May 2009 19:55:51 -0800

Maybe you shouldn't buy that.

Most Expensive

Joe Beese — Sat, 02 May 2009 15:38:14 -0800

The Most Expensive Journal blogs about $4,200 computer keyboards, $2.7 million guitars, and $11 million watches.

Dating A Banker Anonymous

ColdChef — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:54:37 -0800

Dating A Banker Anonymous Are you or someone you love dating a banker? If so, we are here to support you through these difficult times. Dating A Banker Anonymous (DABA) is a safe place where women can come together – free from the scrutiny of feminists– and share their tearful tales of how the mortgage meltdown has affected their relationships. Via

haven't had a dream in a long time

plexi — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 12:57:10 -0800

'You loser!" screamed Katie, aiming a vase at her husband. "You've destroyed my life,'' she continued, hurling it. "Just look at my hair, look at my nails! You loser, you jerk, you nobody."

Katie's husband, Jack, whose property portfolio disintegrated in the financial crash, had just told his wife that she would have to cut back on her thrice-weekly visits to Nicky Clarke, the nail salon in Harvey Nichols, and the oxygen facials, chemical peels and seaweed wraps at Space NK.

The forgotten Holocaust

hadjiboy — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:10:41 -0800

In 1943, while the Allies were busy battling the Axis Powers and the Nazi Regime, there was another kind of war that was being waged against a helpless populace (living on the Indian Sub-continent). A war that has been largely ignored by the mass media and the history books of our time. It is known as the Great Bengal Famine, and ended up causing the death of an estimated 1.5 million to 4 million people.

Neuroses of the Rich and Famous

Weebot — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:15:59 -0800

Psychotherapy in the Age of Obscene Wealth

Richer than Croesus?

electricinca — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 09:48:33 -0800

The Sunday Times have published the 2008 edition of their annual Rich List. The full list of the 1000 wealthiest people in Britain is not online yet but they have published a list of the top 150 (pdf). So now you're richer than Croesus what do you spend your wealth on? Not apparently on Updown Court the most expensive house in Britain, which despite being a very reasonable GBP 70 million is still unsold since going on the market in 2005. And not on prostitutes if the Duke of Westminster has learned his lesson since last year.

America's Middle Class

blue_beetle — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:02:41 -0800

Livin' Large - To hear the Lou Dobbses and Bill O'Reillys of the world--not to mention politicians ranging from Ron Paul to Hillary Clinton--the middle class of America (however you define that term) has never had it so tough. Between credit squeezes, out-of-control immigration, rising costs of education and health care and everything else, it's all darkness out there for those of us who are neither millionaires nor welfare cases, right? (A video presented by Drew Carey and reason.tv)

Shifting Sands

chunking express — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 08:25:41 -0800

Shifting Sands. A great series from the Globe and Mail on the Alberta Tar Sands: An Empire Made of Goo, Black gold, Texas tea, The hollowing out of small Atlantic towns, Where rich and poor Albertas collide, Norway the gold standard for managing oil wealth, The climatic costs of rapid growth.

What Happened to My Forty Acres and a Mule, Fool?

jonp72 — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 10:26:25 -0800

40 acres and a mule has been a slogan of African-American economic aspirations ever since the legislation creating the Freedman's Bureau promised ex-slaves parcels not exceeding forty acres each, to the loyal refugees and freedmen. General William Tecumseh Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15 decreed that the land on slave plantations be seized and distributed to freed slaves, but Andrew Johnson rescinded the order and vetoed expansion of the Freedman's Bureau. Both Henry Louis Gates and Dalton Conley have associated the failure to grant freed slaves their "40 acres and a mule" with the wealth gap between black and white Americans, but now an economics grad student, Melinda Miller, has brought important quantitative data to the debate in a new research paper. Using census data from the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, which was forced to distribute land to freed slaves of the Cherokee tribe shortly after the Civil War, Miller has found a natural experiment that makes it possible to quantify how much the failed dreams of "40 acres of a mule" are at the root of interracial disparities of wealth. According to a fine summary by econo-blogger Tyler Cowen, Miller argues that the failure to distribute land to slaves may account for as little as 20% or as much as 75% of the black/white wealth gap.

Class dismissed.

anotherpanacea — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 07:25:17 -0800

How rich is rich? Becker and Posner debate billionaires. (They're rich, right?) How rich is too rich for democracy? Maybe the problem is that we're all middle class. Check your facts.

Economic Consequences

homunculus — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 00:35:28 -0800

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush. "The next president will have to deal with yet another crippling legacy of George W. Bush: the economy. A Nobel laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz, sees a generation-long struggle to recoup." [Via Firedoglake.]

Treasury: Income Mobility Substantial. Pew: But Not Enough.

shivohum — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 20:22:53 -0800

A new U.S. Treasury Report (press release) reports that tax returns from 1996 to 2005 show that income mobility in the U.S. is "considerable," with rising earnings, and top earners who often stumble. The WSJ crows. Pew releases its own research (reports, press release) on income inequality today with a multi-decade outlook, but summarizes the findings as that American families' income mobility is still highly dependent on their parents' position. Forbes and a The New Republic blog try to reconcile the reports. Meanwhile, blacks appear to be downwardly mobile.

Mind the Gap

hoverboards don't work on water — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 04:51:34 -0800

Mind the Gap: an essay by Paul Graham on wealth, riches, poverty, and why income inequality might not be so bad.

"When people care enough about something to do it well, those who do it best tend to be far better than everyone else. There's a huge gap between Leonardo and second-rate contemporaries like Borgognone. You see the same gap between Raymond Chandler and the average writer of detective novels. A top-ranked professional chess player could play ten thousand games against an ordinary club player without losing once. Like chess or painting or writing novels, making money is a very specialized skill. But for some reason we treat this skill differently. No one complains when a few people surpass all the rest at playing chess or writing novels, but when a few people make more money than the rest, we get editorials saying this is wrong. Why? The pattern of variation seems no different than for any other skill. What causes people to react so strongly when the skill is making money? I think there are three reasons we treat making money as different: the misleading model of wealth we learn as children; the disreputable way in which, till recently, most fortunes were accumulated; and the worry that great variations in income are somehow bad for society. As far as I can tell, the first is mistaken, the second outdated, and the third empirically false. Could it be that, in a modern democracy, variation in income is actually a sign of health?"

California Inspects Spector and cannot decide. There is more to this than meets the eye.

Rancid Badger — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 22:55:21 -0800

California Where the Rich do Fine While the Poor are Doing Time "Hell, you got to live with it, there's nothing else to live with except mendacity, is there?" Big Daddy, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

112 Millionaires Drown In Hilarious Accident

jonson — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:33:52 -0800

Ocean Residences by Four Seasons is your own private apartment aboard a giant cruise ship (one of 112 similar apartments aboardship). For those afflicted with both wanderlust and an unimaginable amount of money, the online brochure makes a somewhat compelling case for having no fixed abode.

Mucho Denero

delmoi — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 14:32:40 -0800

Bill Gates no longer the Richest private citizen in the world. In other news, Larry Ellison still doesn't have any eyebrows.

Pith

Kwantsar — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:39:07 -0800

Why we should not make mean log of wealth big though years to act are long (.pdf) by Paul Samuelson. (via)

The 'greater fool' theory writ large

ikkyu2 — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 17:49:59 -0800

The Motley Fool's new CAPS stock-picking system keeps track of your stock picks and whether they outperformed or underperformed the market. Then everyone's picks are aggregated, weighted by the quality of their past records, to rank individual stocks. Here's how it works. (more inside)

Down with Labor AND Management!

jonson — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 18:36:31 -0800

As Labor Day 2006 winds to a close, America's long & twisted history with Organized Labor seems to never come to rest on any one side of the fence, opinion wise. While we hate the idea of the evil CEO crushing the employees underfoot, there's something profoundly un-American about bolshevikism. This excellent collection of political cartoons from Life Magazine from the early decades of the 20th Century explores both sides of the debate, reminding us at the end of the day that nobody loves a fat man.

Think of it as evolution in action.

ikkyu2 — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 05:43:45 -0800

Little Citadels. "Dine, shop, live, work, and be entertained in a unique and alluring environment," says the Time Warner Center website - all without ever stepping outside your gleaming Manhattan skyscraper. San Jose's Santana Row, which at first glance seemed no more than a Beverly Center you can live in, is now being compared favorably to urban European living. And MGM-Mirage's new, mysterious and costly ($7 billion!) Project CityCenter brings the trend to Las Vegas - with gambling, of course. They're not Arcosantis - and they don't, as yet, require an Oath of Fealty - but by all accounts they're thriving. What do they have in common? Wealthy tenants, megacorporate sponsors, and a shared desire to integrate efficient, conspicuous consumption into every aspect of civic life. Paolo Soleri may have been right after all - maybe he just forgot to account for the effects of capitalism.

Look upon my frozen blue face, ye Mighty, and Despair!

jason's_planet — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 19:33:07 -0800

What’s the best way to dispose of an accumulated fortune? Conventional wisdom tells us that you can’t take it with you. The inevitability of death has inspired otherwise ruthless men to contribute to the larger community with the goal of establishing a posthumous legacy. Carnegie built libraries. Bill Gates is working on global health initiatives. But the conventional wisdom on this matter could be wrong. And with that in mind, some wealthy men are choosing to turn themselves into cryonic popsicles and put their wealth in trust funds in the hope that at some point in the future, Science will be able to revive them.

Living the good life on just $483,800 a year

blahblahblah — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 19:43:08 -0800

What it costs to live well in the United States. According to Forbes, living well for a family of four in New York City requires an annual income of $483,800, compared to $189,923 in Wichita, Kansas. Of course, living well, according to the methodology, involves a vacation home, a BMW 325i and a Lexus RX 330, weekends at the Ritz, and almost no savings, so you might want to skip one of these things if you are a few bucks shy. Also worth noting, the most expensive ZIP codes and houses in the United States (and the world). Are you living well?

Who's Poor?

Gyan — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 23:19:54 -0800

The Measurement of Poverty