Smug alert: I’m about to be ever so pleased with myself. As I write, I’m
sitting in my four-storey Holland Park home. Not sure how much it’s worth:
£3 million, maybe £4 million – who’s counting?
If I look out of the study window, I see the shaggy-haired offspring of W11
frolicking in the Whipsnade-sized private communal gardens. If I peer out of
the large sash windows at the front, I can see the honey-coloured lovelies
of Notting Hill, looking like extras in a Richard Curtis movie. Ah, the
world has been sweet to me. By the way, do you hate me yet?
I confess, I’m a fraud. Any fool knows that the inhabitants of this swanky bit
of town leave in August to cause Italy’s annual espresso-price bubble. It is
true, though, that I’m housesitting here while my own home has its mildew
nature reserve replaced with a bathroom. It’s also true that I’m suffering
from property-related bipolar disorder. I veer between the ecstatic highs of
thinking that I have in some profound spiritual way returned home to my
rightful social station (quite literally Holland Park Tube; very naice);
that I too could be a gilded focaccia-munching Hillbilly trustafarian.
But psyches are like investment: what goes up must come down. The highs are
followed by socialist moments of boiling resentment and jealousy. Why, why,
why don’t I have a trust fund? What a harsh world it is that allows such
terrible inequality: why is it someone else living in the big house, not me!
It has to be said, there are more lows than highs.
Yep, I’m eaten up by a desire to eat the rich. But I’m not alone. It’s open
season on the super-rich. The private-equity buccaneers are smeared as
asset-strippers rather than the saviours of failing businesses; we whine
that foreign bankers and blingy Russian billionaires are pricing us out of
the housing market (“They come here, take our directorships, take our
mansions, take our trophy wives”, etc); City bonuses lead to a ritualised
howl about fat cats; and a slew of poverty-lobby reports ask us to furrow
our brows at the rise of inequality.
As social problems go, the “undeserving rich” is a nice one to have. But have
you noticed how the “problem rich” are never us, and the people who deserve
to have their pips squeaked are always wealthier than us? It couldn’t be
that we underestimate how rich we are. These aren’t words you often hear,
but there is fun to be had at the website of the Institute of Fiscal Studies
(www. ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin), where you can take a test to show where
you stand in the chain of earning. Most of us dramatically underestimate how
many poor schmucks are below us, how few rich bastards above.
So what have the super-rich ever done for us? First, let’s remember Sir Alan
Sugar isn’t rich because Vicky Pollard is poor. Back in 1776, we were told
(weren’t you listening?) by Adam Smith that there isn’t a fixed supply of
wealth, that because someone gets richer it doesn’t follow that someone has
to wear ragged trousers. As P. J. O’Rourke put it: “Wealth is not a pizza.
If I have too many slices, you don’t have to eat the Domino’s box.”
So the rich don’t harm us – but they do drive up standards for all of us.
Would we live in a world where we can own BlackBerries, sports cars and
ten-foot wide TVs if it weren’t for rich people demanding the existence of
these things? If there weren’t so many thoroughbred clotheshorses galloping
around Chanel stores, would we be so well dressed? There is a trickle-down
effect from haute couture to Primark. Without the rich, would we have
teeth-whitening, high-performance engines, Botox, boob jobs, therapy, Thai
holidays? These things aren’t to everyone’s taste, but many want them, and
the rich were the ones to establish a market in them.
And let’s hear it for the idle rich living off their inheritances. Would
tennis or golf have ever come into existence without them? You need a
leisure class, with time on its hands, to perfect such games and then
popularise them. The Grand National would be a sorry affair if the assorted
rich couldn’t afford to keep their horses in straw. Would the modern museum
have ever come into existence were it not for the obsessions of private
collectors in the 18th century? How many art galleries, opera houses, city
academies or football clubs depend on the vanity or philanthropy of the
super-rich? How many artists and musicians have flourished thanks to the
patronage of the wealthy?
Nobody likes paying taxes, so we prefer them to be spent on important things –
schools, kidney dialysis machines, keeping Prezza in a grace-and-favour
apartment and harassing smokers. Nobody won votes promising more opera. So
we need the idle rich to add vim and colour to our lives. Who knows what new
things will emerge from their ability to experiment and play around, free
from the constraints of 9 to 5 wage slavery. Maybe among the legion of
slacking trust-funders at film school is the next Spielberg. Maybe there is
even a billionaire who can make a reality of Peter Mandelson’s millennium
promise that the nonexistent sport of surfball would be the game of the 21st
century. In our age of abundance, we still need the filthy rich to give us a
clue about how to enjoy life and discover new luxuries for us to consume.
Perhaps you still want to eat the rich. But the Rowntree Trust wouldn’t be
able to issue its worthy reports if Joseph Rowntree, the teeth-rotting
industrialist, hadn’t established the trust in 1904 to cure the “great
scourges of humanity” – “war, slavery, intemperance, the opium traffic,
impurity and gambling”. Karl Marx wouldn’t have had the freedom to think
were it not for the patronage of the fox-hunting, factory-owning Friedrich
Engels. Which goes to show that the rich aren’t all perfect.
Is constipation too much to stomach?
What’s not to like about constipation? Or, to be more precise, what’s wrong
with that nononsense word “constipation”? You may have seen the ad in which
two women sing the praises of a well-known yoghurt because it stops their
insides being bunged up. Except they don’t say that; the voice-over talks of
the product easing “slower digestive transit”. Eh? Who talks like that? We
don't call air fresheners “negative olfactory sensation inhibitors”, or
shampoo “follicular degreasant agent”. Get a grip, Mr Danone: what’s wrong
with calling a manual excavation implement a manual excavation implement?
Different in kindness
The other day on the train a homeless person addressed the carriage, pleading
for money. I firmly shook my head. I never give because: 1) the money would
be better spent on agencies that help the indigent, 2) I don’t want to abet
someone’s slow suicide by drink or drugs, and 3) giving money to beggars
encourages more people to drop out. Not giving money is cruel to be kind.
But one passenger – let’s call him Mr Nice Guy – asked to look at the beggar’s
arms for needle marks. Seeing none, he gave him money and started talkingly
to him in a matey, familiar fashion. “Grrr,” I seethed inwardly. It was the
mixture of showing himself au fait with underclass drug habits but also
being uncorrupted by cynicism that rankled with me. I’m convinced that Mr
Nice Guy raised his voice so that people could hear how good he was. Yuck:
surely it was an example of moral showboating?
Yes, Mr Nice Guy preened his ethical plumage – but does that matter if the end
result is kindness? And was I peevish because of guilt that my hardline
stance was simply a cop out from helping? I genuinely don’t know: what do
you think?
