Like just about everybody, I wish I had a whole lot more lettuce than I do, but, hey, life is good. That’s why, I guess, I wonder about how big of an issue it really should be that the mega rich have become richer at a faster pace than the rest of us.
Why care? Most agree, from shrinks, to sociologists, to rock stars that after you reach a relatively modest threshold, the correlation between net worth and happiness rapidly weakens. (Besides, every redistributive effort thus far has failed miserably. Just ask Gorbachev. Or even better – Deng Xiaoping.)
Think how ecstatic you’d be if all of a sudden your desire for more ‘stuff’ evaporated. And you care less about the Jones. Think how full your house is of junk that has long not seen the light of day. Things that still fit and/or are far from the end of their useful lives.
You’d be able to relax a bit more and enjoy the company of your roommate. Which reminds me that mine is still away. And the funny thing is that my friends at the Economist found out and included a bit in the 8/30 issue to help keep my mind on the subject. (And off of the magazine covers son has left strewn about.)
It is a review of a book titled September Songs: The Good News about Marriage in the Later Years. The author “turns her attention to couples in their 50’s and 60’s and finds older marriage is full of unexpected pleasures”.
“Older couples expressed lower levels of anger, disgust, belligerence and whining and higher levels of one important emotion, namely affection.”
“The nest empties. Retirement approaches… As in late adolescence people once again have to forge an individual identity. Without a growing family or a career to provide self-definition, older people must answer anew the teenage question, ‘who am I?'”
What fun! Hope I don’t get pimples again. Wife never had any.
We’ll have to look in the mirror and see what we see…
The Subtle Landscape 
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