☞ Tonight, on This Old Penthouse
I had a dream last night where I received a $110 bill back from the bank.
I think it’s safe to assume that will be the closest I ever get to having a “bank error in your favor” ala the Community Chest card in Monopoly. (Seriously Parker Brothers, I don’t know what bank you use, but when has there ever been a bank error in anyone’s favor? Bank errors in the bank’s favor, sure… but I for one have never seen one of those ATMs that just keeps spitting out money in real life.)
I’m not sure where the $110 dream came from. Maybe it was because I was reading about new technology the US Mint is taking to stop counterfeiters? (Scratch n’ sniff technology.) Maybe I really really just want to see Millard Fillmore get on the $110 bill? (Compromise of 1850 4life!) Maybe it was just wishful thinking about the redistribution of wealth.
I saw a graph showing the distribution of money in America a few days ago. If you look at Slide A here you’ll see what I’m talking about.
What’s that? Okay. I’m being told there is no Slide A.
Well, we can skip right to Slide B, then.
Oh. Okay, no Slide B, either, huh.
No slides at all? Right. Oh, sure, budget cuts. No, no, I understand. No, of course, no, times are tough for everyone. We all have to make sacrifices.
What? Oh, you’re actually doing fine. Best year ever? You bought a schooner? Seriously? And got a huge tax return? Wow. Well, yeah, cool. No, good for you, man.
No, no, don’t worry about it. I’ll just describe the chart to them. No, it’ll be fine. Yeah, yeah, catch you around. No, have fun in Tahoe. Take it easy.
I hate that guy.
Where was I? Oh, right. Slide A.
So Slide A visualizes is the distribution of wealth in America. As you may have guessed, it’s a little bleak. Notably, the top 5% of Americans own 72% of the wealth in America.
Just let that sink in for a moment.
To put it another way, of the 20 people reading this (wishful thinking), one of you could buy and sell the rest three times over. You know, if slavery were still cool. Which, given the distribution of wealth, it almost seems like it’s making a comeback! Go slavery! (Too soon?)
I believe the applicable cliché here is “the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.” I’ve always believed that to be true, but a couple months ago, I actually witnessed it happening first hand.
Now, as I frequently do*, I will use It’s A Wonderful Life as an analogy for the real world. (*I have never done this before.)
There’s a scene in It’s a Wonderful Life when Jimmy Stewart’s character George Bailey is talking to Old Man Potter (Lionel Barrymore) (Lionel!) about a job. Potter mentions during the great depression George saved the Bailey Building & Loan and Potter “saved” everything else in Bedford Falls. And by “saved” Potter really means “bought.” Potter eventually makes George a job offer that George declines in the most awesomely Jimmy Stewart way possible. Roll the clip.
What? No clip? Right. Budget cuts. Tahoe.
Moving on.
A couple months ago I was in an apartment on the 30th floor of a building on Central Park West.
Actually, let me revise that statement. I was in an apartment— the 30th floor of a building on Central Park West. Much better.
Anyway, I was getting the tour of the place from one of the nannies (because when you own the entire floor of a building overlooking Central Park, you also tend to be swimming in nannies), and we got to the kids’ bedroom. Which was enormous.
“This room is awesome,” I said. “I love the green molding along the floor.” Because apparently I’m gay for molding.
“Yeah, it’s nice, too bad they’re tearing it apart,” the nanny said.
“The molding! No! Not the molding!”
“No, they’re tearing apart the entire room.”
“Bwwwwwwaaa?”
“Yeah, they just bought the 29th floor, this room is going to become the main staircase.”
At that moment I pooped my pants a little. Fortunately we were in the kids’ room and the nanny was there, so that was okay.
Now in my It’s A Wonderful Life analogy, the people who owned the 29th floor are the Bailey Building & Loan, and my friends on 30 are Old Man Potter. Only the people on 29 didn’t turn down the job, Jimmy Stewart-style, they took it. Granted, this is a ridiculous New York City example of the super-mega-rich becoming only slightly less-mega rich to the super-duper-mega-rich upstairs, but the point stands.
I’ve seen a lot of absurd apartments during my time in New York. Entire floors owned. Entire buildings owned. Elevators that open directly into living rooms. Teenagers with bedrooms bigger than apartments I’ve lived in. An in-house library with one of those rolly ladders… you know the ones. They roll.
I’ve seen live-in cleaning maids their own apartments inside other apartments. An apartment with a dojo inside of it for karate practice. Another apartment where I actually lost track of how many bedrooms they had. I counted nine, but after that I got lost and had to follow my breadcrumbs back to the elevator. (Unfortunately the breadcrumbs had already been vacuumed up by the live-in maid at that point, so I just took a nap in one of the bedrooms until the live-in security kicked me out.)
My all-time favorite though, was the apartment where they clearly ran out of ideas for what to do with all the space that they had, so they made a “sitting room.” This was a 10’ by 10’ room with nothing in it but a chair in the center of the room. I hate everyone.
Moral of the story, if you want to see the disparity of wealth between the top 5% and everyone else in America, there’s no better place to do it than New York City.
Huh, I should pitch this to the NYC Tourism Bureau.
I’ll call it the “I ♥ Gross Disparities In Wealth” campaign.
I could make millions off the t-shirts alone!
Wait a minute…
