Post #4140626

It seems like a lot of the fantastic wealth of the super-rich is an illusion, a lot of theoretical valuation of financial instruments whose value would collapse if they actually cashed them in. I wonder how far that really goes. This may be stupid of me, but I'm starting to wonder if the rich have grown poorer along with the rest of us, and they're faking a lot. Someone commented that the rich in the 19th century were always trying to promote themselves with civic monumental architecture and so forth, and the modern rich don't seem to be doing anything like that. There are those TV shows about lifestyles of the rich that turn out to be just advertising for speculative real estate, houses that no one has ever lived in. There were stories about how for a long time, Musk didn't even own a house. It's hardly like those 18th century aristocrats with giant houses and armies of servants. (Though in that case the increase in working class living standards might be part of it.)