Rich People Things

Beschreibung:

It’s never easy being rich: endless tax avoidance, the Sisyphean search
for reliable domestic staff, the never-ending burden of surly stares
from the Great Sea of the Unwashed as one goes about one’s rightful
business. Toughest of all is simply keeping track of everything one
owns. There’s so much of it. And personal possessions are just the
beginning.
You must keep a gimlet eye, too, on the myriad people and
institutions that safeguard your gilded status: politicians, newspapers,
financial instruments, branches of government. They all belong to you.
But staying on top of what they’re up to is a full time job. What’s an
overstretched gazillionaire to do?

Now, with the publication of
Rich People Things, the problems of our over-classes are, well, over. In
a concise, easy-to-use guide, Chris Lehmann catalogs the fortifications
that shelter the opulent from the resentments of the hoi polloi. From
ideological stanchions such as the Free Market and the Prosperity
Gospel, through the castellation of media, including The New York Times,
Wired Magazine and Reality Television, to burly gatekeepers such as
David Brooks, Steve Forbes and Alan Greenspan, the well-to-do will find,
in these pages, a comforting and comprehensive array of the protections
that allow them to sleep sound at night.

For the rest of us,
Lehmann’s sparkling prose, at the same time pointed and whimsical,
together with the clever, teasing illustrations of Peter Arkle, can at
least provide a diverting glimpse into how the top one percent maintains
an iron grip on almost half of America’s financial wealth.