Wealth Porn!

I am completely guilty. I love to gawk at how the wealthy live. I love the TV channel Fine Living, the Forbes Life section of Forbes.com, and the Real Estate Journal section of The Wall Street Journal. I even recorded some episodes of MTV Cribs on my DVR the other day. To save a little face, I don't read People magazine or follow the tabloids, and what I get most interested are the parts about houses and real estate. But still, why-oh-why do I like this crap?

I think that we are fascinated with both how similar and how different from us these super wealthy people seem. I've rationalized to myself that there is no way that Donald Trump is any smarter or talented than I am. So why are our lives so different? Then I'm honest with myself and say, "Well, he went to Wharton for an MBA and has used debt, leverage, and risk to build wealth in real estate." The stress and difficulty of that path would make my stomach do back flips. You see, we are so similar, but yet so different.

I think we all have a little bit of class and wealth envy in us. I think it is one of the things that drives us to take risks and achieve more. We see the good life and work hard to get there. We innovate, invent, and invest our way to a better life. If we never knew something better existed we may never have aspired to do more. This of course can also lead us to do some very foolish things.

Dante defined envy as "love of one's own good perverted to a desire to deprive other men of theirs." By this definition, we watch wealth porn not to inspire us to achieve more, but instead out of a desire to see others fail. If I were to give into envy I would think about how Donald Trump does not deserve his wealth. On some level I would desire for him to falter, rather than consider constructively how I might learn from him and better my own situation. It is important that we aspire to do better and not to bring others down.

I have chosen to highlight Donald Trump because I can relate to him. When I watch MTV Cribs I see the opulent homes and cars of musicians, athletes, and celebrities with which I have nothing in common. There is very little to learn from watching that type of show other than to see how it is on the 'other side of the tracks' so to speak. It seems more and more that this may lead to frustration rather than to realistic aspiration. I know just how few people achieve that level of financial success, but do the teens who spend hours every day practicing free throws or power chords rather than doing their homework? But again, if I want to bring them down in order to bring myself satisfaction, I am guilty of Dante's envy.

One of my excuses for some of my wealth porn habit is that, "What I really care about is the beauty of the house itself; the architecture, rather than the lifestyle it represents." I nearly went into architecture so this makes some sense. Of course underneath that explanation I am internally figuring how much wealth I would need to responsibly own a house like that. $10, $20, $30 million? I aspire to own these types of luxurious homes. Is that greedy? I hope to own what most would call a McMansion of around 5,000 sq ft one day; is that because of the wealth porn or because of a natural drive to succeed; to be King of my own castle?

Wealth porn (or actually even the guy down the block) has the ability to push us into spending more than we earn or buying things we don't need. I have a feeling that keeping up with the Jones has been a part of our society from the beginning, but has it gotten worse because of TV, magazines, and movies? Certainly the availability of large amounts of credit to the masses has compounded the problem. All I know is that, despite aspiring to increasing my standard of living, since founding this blog I have committed that I will get my debt in check and be cautious about how the greed, envy, and desire for immediate gratification affects my spending. If I do it right, the time may come when I will have earned the luxuries, and I can live a lifestyle that would, to outsiders, qualify as wealth porn.

It seems that with this post I have asked more questions that I have answered. It has been an interesting philosophical journey for me to write this. Please leave some comments and let me know what you think about some of the issues raised.