Born Rich-- A Fraction Of The 1%

Sunday night we watched Jamie Johnson's second movie, The One Percent, right? Two years earlier he made Born Rich, above, which got a couple of Emmy nominations. Worth watching? Absolutely! But I'm such a crybaby. You can't take me to a tear-jerky movie. When this one young heir in the film said the thought of losing his inheritance would be like losing a parent or a sibling I just started crying. I felt less badly for him when it turned out he tried suing Jamie for defamation. The judge threw the "case" out of court.

Aside from making films, Jamie writes a column on the 1% for Vanity Fair. Last May he did one on how female members of the 1% can be as gross as their male compadres.

Traditional stereotypes depicting billionairesses as defenders of proper etiquette and good taste can be downright false. In truth, money tends to animate the wolfish side of women. It arouses their predatory instincts and makes them every bit as sexually domineering as well-to-do men.

Consider, for example, an heiress I know who has always kept track of her erotic conquests by photographing the unsheathed swords of all the squires to have visited her bed. The collection of images functions as a trophy case, celebrating a lifetime of seduction and feminine élan. Maudlin sentimentality has no place in this X-rated autobiography. Instead, emphasis rests where it counts-- on both the number of companions in her legion and the size of their sporting equipment. (Besides, a conventional deference to social mores has never been her preoccupation.) Possessing a sizable fortune simply has given her license to pursue her own desire, free of inhibition. She’s managed to maintain a thriving marriage and raise a family without ever having to ignore the drive of her own carnal appetites.

It’s common for women with extraordinary wealth to choose relationships that completely dismantle typical gender roles. Ladies of the manor usually prefer to control their lovers and preserve their own right to do whatever they please. There’s a reason why so many vastly rich women either decide never to marry at all or systematically breeze through multiple husbands. Staying forever single guarantees absolute autonomy, and marriages are short-lived for women who want to rule the roost exclusively.

In the film you'll no doubt enjoy the bit where some of the heirs giggle at the very idea of dating people from the 99%. The next month he investigated the 1%'s preference for Coke over Pepsi.

“When have you ever heard someone order a Pepsi at a country club?” he asked. I hesitated for a brief moment and then realized my answer implicitly proved his point: “Never,” I conceded.

...Affluent devotees of the original cola like its history, its pedigree, and its aesthetics-- especially the quintessentially American drink’s glass-bottle version. It’s part taste, part snobbery: rich people genuinely believe the cane-sugar Coke in bottles, often made in Mexico, is more delectable and satisfying than the U.S.’s corn-syrup version in the cans. That preference encourages the pretension of sipping from those charming little glass vessels—and what a sight awaits the guest who opens a host’s fridge to find entire shelves of foreign-version Cokes, their exotic bottle labels neatly facing forward. It’s a small expression of the kind of extravagance reserved for those who aren’t required to balance a budget, or worry about stocking their own kitchen without professional help.

And this past July he asked Where were your kids this summer?

In wealthy circles, how a person spends his or her summer says everything about social class. Having family ties to a prestigious resort enclave and country club provides crucial cul-de-sac cred, the assumption being that those who vacation in the best spots have the necessary prerequisites for American aristocracy: money, access, and taste.

This implied measure of status is now being used to define the structure of life for affluent children over summer vacation. The Times article cited well-to-do parents pressuring summer camps to do a better job of providing services that will help kids “pad the high-school resume.” The traditional camp experience isn’t enough, according to this view. Now families are demanding that their children’s summer-camp programs focus on activities that will get them into Harvard, such as brushing up on their studies or training with premier golf and tennis coaches.

When I was young, the camp you went to said something about your background. Rich kids from the Northeast (at least the ones I knew) all wanted to go to the Windridge Tennis & Sports Camps-- the St. Tropez of camps for a network of preppy children who were just beginning to understand the value of having the right friends.

Back then, strategic social positioning was still in the early stages of development. Aside from being able to say their kids went to a prestigious camp, most parents didn’t care how their kids behaved there or whether they learned anything at all. It was enough that they were with other members of their high caste, and that the burden of parenting had disappeared for a while. I remember one old friend of mine running away from Windridge and making it all the way to the neighboring town before anyone noticed, which was quite a long distance to travel over the rural hills of Vermont. Remarkably, his rogue escape didn’t seem to disturb anyone. He simply was allowed to go home, after which the routine life of camp resumed.

Today, by contrast, such acts of rebellion would have repercussions, because they’re not in keeping with the Ivy League manner rich adults have come to expect from their offspring. Vacation months for posh adolescents are filled with status-conscious enterprises designed to guarantee prestige from the outset. In addition to increasingly refined camps, kids are encouraged to master skills that will prepare them for the boardroom.

Not too long ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article on a program for affluent children that’s taking place this summer in New York City. With the lofty name Global Fellows in Social Enterprise, it’s designed to educate the scions of high-net-worth families about important financial issues. It’s anyone’s guess if this kind of exercise will help kids learn much, but for sure it will instill in them an awareness of their rank, and provide a stark contrast with the comparatively ordinary jobs that middle-class kids can look forward to.

Over the weekend, longtime plutocrat suck-up Peggy Noonan warned that if taxes go up on the rich, they'll leave America. Hopefully they'll move to the libertarian paradise of Somalia. But where they go is their own choice. There are no countries offering that super-rich a better deal than the U.S. More to the point, though, is that if every single one of the young heirs interviewed in Jamie's film were to pack up and leave tomorrow, wouldn't America be far better off? Is there a single thing of value any of them have to offer to our society? Do you really want Trump's daughter staking out spots in the New York skyline to blot out with badly constructed buildings? These people are a living testament for increasing the estate tax to 90%.

In his introduction to The Reactionary Mind, Corey Robin writes extensively of the fear conservatives have of equality, something Johnson also deals with very graphically in his film. "When the conservative," writes Robin, "looks upon a democratic movement from below, this (and the exercise of agency) is what he sees: a terrible disturbance in the private life of power. Witnessing the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800, Theordore Sedgwick lamented, 'The aristocracy of virtue is destroyed; personal influence is at an end'."