Personal essays
On doing more and giving more
Enough
Maria Popova reposted a story she shared in January 2014.
It was Kurt Vonnegut’s story about a meeting he had with Joseph Heller. They were at a billionaire’s house and Vonnegut pointed out that the billionaire had made more in the previous 24 hours than “Catch 22” did over its entire lifetime.
Heller replies, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
Hmmm. I wonder what that is.
Heller explains “[I have] the knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
It’s exactly my question about so many of these billionaires - why isn’t what they have enough?
One of the ideas that came up during the US presidential election a couple of cycles back was universal basic income. In this system everyone receives a minimum income.
This offends others.
How do we justify giving “these people”, and it’s always “these people”, money without them working for it.
Forget that we give “those people”, the billionaires and those who already have so much, a ton of money, benefits, and tax breaks that they haven’t earned and don’t need.
For most of these billionaires, they never have enough. For most of them, they’re entitled to more. For most of them, the rest of us are undeserving.
My sister-in-law used to cut the hair of someone who produced shows on Broadway. He skewed right wing - though by today’s standards would probably be considered a centrist or slightly progressive. He told her that of course he supported these policies - it benefited him financially - but advised that she shouldn’t.
And yet that’s the part of our current system that baffles me.
So many people who don’t have enough have been convinced to support these policies that benefit the billionaires while cutting their own benefits.
(I’m in my third time zone in three weeks so I’m not sure how clearly I’m expressing myself).
Levels of rich
Back to Joseph Heller. He has enough and knows he has enough.
He doesn’t need to compare himself to someone who has more.
He doesn’t feel badly because someone makes more in a day than he made in his entire career.
Heller’s a better man than I.
I don’t feel badly about myself but I have gotten to where I’m offended by the billionaire.
I used to have this argument about athletes who made obscene amounts of money. There’s a story that’s recently been broken about Kawhi Leonard. Teams are required to spend no more than a certain amount on their players.
(I say “required” though there are a bunch of exceptions and accepted work-arounds.)
With Leonard, team owner Steve Ballmer found ways to pay him more by allegedly giving money to companies who then gave that money to Leonard for services he never performed.
I can’t believe I wrote “allegedly” but there we are.
People I know argue that there shouldn’t be a salary cap. Let the players get as much as they can get. Let the free market decide.
But the market doesn’t decide. That’s not correct. The market decides but its not free.
The salary cap was something the owners agreed to to protect themselves from themselves. Keep us from paying these players so much of the obscene amount of money that we have.
The billionaires look at the millionaire athletes and say, we don’t have enough but they (you know - “those people”) have enough.
In between
The current US government is of, for, and by the very rich. They’ve used cultural issues like trans and woke and Lake America to distract us enough with things to be outraged enough while they continue to take more.
If they don’t crash the dollar then I have enough.
I don’t have Bezos’ enough. I don’t even have Heller’s enough. I have enough.
This weekend a friend said, we should start giving some money to our kids regularly.
We’ve got enough. We will always have enough. Why are we making our kids wait until we’re gone to give them some of what we have. Why not give them some now?
He wasn’t talking about a one time payment.
He was talking about regular payments that we mostly wouldn’t miss but would mean a lot to them.
Twenty years ago I might have balked at this idea.
In fact, I did.
Kim and I had planned to pay for half of Maggie’s college.
It’s what we could afford and it was no small amount.
When Elena died, Kim argued that we’d saved to pay for half of both kids’ college tuition, we could now pay for all of Maggie’s.
I’d somehow forgotten why we’d thought half was the right amount and I worried that Maggie wouldn’t value college if she wasn’t contributing.
Kim, who was smarter than I, argued that she had paid for college and it hadn’t made her any more or less appreciative. In fact, it meant she had to spend time working during college to afford it.
I look back at that and see how easily I had bought into arguments that offend me. It’s the conservative argument about pushing able bodied people off of government assistance like the recipients are living large and enjoying a life of leisure.
We object to programs that feed low income families school lunches or provide housing or heat in the winter while we ignore the money being given to large companies and the very rich.
I’m not saying that we all should be giving our kids money, not everyone has enough.
As I said, I don’t have Heller’s enough, but I’m fairly confident that I will be giving Maggie money when I die. Why not give some to her now while she could really benefit from it?
Selfishly, why not give some to her now while I can see the impact it has.
I look at billionaires and complain that they have enough. I would spend that money to make others happy and to do good in this world.
I wonder if I would.
I think I do more of that now because I have so much less than they.
Some of the best tippers at restaurants are the people who have the least money. Some of the worst are the very rich.
I can do more. I can give more. I have enough.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 337. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe