If you asked an elementary school-aged boy in the late 1960s or early ‘70s what he wanted to own when he grew up, if he could own anything in the world, he would very likely have had one or more of the following on his list: a rocket ship, his own car company, an airplane (or even better, an airline), maybe his local newspaper, and a sports team. Yes, these are clichés, and gross generalizations based on gender – but they’re also true.
It’s probably apocryphal, but it is said that Ernest Hemingway told F. Scott Fitzgerald: “the rich are not like you and me.” Implying that the woes and satisfactions of the wealthy are beyond the comprehension of the rest of us. Which raises the question: are really rich people happier than everyone else? Or do they have problems and worries, but different ones than the hoi polloi?
In the midst of the usual Monday doom and gloom news reports, as we yawned from staying up too late to watch the Olympics, one headline in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal caught our attention here at Dandelion Chandelier. According to the consultants at Wealth-X, who are experts on people with net worth of $30 million or more, there are officially 2,473 billionaires in the world. That’s up by 6.4% from the prior year. In the world of luxury, that counts as important breaking news.
