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“He gets paid every two weeks,” says Rebecca. “For state and federal taxes they take about a hundred eighty dollars. Then for health insurance they take about three hundred seventy-five.”
“The health costs go up every year,” says De
I ask them if they feel worse off than they did a few years ago. Rebecca says, “Yes, a little. The cost of everything, like health insurance, gas, and groceries, has been going up by leaps and bounds. Some things have even seemed to double. Versus our income not changing that much.”
I tell them about the health system in my native UK—free health care for everyone. I say I remember Gle
“But it’s not failing,” I say. “It’s great. And nobody has to pay anything.” (Actually, it’s funded by national taxation, and some parts of it work more efficiently than others, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a Brit who doesn’t feel essentially proud and defensive of the system.)
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So they’re going nowhere for their a
De
This is a little heartbreaking to hear. It reminds me of Frantz. He rationalizes his place in the ecosystem by saying it’s manageable as long as people talk to him respectfully. De
And there’s something else De
“I hope you’re not offended,” I say, “but your lives seem unexpectedly similar to Frantz’s.”
“I don’t find it surprising that we have the same struggles,” says Rebecca.
“How do you feel when you hear stories of the super-rich getting away with paying hardly any tax?” I ask them.
There’s a short silence.
“I’d probably do it, too, if I could,” De
• • •
FIVE TIMES De
But I have none of De
• • •
THE WOMAN who makes roughly five times more than me—$1.25 million in a bad year, up to $3 million in a great one—wants to remain anonymous. I’ll call her Ellen. She’s a New York producer: movies, TV, Broadway. I meet her in London. She’s over on business. She’s brassy and loud and restless and alarmingly energetic and tough-looking and she talks incredibly fast. She says it would be “too weird and stressful” to reveal her name to the world in the context of what she makes. If you’re super-rich or super-poor, everyone can see that. But in the top-middle, one stays covert. Plus she doesn’t want letters begging for money. She once had one from her father, who is a “pathetic gambler.”
“How does it feel to make what you make?” I ask her.
I notice a strange tone in my voice. The usual chirpy sense of inquiry isn’t there. Instead I sound weirdly tense, as if the true reason for our meeting is for me to discover what I’m missing out on.
“Good,” she says, nodding. “Happiness is having twenty percent more than what you need. The trick is not to be too rich.”
“Why not?” I ask her.
“People want to go on your private plane,” she says. “You fall asleep in the middle of conference calls. There’s a certain discombobulation when you have too much.”
Maybe Ellen’s right. Maybe it would be bad to have your own plane. But for a second De
Personally, I wish I was better at opiating myself. Instead I’m sort of glaring at Ellen in a hostile ma
“So what can and what can’t you do in terms of luxury living?” I ask her.
“If you’re really rich, you can buy your doctors,” she says. “Mike Ovitz famously bought a couple of cardiac surgeons.”
“You don’t have anything like that, do you?” I say.
“No, of course not,” says Ellen.
“Thank God,” I think. Becoming aware of what’s just out of your reach can pull the rug from under your feet. It’s comforting to know that having my own doctors would be massively out of my reach.
“But I know a guy who knows a guy,” says Ellen. “I’m at a level where I don’t have to suffer. I’ve been sick. I had cancer. If you have money, you call the guy who knows the guy who’s the head of the department. The truth is, rich people with cancer versus everyone else with cancer? Longer life! And I didn’t think about bills at all! I have a bill? I throw it in the box. And that box goes to my business manager. This is a key item if you have money. You don’t look at the bills. When I got money I vowed, ‘Never again will I suffer the small stuff.’ To me, paying a bill is the small stuff. ‘I don’t care how the fuck it happens, someone pay that fucking thing!’ It’s a good feeling.”
I listen and nod and think, “I very much need a business manager.” “How much do you pay your business manager?” I ask.
“A very small amount of money,” Ellen says. “A hundred thousand dollars a year.”
There’s a silence. “That’s a lot,” I say.
Ellen looks at me surprised. “No, it’s not,” she says.
She explains that her business manager performs many tasks for her: He runs her office, does her bookkeeping, oversees her investments, files her taxes. And even though she pays him what can amount to 10 percent of her income, she has some money in the bank, so she can afford him.
Rarely has an interview awakened in me so many dormant desires. Before meeting Ellen I had no idea I needed a business manager and a friend who knows top surgeons personally. I was a lot happier before this interview began.