Future Timeline

The Aristocracy Is Dead …

For about a week every year in my childhood, I was a member of one of America’s fading aristocracies. Sometimes around Christmas, more often on the Fourth of July, my family would take up residence at one of my grandparents’ country clubs in Chicago, Palm Beach, or Asheville, North Carolina. The breakfast buffets were magnificent, and Grandfather was a jovial host, always ready with a familiar story, rarely missing an opportunity for gentle instruction on proper club etiquette. At the age of 11 or 12, I gathered from him, between his puffs of cigar smoke, that we owed our weeks of plenty to Great-Grandfather, Colonel Robert W. Stewart, a Rough Rider with Teddy Roosevelt who made his fortune as the chairman of Standard Oil of Indiana in the 1920s. I was also given to understand that, for reasons traceable to some ancient and incomprehensible dispute, the Rockefellers were the mortal enemies of our clan. Only much later in life did I learn that the stories about the Colonel and his tangles with titans fell far short of the truth.

funkervogt wrote: ↑Mon Jan 09, 2023 12:48 pm You're welcome to donate your money to charity to assuage your guilt.

That works if enough of the "new aristocracy" donates enough to charity to mitigate the worst of the problems caused by the rising inequality of wealth.

funkervogt wrote: ↑Mon Jan 09, 2023 4:33 pm

That works if enough of the "new aristocracy" donates enough to charity to mitigate the worst of the problems caused by the rising inequality of wealth.

The presence of rich people creates problems of jealousy just as the presence of more than one race of people in a country creates problems of racism.

funkervogt wrote: ↑Mon Jan 09, 2023 4:33 pm The presence of rich people creates problems of jealousy....

just as the presence of more than one race of people in a country creates problems of racism.