Scarlett O’Hara herself told us that money is the most important thing in the world. Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey won Oscars in part for singing to us that money makes the world go around. As Leslie Benedict in Giant, Elizabeth Taylor tells James Dean playing Jett Rink, “Money isn’t all you know, Jett.” He simply replies, “Not when you’ve got it.”
But what is having it? And what do folks do when they do? Our language has all kinds of ambiguous words and terms for the having and not having of it, vague perhaps because talking about money (unless it’s someone else’s) isn’t generally a mannerly thing to do.
Looking across the spectrum of the haves and have-nots, there are several categories available. There are those living in poverty, and those who are poor. Some folks are scraping by while others are getting by. Others are doing well, but not as well as the well-to-do. The majority of folks will fit into one of these boxes, but far more time and attention is given to what is rather vulgarly referred to as the rich.
There is something not quite good about that word. Perhaps that’s because on the fairly rare occasions I can recall Mother referring to someone as rich, there was something implied that getting there had not been by completely honest means, that said person was behaving in a showy or even reckless manner, and that there was a real possibility that the current condition might not last long. “Rich today, gone tomorrow.” I’ve lived in Dallas long enough to have seen that cycle played out more times than I can enumerate. Being wealthy, on the other hand, is something rarely thought to be transient. I’ll explain what I mean.
This week, I had lunch with a dear friend at a fairly new establishment that can best be described using the old-fashioned word “ritzy.” While engaging in our usual scintillating conversation, I cast a much-practiced eye over most of the others who were there. There were several duos of ladies, mostly middle-aged and stylish, while we were lodged between a table of about six young women not older than 30 and a table of four ladies who were of my generation. The younger ones were a good deal more fashionable than the older ones and a bit louder as they left their table to gather for a group picture at the entrance to the restaurant, no doubt to be posted on social media. At that moment, I noticed the two ladies to my right at the next table seated on the same banquette raise their eyes and one eyebrow at the passing commotion. I also noticed for the first time that the lady immediately next to me was wearing a pair of flats I instantly recognized as being pre-Covid Valentino.
Whether that was being rich versus being wealthy I can only guess. But I am fairly sure that the older ladies were first wives, while the others were second wives. If not second wives now, at some point in the not too distant future.
For many of us, our emails and texts are clogged with messages trying to sell us something we probably don’t need or requests from politicians we don’t even know for contributions to help them do something they probably can’t do. But it’s all about money.
The news of the day is similarly monotonic. Almost every issue has something to do with how money should be spent or should not be spent. There seems to be an unending argument about who deserves the largesse of the taxpayers and who decidedly does not. Social media is often clotted with posts from folks who were not materially affected by either the first Trump administration or the Biden administration, either complaining or praising things that may or may not be happening in the current administration. Discussion of how some folks actually can be materially affected by what is going on gets lost while too much of our attention is focused on airplanes.
Cary Grant’s line in The Philadelphia Story comes to mind. Condensed somewhat for clarity, it reads, “It’s astonishing what money can do for people… not too much, you know, just more than enough.” Yet I must quibble just a bit with Mr. Grant.Could it be that all this focus on money is having a deleterious effect on us? I don’t know that it’s ever been astonishing what money can do for people; the benefits and opportunities provided by money are more than obvious. It’s what money can do to people that’s astonishing. Not too much, you know, just more than enough.
