[Posted on the Original RAWbservations]

A little while back, I was perusing KAZAA for a couple missing Matchbox Twenty songs (note to Owen: I have already purchased their entire collection). It's not uncommon for files to be mislabeled, so I searched for Rob Thomas (lead singer) to see what came up. One extremely large file called "4 Millionaire Next Door." Thinking to myself that there may be a song I didn't know about (and that it might be a mislabeled .wav justifying the size), I downloaded it.

Apparently, it was an excerpt from Robert J. Stanley's well-known Millionaire Next Door series. However, once it was playing, I couldn't bring myself to delete it. It was just too... interesting.

Methinks perhaps I am a bit of a nerd and that might explain my lack of a social life, but I listened to the entire half hour, captivated by Stanley's speculations about where the economy was headed.
What he said, quite optomistically, I found quite disturbing.

What it mostly came down to was that the rich were going to get richer and that the job opportunities for the less wealthy would primarily be serving the rich. As the rich get richer, the boom industry will be in wealthy luxuries and narrow services. For instance, he suggested that someone looking to make a lot of money go into law school. "But aren't there too many lawyers?" he was asked. No, he explained, there are too many people with law degrees. There are too many plaintiff's attourneys and defense attorneys, but not enough estate attourneys and retained attourneys under one or two (uberwealthy) employer. Medical school is another option, though not to be a surgeon or general medical practitioner (of which there are plenty), but rather a doctor specializing in the needs of the wealthy. Enough dentists, not enough orthodontists. Enough demotologists, not enough plastic surgeons, and so on.

Once I recalled who the author was and what he was selling, I tried to just dismiss him as another late-night get-rich-quick infomercialite. The more I thought about it, though, the more he really was convincing before he got to his sales pitch. The numbers he through out and rationale he used were sound. When it ended, I found myself feeling rather concerned.

Now, I'm pro-capitalist and don't have a problem with people amassing large amounts of money, so it wasn't a sense of injustice that got to me. It was a sense of fragility. The economy that he described in the first half is one in which not only do the wealthy get wealthier, but it's going to be required to keep the economy going. The rich will have to get richer or there will be a lot of people who got in the career of serving them out of work. It doesn't take an economist to know that when times get bad, it's the luxury providers that get hit most of all. Bologni sales go up, veil sales go down.

The Millionaire Next Door was written during the height of the economic boom, so much of it may not apply anymore. Had it continued (or if this is just a blip and things will return to normal), the economy that Stanley prognosticated would return. An economy in which a significant proportion of the GDP goes towards catering to the super-wealthy. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing and I'm worried over nothing. After all, if a middle to upper-middle class can be provided by serving the wealthy, isn't that better than no middle class or upper-middle class at all? If people can get work serving the wealthy where they otherwise wouldn't do as well, is that not a good thing? Ideologically, I'd say it's a good thing. I just can't get myself to believe that such a vertical plantation-style (not referring to slavery, just structure) economy is such a good thing. It doesn't produce anything. Then again, a lot of what we do (all the service-based industries, whomever they are servicing) doesn't actually produce anything and I've had little reason to complain so far. I even applaud it in some cases where it gives the poor jobs they otherwise wouldn't have (such as lawn care).

So I'm stumped. What do y'all think? Am I turning into a pink hippie liberal or does anyone else see this as a little disturbing?