Question Two articles on the psychology of the rich.

Some interesting background reading about the types of power relationships that appear when you have more money than you can spend.

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/01/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-billionaire

https://books.google.co.vi/books?id=fccDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA44&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

I though it might be useful background for authors creating characters that are members of the Golden Kids.

Well, I don't know any billionaires, but I have gotten chummy with a handful of full on multi-millionaires when I had my own business doing phone and IT cabling. Nice bunch of guys and gals, and if I had to distill them down to a single word I would pick 'optimistic' every time. That said, they do think of things differently than 'normal' folks as I'll illustrate.

One afternoon during a lunch break, some of the guys were commenting on a painting (a Van Gogh if memory serves) that had just sold at auction for some record amount of money. I made the comment that I could think of plenty of better things to spend that kind of money on.

The owner, who had come by to check on progress and brought lunch because he was a nice guy and a former working slob himself once upon a time shook his head and said, "You guys don't get it. That painting will do much more for somebody. Let me explain. So I spent $50 million on a painting. I'll throw lots of parties and invite lots of friends and acquaintances I'd like to become friends and or business partners over to look at it. The contacts and hand shakes I'll get out of that will be worth the price of the painting many times over. It will be insured for three or four times what I paid for it the entire time so if it is stolen I won't be hurt. I'll have years of enjoying looking at it and when that gets old I'll put it up for auction and sell it for a new record, getting all my original money back with interest."

I haven't looked at art, or money the same since.

I've always hated the idea of putting prominent works of art in private collections instead of in a museum on loan, but suddenly it makes a lot more sense.

In a very cut-throat business sense, but it does make sense.

Not always. There *are* some, and this is old money, who don't have various built in 'root/prove' traditions, more than new money (who often do exactly the above), who acquire it simply because they can, and they want to because it makes them 'feel' good, or 'powerful'

You can boil the 'well off' into three groups: Those who made it themselves, those who at least have a tradition of service, root hog or die (these almost always fall into the made it themselves), then the 2nd+ generation of Wealth (usually 3rd, but some 2nds are showing this) and are thinking 'they're better...'

First two groups tend to *value* things, and realize they don't always have them. The *latter* group is completely disconnected from reality, in some ways, and *feel* entitled.

Old money has a... different relationship with objects than your average dotcom billionaire. My family is not of millionaires, but we are rather comfortable, and (on my father's side) have been for a few generations. So we have, for instance, inherited a lot of quality old furniture that would fetch high prices at an antique shop if we were inclined to sell them. But we don't think of them as "antiques;" they are just... Grandpa's dining room table and chairs, Great-Aunt's armoire, things like that. They have sentimental value, not monetary value.

Once an antiquarian called my mother to offer her his wares, because someone told him that my mother liked antiques. Mom explained to him that her house wasn't furnished with antiques, it was furnished with old junk. Sometimes literally: Dad likes junkyards, and sometime in the Seventies he ran into a bunch of ancient, broken sewing machines. Like, WW1-era stuff. Beautiful in their way, black with yellow scrollwork. There are two or three still decorating their living room.

Terry Pratchett once observed (I think it was in Guards! Guards!) that having money saves money, because you can acquire quality stuff that ends up lasting a lot longer. Like those hundred-year-old furniture that has been in the family for generations. And if you grew up with hundred-year-old furniture, it colors your expectations: you know down into your bones that stuff can last hundreds of years, so of course anything you buy should last long too, otherwise you feel cheated. So they are less into "fashionable" and more into "quality."