What do I mean by saying the wealthy are less greedy these days… To get to the point, that is one of the insights gleaned from the results of a quick survey I did on Ask 500 People, that people who have higher incomes generally think they have enough stuff and a very low percentage of people making over $100k think they don’t have enough stuff.
Before I get any further into the meaning of the results, I need to do a better job of setting the stage, from the beginning. You see, it’s been on my mind a lot lately that I really do have enough stuff. That the all out feeding frenzy at the buffet of consumerism is perhaps coming to an end. Many retailers are going to be really hurt as we have seen already with Circuit City, Mervyns and Macy’s among the first to experience the hardships. Now this is especially going to be true for those retailers who aren’t using ecommerce effectively (as you may have seen in my brick and mortar review, shopping at the mall isn’t what it used to be).
People are waking up to the wastefulness of our habits (I sure have – everything from the amount of food that spoils to the amount of packaging materials I throw away and of course, all the old obsolete technology – ugghhh). More and more people from all walks of life are, from all around the world, are realizing that this sort of behaviour is unsustainable.
With a margin of error of what I believe is +/- 2% for all respondents (424) versus known respondents with unverified profiles, I think these stats are close to speaking for the whole.
I see some other stuff here that is interesting, and I need to take some more time to write my post for “The Economy of Enough” which is what inspired me to ask this question, so I will just close by saying that if we were still in the Gordon Gecko era of cash is king 80’s, I would suspect it might look something like this:
Just for kicks, lets take a nostalgic look back at Mr. Gecko’s infamous speech…
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#1 by Yana - August 11th, 2009 at 00:20
You can only say that the wealthy are less greedy when they share more – not buy less. In other words, when the wealthy stop keeping all of the money they don't need for themselves, then they stop being greedy. Generosity is the cure for greed – and nothing else. To whom the most is given, the most is expected. Most wealthy people don't want to hear this. Fact is, most people get extremely wealthy by pretending they owe nothing to anybody. Actually, you can't get wealthy by keeping only enough for yourself to be very comfortable. You can only become wealthy by keeping more money than you need to be very comfortable all the while being completely aware that there are people starving in this world. Rich people don't like to think like this because they can't enjoy their greed if they realize this truth.