I had a buddy who inherited millions in the 90s. He insisted whenever we met up for dinner it be at Hama Sushi. I’m not a sushi fan but whatever. I’d order a California roll and a Bud Light while he ordered Sea Urchin sashimi, Dragon rolls, Soft-shell crab and a couple of hot sakis. The bill would arrive and he’d insist we split it equally.
He would do this with a straight face.
When it was just the two of us I’d tell him no, forcing him to pay his share of the meal. However, the larger the group of people meeting out for dinner, the more successful my wealthy friend would be in passing the cost of his exorbitant meals onto others. Economists call this the tragedy of the commons. I call it entitled multi-millionaire cheapskates and it’s what’s driving our country down the toilet.
I’ve heard, “If you want to be rich, you have to do it with other people’s money,” from many successful businessmen, lawyers, real estate magnates, bankers and movie producers in my life. It’s their most common advice. The truly rich don’t risk their own money, they risk yours: your pension funds, your mortgages, your city, state and federal tax dollars.
It’s an ugly truth that O.P.P., Other People’s Property, is what built this country. “Free land,” taken from natives and “Free labor,” taken from Africa with investment capital supplied by Europe drove American expansion and industrialization. We deal with the repercussions to this day.
Now our elite hoard their money like dragons, underpaying their workers in the companies they own and letting the government pick up the slack in food stamps, welfare and medicaid. They slash education and protections for the American people. Trump, his cabinet and his wealthy supporters are a perfect example of this – they’ve driven the federal budget over a cliff with the expectation that you, the American people, will be left holding the bag for trillions in debt they’ve accumulated in order to further enrich themselves.
The money they seem willing to part with (aside from massages, gurus and helicopter skiing) buys politicians, which appears to be cheaper than a two bedroom home in Modesto. But even that seems too great an expense lately as the moneyed elite behind Trump are so tight-fisted with their cash they allowed the Russians to buy the election for what appears to be less than the cost of a mid-budget studio feature film – they used other people’s money and got to reap the profits.
My friend, twenty years later, still tries to stick people with the bill but we know better now. We all band together and keep him from getting away with it, no matter how large the group, because we’ve come to expect his predictable behavior. It’s like a financial version of Naughty by Nature’s song, right down to somebody getting screwed in the end.
It’s time we as a society say we’re not down with O.P.P. and that we’re tired of getting cheated.
Wes Clark Jr. 