sawyl | Front on relative poverty (Reply)

Once again, actor, Gruaniad columnist and fellow veggie Rebecca Front has hit the nail on the head, this time on the thorny subject of wealth and poverty:

Poverty is in some ways a matter of perception, though if you're living in squalor with no food, you don't need to be particularly perceptive to notice. My children are at an age when they are beginning to understand money and have asked me whether we are rich or poor. I try to explain that to a millionaire our modest house, one car and lack of a yacht might seem meagre, but to millions of people in the world we are rich beyond their wildest dreams, because we have a home, plentiful food, clean water, good clothes and more toys than we can reasonably fit into a cupboard. At this point the discussion usually degenerates into "so can you please put some of them away", but what I really want them to learn is that there is nothing to be gained from competitive poverty or competitive wealth. If you have enough money to pay for your survival and a bit left for fun, you should consider yourself rich and shut the hell up about it.

This reminded me of a moment in my childhood when I first asked my parents about such things. My pater pointed out that we had most of the things we wanted out of life and thus should consider ourselves fortunate beyond the wildest dreams of the majority of the world's population, while mater remarked that it was a matter of very poor taste to discuss something as vulgar as money, unless one was using it to illustrate a point in a discussion about a particularly obscure facet macroeconomic theory. Talk about an impressive encapsulation of the nerdy, leftist, upper middle class snob position on wealth...