WASHINGTON DIARY: The price of feeling rich —Dr Manzur Ejaz

Every country with a rising gap between the rich and the poor has used different
devices to distract its people’s attention from core economic issues

There is an elephant in the room. It is not the proverbial one but a real beast
that has been transported from Connecticut to Virginia for an Indian wedding. It
began with “veer mera ghori charheya” (traditional bridegroom riding the horse)
and has now come to the bridegroom riding an elephant and importing flowers from
India for his wedding.

Is this the stylish expression of Indian-American millionaires/billionaires? No,

this is the new way of the rich of the world.

In this new world which follows the logic of the ‘survival of the fittest’ and
where only the cleverest and most ingenious rise to elite status, a hamburger can
be sold for $500 and a bottle of wine can go for thousands of dollars. It appears
that the new rich of the world enjoy burning their money as the old feudals did,
who showered their entire wealth on dancing girls without watching them or
listening to the music. The money was just a show of power and wealth and was
spent for mere thrills.

India and China have been the rising economic tigers in the global economy with
annual growth rates of over ten percent. However, a bulk of the gains has been
appropriated by the top five to ten percent. While the masses in both countries
have been languishing in dire poverty, a Chinese billionaire paid the highest ever
price for a bottle of wine and an Indian, Mukesh Ambani, is constructing the
world’s largest mansion with a parking facility of up to 800 cars.

The American super-rich are no different. Hiring a domestic servant — a rarity in

the US a few decades ago — has now become very common. Ordinary Americans still go
to good old McDonalds for a $5 meal while the rich spend $500 for a single
hamburger. The American elites have developed segregated consumer markets; racial
segregation, it seems, has been replaced by class differentiation. The US is no
more the egalitarian society it used to be.

The class-segregated society has created the most illusionary and speculative
economic culture in the US and the rest of the world. In a bid to ape the
exhibitionist super rich, the middle class and even the lower economic tier
households gambled in stock markets and real estate. They bought huge houses and
mansions and the builders and mortgage industry, greedy for making a quick buck,
doled out loans without checking the affordability.

The level of illusionary consumer culture has reached a point where a penniless
Pakistani-American woman is begging for donations for her daughter’s wedding. She
wants to throw a grand wedding party that will cost thousands of dollars. One can
see that this illusionary feel-rich culture has seeped into the entire fabric of
society.

As a matter of fact, such a make-believe, feel-good culture has served as an

opiate for the masses. This false hope of emulating the lifestyle of the rich has
been keeping common people everywhere pacified. The prevalence of gambling in
different markets has also helped to sustain this false hope.

The US administration created other distractions for the masses, too. Invading
Iraq, Afghanistan and making noise for the war on terror has been successfully
employed to keep economic difficulties under wraps. The activist community has
been consumed by its anti-war crusade, leaving little or no time to raise
awareness about ever-rising economic inequalities. Every country with a rising gap
between the rich and the poor has used different devices to distract its people’s
attention from core economic issues.

However, this unreal, imaginary world can only go so far. Skyrocketing prices of
essential items have brought down the imaginary castle of false hopes and there is
uproar everywhere in the world. This wave of becoming rich and feeling rich always
had self-destructive tendencies and they were bound to surface. Now the chickens
have come home to roost and the world has to deal with it. How? No one knows yet.

The writer can be reached at manzurejaz@yahoo.com