New York Times Opinion
The weekend before Election Day, I opened up Instagram and saw an image so jarring that I first thought it was A.I.-generated.
Martha Stewart had dressed up as a poor person for Halloween. She wore ripped jeans and a weather-beaten flannel, and had what looked like dirt smeared across her face. She held a sign that said “I AM HUNGRY HELP ME!!” and turned her lips down into a mocking frown. The caption directed her audience toward her branded candle collection.
Ms. Stewart’s Halloween costume is the sort of thing we’ve been seeing from rich people since President Trump’s second election. Many regular voters went for Mr. Trump in 2024 because of the high cost of groceries. But rich people felt empowered by his second victory, as if the public elected them, too.
And so it’s been two years of rich people going full Roman emperor — unleashed, unapologetic and, often, punching down.
For much of my life, I’ve spent a lot of time with wealthy people in places like New York City and Los Angeles. My family, literary types, were not Wall Street banker rich or industrialist rich, like some of my friends and neighbors. I miss that brand of rich person. They had some vague WASP-y reticence about showing off. Some of them drove old Volvos. Few of them flew first class, let alone private. Besides, the New York of the 1980s was a place where showoffs tended to get mugged. If someone was mind-bendingly wealthy, that person didn’t necessarily want you to know it.
Today’s rich people are richer than ever, and that seems to have made them worse than ever. More shameless. More out of touch. Less empathetic. Thinner-skinned. And, for some mysterious reason, angrier. They’re people who consider equality for others oppression for themselves.
Sometimes they’re nouveau riche ridiculous — Jeff Bezos throwing a foam party on his half-billion-dollar yacht and then occupying Venice for his star-studded wedding. Or they’re destabilizing — Elon Musk dancing with a chain saw and hacking away at the federal government, a move that threw hundreds of thousands of people out of the federal work force and has cost taxpayers an estimated $135 billion last year.
Ms. Stewart’s Halloween costume is the sort of thing we’ve been seeing from rich people since President Trump’s second election. Many regular voters went for Mr. Trump in 2024 because of the high cost of groceries. But rich people felt empowered by his second victory, as if the public elected them, too.
And so it’s been two years of rich people going full Roman emperor — unleashed, unapologetic and, often, punching down.
For much of my life, I’ve spent a lot of time with wealthy people in places like New York City and Los Angeles. My family, literary types, were not Wall Street banker rich or industrialist rich, like some of my friends and neighbors. I miss that brand of rich person. They had some vague WASP-y reticence about showing off. Some of them drove old Volvos. Few of them flew first class, let alone private. Besides, the New York of the 1980s was a place where showoffs tended to get mugged. If someone was mind-bendingly wealthy, that person didn’t necessarily want you to know it.
Today’s rich people are richer than ever, and that seems to have made them worse than ever. More shameless. More out of touch. Less empathetic. Thinner-skinned. And, for some mysterious reason, angrier. They’re people who consider equality for others oppression for themselves.
Sometimes they’re nouveau riche ridiculous — Jeff Bezos throwing a foam party on his half-billion-dollar yacht and then occupying Venice for his star-studded wedding. Or they’re destabilizing — Elon Musk dancing with a chain saw and hacking away at the federal government, a move that threw hundreds of thousands of people out of the federal work force and has cost taxpayers an estimated $135 billion last year.
Too often, they’ve been flashing their wealth before our eyes. Mr. Trump’s billionaire buddies kissed up and paid up — pass the hat for the inauguration, boys! — and ended up with tax benefits. (See: "bonus depreciation" which allows executives to write off depreciating assets and has led to a buying spree in both private planes and racehorses.)
It’s well documented that extreme wealth melts one’s brain. As Helen Riess and Liz Neporent write in “The Empathy Effect”: “Scientific studies have shown there is an inverse relationship between power and empathy. This distance often insulates the rich and powerful from the suffering of the everyday person.”
It’s well documented that extreme wealth melts one’s brain. As Helen Riess and Liz Neporent write in “The Empathy Effect”: “Scientific studies have shown there is an inverse relationship between power and empathy. This distance often insulates the rich and powerful from the suffering of the everyday person.”
The wealthiest Americans’ X feeds must be puzzlingly filled with self-pity or the belief that somehow they are the ones being discriminated against in the world. Sergey Brin personally spent $100 million to help defeat the California wealth tax.
And never mind all the squawking among the 17,000 New Yorkers who were asked by the Mamdani administration to prove that their $5-million-plus homes were not pieds-à-terre, and therefore subject to an extra tax.
Once upon a time, the wealthiest Americans knew they had it good and that they owed something to the rest of us. They followed in the spirit of Andrew Carnegie’s “The Gospel of Wealth,” in which he argued that the rich have a moral duty to help better the world, for everyone. They funded libraries, museums, medical research, disease eradication projects and even entire universities. Maybe this was out of moral or even religious conviction. Maybe it was out of a desire to see their names on buildings. Or maybe it was out of fear, after decades of strikes and social movements and, in other countries, revolutions.
Those lessons have been mostly forgotten. The wealthiest Americans don’t seem to care that much about giving back. When billionaires do give, it’s often to causes that appear to come with perks, like Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund or his ridiculous ballroom.
It looks as if, finally, regular Americans have had enough. On the whole, voters rebuked Mr. Trump’s by-billionaires-for-billionaires government in stunning fashion in last week’s midterms. They won’t be bought or bribed away from reality, and they’ll turn out in droves before they'll let Elon Musk buy their elections. When the president tried to dangle a $5,000 check in front of voters, they just said no.
Affordability became a midterm buzzword because it’s a real crisis. During Mr. Trump’s second term, prices for staples like gas, diesel, beef and coffee have skyrocketed. Medicare and Obamacare cuts are throwing millions off health insurance. The One Big Beautiful Bill stripped millions of people of the SNAP benefits they need to feed their families. While Mr. Trump obsesses about a plethora of construction projects including a ballroom, normal people are poorer and angrier than they were when they elected him.
Cue Martha Stewart: “I AM HUNGRY HELP ME!!”
What was she expecting people to do, write “yaaaas Hobo Queen!” in the comments?
Ms. Stewart quickly took down her Instagram post and, after public outcry, apologized, multiple times. Then, she started blaming someone else for her Halloween misstep. She said the “Today” show anchor Craig Melvin spilled chocolate on her sweater and that she dressed up that way because she had only 10 minutes to get ready. Shockingly, nobody’s really buying that excuse.
Much like Mr. Trump and his billionaire buddies, she may have squandered her gilded age.
Once upon a time, the wealthiest Americans knew they had it good and that they owed something to the rest of us. They followed in the spirit of Andrew Carnegie’s “The Gospel of Wealth,” in which he argued that the rich have a moral duty to help better the world, for everyone. They funded libraries, museums, medical research, disease eradication projects and even entire universities. Maybe this was out of moral or even religious conviction. Maybe it was out of a desire to see their names on buildings. Or maybe it was out of fear, after decades of strikes and social movements and, in other countries, revolutions.
Those lessons have been mostly forgotten. The wealthiest Americans don’t seem to care that much about giving back. When billionaires do give, it’s often to causes that appear to come with perks, like Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund or his ridiculous ballroom.
It looks as if, finally, regular Americans have had enough. On the whole, voters rebuked Mr. Trump’s by-billionaires-for-billionaires government in stunning fashion in last week’s midterms. They won’t be bought or bribed away from reality, and they’ll turn out in droves before they'll let Elon Musk buy their elections. When the president tried to dangle a $5,000 check in front of voters, they just said no.
Affordability became a midterm buzzword because it’s a real crisis. During Mr. Trump’s second term, prices for staples like gas, diesel, beef and coffee have skyrocketed. Medicare and Obamacare cuts are throwing millions off health insurance. The One Big Beautiful Bill stripped millions of people of the SNAP benefits they need to feed their families. While Mr. Trump obsesses about a plethora of construction projects including a ballroom, normal people are poorer and angrier than they were when they elected him.
Cue Martha Stewart: “I AM HUNGRY HELP ME!!”
What was she expecting people to do, write “yaaaas Hobo Queen!” in the comments?
Ms. Stewart quickly took down her Instagram post and, after public outcry, apologized, multiple times. Then, she started blaming someone else for her Halloween misstep. She said the “Today” show anchor Craig Melvin spilled chocolate on her sweater and that she dressed up that way because she had only 10 minutes to get ready. Shockingly, nobody’s really buying that excuse.
Much like Mr. Trump and his billionaire buddies, she may have squandered her gilded age.
3 comments:
pied-à-terre
a small apartment, house, or room kept for occasional use:
"the couple use the home as a pied-à-terre"
One political party leaves and another comes in but the outcome is the same. These guys are nothing but a bunch of corrupt liars who do nothing for the people. They only enrich themselves. Nothing ever changes. The only ones to blame is us the voters. We follow a particular party instead of voting for an individual. The current cry is Medicare for all but they fail to tell us that at the end of the day that we will be paying for it through higher taxes if it passes which I doubt. Keep a watch on this years property taxes. They will go up. Thanks to the new party in power.
Is Texas going criminalize marijuana, I don't think so? Voting matters because there is change in policy, law, and those elected. Snap out of it, wake the F up! Major changes.
-LOTSHOTS
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