A person can become saturated with their own greed, it’s the point where the interest in private wealth is lost and its RELATIVITY is increased by keeping the resources of those around them to an absolute minimum.
Then instead of a finite figure prosperity can be measured in terms of a ratio, which has a more warming effect on the ego. The main reason being that attention can be switched to justifying the lack of wealth of those without, rather than having to explain the reasoning behind personal greed.
Years ago I overheard this bloke in a pub talking about his car being serviced, speaking in one of those nauseating tones that seems to pierce the boundaries of any conversation underway. “£70 for 4 hours labour, outrageous!!”.
Motorists winging about mechanics is nothing new, but this particular rant continued into a momentous twist of the delicious irony with a capital I. In almost the same sentence, through an oppressed smile, he groaned about ‘His’ lawyer costing £250 per hour.
Really he’s just informing us that he can afford a top lawyer, smiling inwardly about the necessity of such a comfort being the preserve of the few. The basic cost of the mechanic was genuinely begrudged, while the cost of the lawyer is celebrated as a sort of sinister recognition of the disparity within our society.
Some spending has glamour attached to it that is proportionate to its cost, full circle to a point that the cheaper it is the more of a rip off it becomes. A Bizarre mix of intellectual snobbery hiding a practical ineptitude.
I went to a auction once and watched a record collector part with £200 for a copy of The Magical Mystery Tour on yellow vinyl. He was quite rightly ecstatic as it was a fantastic piece of memorabilia, if I had the money it would have been mine. Which made me think that something is basically worth what someone else is willing to pay for it.
If the mechanic wants to charge that sort of money then why shouldn’t he? If you don’t like it buy a Haynes manual and crawl around in filthy sump oil yourself. All this is back up by the likes of Rouge Traders, conservative opportunism at its finest.
Its at this point that the scum exposed on rouge traders all become happy go lucky Gary Hobbs from the square. Grinning inanely whilst not bothering to change the oil filter and compounding the insult further by showing the owner an old one from a completely different car, or decade.
How do you keep a straight face? The customer walks back to the trusty family MG tut tuting at the exorbitant prices of working men, blissfully ignorant the thing is going to have to do yet another 18,000 miles on soiled lubricant.
Hilarious!
Things have started to change over the past 15 or so years. The explosion in the ideas surrounding celebrity have allowed the unlikeliest people to earn huge amounts of cash. This earning potential is begrudged by many who look upon these brilliantly successful individuals as undeserving because, “Its just not worth that…”
The reason why, and look away if you’re queasy, is based on and around the functions of intellectual snobbery, the worst kind. The notion that an earning potential should somehow be linked to academic achievement or worse still, your background and how you speak is fairly pervasive in our society.
Infuriating but true.
I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve heard people moan about how thick footballers are, in the same sentence as expressing quite obvious jealousy about their earnings.
Lets take another example, Jordan, who despite the pneumatic chest is a lovely looking and funny woman. The paradox in the thought of all those angry young ‘Film studies’ graduates banging on about how thick she is, whilst being completely unable to tear themselves away from her images is to good to be true.
Every time I see Jordan I can’t help but think of the huge amounts of cash being shovelled into her bank account. Outstanding! Tabloid tales of wanton sexual excess are earning her millions for basically just enjoying herself, for some reason this success is resented because she talks in a certain manner…Or more to the point, because she is working class.
Further, the antics of Premiership footballers in city centre bars and clubs is a times completely unacceptable, but should we get this into perspective? Are they any worse than a group of middle class twenty something’s on a stag night in Prague. Or the psychotic city dealer that bankrupts a third world country at the flick of a switch and then grabs a 30 billion pound bonus.
Are these acceptable occurrences because of the people involved? Being thick is not definable, and as an education at any level is not indicative of intelligence then resentment of glamour girls and footballers with sexy accents can only point to one final factor.
Class snobbery fuelled by a complete misunderstanding of the ideas surrounding raw talent and intelligence. There’s no other way to explain contradictions harboured by the jealous, about the uniquely gifted ability of the likes of Paul Gasgoine, David Beckham and Jordan.