Before I became rich, I assumed rich people just looked out the windows of their Hollywood Hills homes, eating truffled popcorn and congratulating themselves on being smart enough to go into the lucrative field of journalism. But it turns out there's a lot of guilt involved. Sure, most of the time I'm jealous of the 3% of Americans who make more money than I do, with their tacky, slightly more expensive cars and their gaudy, slightly bigger diamond rings. But sometimes I feel bad for the 97%. And I want everyone to know I feel bad. Not bad enough to give my money away, but whatever the level of bad is that's right below actually doing something about it.
So when I read Bruce McCall and David Letterman's terrific new book, This Land Was Made for You and Me (But Mostly Me), I was deeply jealous. Not because the jokes and drawings that parody one-percenters are great (a 36-hole golf course built on the Sahara, an Olympic-size Jacuzzi powered by its own nuclear plant). No, I was jealous because McCall and Letterman were rich people who had figured out how to seem like they cared about income inequality. And got paid to do it.
I too want people to know that I think it's unsustainable for 1% of Americans to have over 35% of the wealth, while 80% have just 11%. I want everyone to know that I think it's wrong that the CEOs of the largest American companies make in one hour what their average employees make in a month and that I silently judge my CEO friends for this at their parties. I want to inform the public that I'm certain that if cities like Los Angeles continue to have a 66% high school graduation rate in an economy where there are no jobs for people without a high school diploma, we'll have gated-off security zones for rich people like they do in Johannesburg, which is a look I find aesthetically displeasing. I want them to know that I vote for candidates who will raise my taxes because I want a more just society and not because I've noticed that even when they win, they never succeed in raising taxes.
Yet few people know this part of me, largely because it's such a tiny part. I should make more of an effort, like millionaires Russell Simmons, Alec Baldwin and Kanye West did when they visited Occupy Wall Street. So I called McCall, whom I've known for a long time. He has taken me to dinner at great Upper West Side restaurants and drives everywhere he goes, even in Manhattan, just so he can smoke cigars. Though I've never seen him wear a monocle, that does not mean he doesn't own a monocle.
But when I called him for advice on how rich guys like us should show people how much we hate rich guys like us, McCall informed me that he's not a rich guy. Our argument involved a lot of complex math and economic history:
McCall: "I'm a middle-class guy. I don't have a lot of money."
Me: "You're not middle class."
McCall: "I am so."
Me: "You are not."
McCall: "I started lower middle class, and now I'm middle class. I don't know what the definition is."
Me: "I do. It's how much money you have."
McCall: "It's not just a question of money. It's a matter of social standing and education. I'm a high school dropout for God's sake."
Me: "Social standing? You write and draw covers for the New Yorker."