By Dr. John Gilmore
Gerard Aquilina,
the head of Barclays Wealth Managements’s private
banking unit, at a conference in Zurich, as reported
by Bloomberg News Columnist Matthew Lynn in his
column Ultra Rich in Finance are Meaner than the rest of
Us, gave the following admonition:
“Beware
of the complexities of dealing with the ultra high net worths,”
Aquilina told his audience. “Demanding and often unreasonable
requests from them may create “Impossible demands on
the organization.” Such as? Help with getting
children into the right school, securing credit to buy
property, or obtaining last-minute concert tickets, for example.
Even worse, the richest of the rich turn out to be pretty
stingy as well. They don’t even want to pay the full fee for
all the services they demand.
According
to Lynn, this was insight into how the rich have changed in the last
decade. One study from the University of California, Berkeleyfound
that the rich are ruder than others. Another study found they were
less likely to give to charity andhelp poorer people. A third study
in Humboldt University in Berlin concluded that they were
“nastier” in the sense of being more apt to punish others.
The
results of this research and may just explain the cry for no more
taxes, ending social security, spending more on war than health care,
and the many other policies pushed from the top down through the
conservative media that is always trying to pretend to be liberal, in
my humble opinion, that puts property and material gain before the
quality of life fort the human family and the overall environment.