Top 10 Wealth Report Posts of All Time

Today marks the last day of the Wealth Report.

Over the past five years, the Report racked up 1,207 posts,  41,800 comments and the honor of being named by Time magazine as one of the nation’s most influential financial blogs.

I’m not disappearing.  I’m just relocating.

But the Wealth Report’s success came mostly from its readers and commenters.  The comments from Tiredofflippingthebill, Peter Bradshaw, David Lesperance and others were often better, and better-read, than the original posts. To them, and to all the readers and commenters, I give my most heartfelt thanks.

You have shown the world that highly researched, factual, non-partisan and non-judgmental coverage of the wealthy is still in high demand.

As a sign-off, I present The Wealth Report “Best of” list, with the top 10 most popular posts of all time.

Top 10 Wealth Report Posts of All Time

1 – Will Facebook Really Create 1,000 Millionaires

2 – Oprah: It’s Great to Have a Private Jet

3 – The Perfect Salary for Happiness: $75,000

4 – The Rich-O-Meter

5 – Tin-Can Collector Died A Millionaire

6 – World’ Richest Man: “Charity Doesn’t Solve Anything.”

7 – “Struggling” on $350,000 a Year

8 – How Does a a Four-Year-Old Spend $46,000 a Month?

9 – How Rich Are You?

10 – The Rich Cut Back on Payments to Mistresses

What was your favorite Wealth Report post?

Do the Wealthy Work Harder Than the Rest?

One of the most controversial issues surrounding inequality is work effort. Some on the right argue that top earners are successful in part because they work harder than others. Many on the left argue that the middle class and poor work just as hard – maybe even harder, with multiple jobs — but that the economic deck is stacked against them.

A new study offers evidence that higher-educated (and therefore higher-earning) Americans do indeed spend more time working and less time on leisure than poorer income groups. In fact, while income inequality may be growing, “leisure inequality” – time spent on enjoyment – is growing as a mirror image, with the low earners gaining leisure and the high earners losing.

The paper, by Orazio Attanasio, Erik Hurst and Luigi Pistaferri, finds that both income inequality and consumption inequality (the stuff that people buy) have increased over the past 20 years.

The more surprising discovery, however, is a corresponding leisure gap has opened up between the highly-educated and less-educated. Low-educated men saw their leisure hours grow to 39.1 hours in 2003-2007, from 36.6 hours in 1985. Highly-educated men saw their leisure hours shrink to 33.2 hours from 34.4 hours. (Mr. Hurst says that education levels are a “proxy” for incomes, since they tend to correspond).

A similar pattern emerged for women. Low-educated women saw their leisure time grow to 35.2 hours a week from 35 hours. High-educated women saw their leisure time decrease to 30.3 hours from 32.2 hours. Educated women, in other words, had the largest decline in leisure time of the four groups.

(The study defines leisure as time spend watching TV, socializing, playing games, talking on the phone, reading personal email, enjoying entertainment and hobbies and other activities.)

Of course, some of the decline is due to non-educated people being unemployed or under-employed. Some of their leisure time is simply “not being able to work” time.

Yet the research shows that up to half the gap is due to unemployment. Mr. Hurst says the leisure gap still remains between employed high-educated workers and employed low-educated workers. It also persists among unemployed high-education people and unemployed low-education people.

While the study doesn’t seek to prove that the high earners work harder “that story would be consistent with the data,” said Mr. Hurst.

Do you think higher earners work harder?

Millionaires More Bearish Than Their Advisors

It’s a lot easier to be bullish with other people’s money than your own.

Still, a recent study shows a surprisingly wide “optimism gap” between millionaires and their financial advisers. According to the study from Charles Schwab, 45% of financial advisers are bullish about the market over the next six months. Only 29% of millionaires (those with $1 million or more in investible assets) are bullish.

Fully 19% of millionaires are bearish – more than the 13% for advisers.

Millionaires are far more likely to believe that inflation will increase over the next six months. They also are more likely to believe that unemployment will increase, the deficit will increase and that the U.S. will experience a double-dip recession.

About 70% of the millionaires said their primary investment strategy was “capital preservation” and that their chief investment goal is generating enough retirement income to last the rest of their lives.

Advisers have a different view of their client goals: They say 50% of their clients seek capital preservation and the other half seek appreciation. The advisers say 64% of clients are looking for retirement income.

What this all means is that wealth advisers aren’t as worried about the economy or political environment as their clients. And they don’t realize just how conservative their clients want to be.

Why do you think there’s an “optimism” gap between advisers and their clients? Is it just about selling them more products or something larger?

The New Politics of Wealth Denial

One of the most famous and funny Monty Python skits is the “Four Yorkshiremen.” Four cigar-smoking, tux-wearing swells recount their childhood and try to top each other with stories of hardship.

One says he used to live in a single room with 26 others.

“Eh, you were lucky to have a room!,” says another. “We used to have to live in t’ corridor!”

“Oh, we used to dream of livin’ in a corridor!” says another. “Would ha’ been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.”

The other responds, “Well, when I say ‘house’ it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.”

” We were evicted from our hole in the ground and we ‘ad to go live in a lake.”

And so on…

The Four Yorkshiremen provide an apt analogy for the populist, anti-privilege strain running through the presidential election. In drawing the line between himself and Romney, President Obama is filling his stump speeches with his own version of the “You were lucky!” competition.

It started with Obama telling audiences that he wasn’t born rich – unlike Romney, who was. Then he said he and Michelle had to take out student loans to go to college. Not only that, but they weren’t able to pay off the student loans until eight years ago.

Romney — he of the $250 million net worth, twin Cadillacs and penchant for viewing $360,000 a year in income as “not much money” — has joined in as the second Yorkshireman. He said he once worried about getting fired.

College? Well, you were lucky, Romney says. He says his dad was born in Mexico, grew up poor and never even got to go to college. And his grandfather was a poor carpenter and contractor.

“And as you may know, contractors have financial difficulty from time to time.”

And so on.

You can’t blame the candidates for trying to highlight their “everyman” roots at a time when many Americans feel that Washington and the wealthy are ignoring the concerns of the rest of the country. Obama is clearly using wealth as the real differentiator in the campaign.

But let’s get real. George Romney’s family wasn’t really poor – at least not for long. And Obama and his wife were making more than $200,000 a year before they paid off their loans. Their competing poverty narratives are about as credible as the Yorkshireman’s family living in the lake.

Rather than spending time exaggerating their own family hardships, perhaps the candidates would do better to highlight the real struggles faced by the rest of the country.

What do you think of the “Four Yorkshireman” strategy of the Obama campaign?

Do Wealthy Kids Live at Home Longer?

The trend toward more adults living with their parents is usually framed as a problem of the middle class. With little money or job prospects, and lots of student loans, today’s working-class kids have little choice but to move back in with mom and dad.

But a new study in Australia suggests that wealthy kids may actually be living at home longer than their non-wealthy and even poor counterparts.

According to the study, young adults from privileged backgrounds are more likely to live at home than their less privileged peers. The study found that 75% of 20-year-olds from privileged backgrounds still lived at home. By contrast, more than a third of 20-year-olds from welfare families no longer depended on their parents.

It all boils down to whether the family can provide support or not, according to the study, by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research.

“Some families lack the necessary resources,” said Deborah Cobb-Clark, the director of the Institute and co-author of the study, “while others may simply be unwilling to continue to support their children after they reach adulthood.”

This makes sense, of course. You’re more likely to move back home to the McMansion if mom and dad also give you use of the AmEx and Mercedes. Add to that the problem of the age gap in wealth and issues of motivation for kids who’ve had everything growing up, and you’ve got a recipe for lots of affluent kids seeking refuge back home rather than being unemployed on their own.

This is probably not as true for the super-rich, of course. They can afford to buy their kids $88 million dorm rooms. (Though the kids are still “financially dependent” even if they live apart).

Do you think wealthy kids are more likely to live at home than non-wealthy kids?

The Mega-Yacht Battle of Barcelona

The surge of mega-yachts during the mid-2000s left a huge problem in its wake: too many giant yachts and not enough places to park them. (You read about billionaires fighting for good yacht-parking spots here).

As a result, marina developers around the world have been trying to build mega-yacht berths as fast as they can — from Montenegro to Monaco. Now, a proposed marina in Barcelona has sparked a bitter battle over how the floating super-rich may damage a historic community.

A London-based company is planning to turn a marina in Old Barcelona into a home for mega-yachts. And not just any mega-yachts. This marina would be Abramovich-ready, catering to boats up 590 feet long.

According to articles in the British press, locals say the giant yachts docked in the marina will tower Godzilla-like over their famously quaint Spanish neighborhood. The marina will also include a giant wall for security for the yachts, further degrading the area.

Some worry that in addition to the wall and ships, the waves of super-rich yachters will price out the locals – replacing barrio grocers with Louis Vuitton shops and $100-a-plate cafes.

“I’ve lived here all my life and the barrio has a special identity, precisely because so many working-class people have always lived here,” a 68-year-old retiree told the Observer. “But this will price us out, turning the port into a place only for the very rich and changing things for ever.”

Of course, those mega-yachts will also unload lots of big spenders, which can surely help the neighborhood. The fear about an increase in rowdy tourists may also be overblown, since mega-yacht owners and guests tend to be a private group.

Still, the mega-yacht battle of Barcelona echoes similar controversies throughout Europe as the super-rich Russians and Middle-Easterners become a (literally) larger presence.

Do Fewer Americans Support Taxing the Rich?

Poll after poll shows that a majority of Americans support higher taxes on the wealthy. A number of millionaires – aka The Friends of Warren – also believe in paying more.

Yet a new Gallup poll shows that American support for higher taxes on the wealthy may actually be declining. Fully 62% of Americans say the wealthy pay too little. That’s the lowest number in a decade, with the single exception of 2010, when 55% of Americans supported higher taxes on the wealthy. (Click here to see a chart of perceptions of taxes paid by the wealthy over the years.)

If you look at the larger trend over the past decade, American support for taxing the wealthy has been declining. In 1992, 77% of respondents said the wealthy paid too little. After the Clinton tax hikes on the wealthy in 1993, support for taxing the wealthy still remained high at 68%.

At the same time, the percentage of voters who think the wealthy pay their fair share has increased – from 16% in 1992 to 25% in 2012. And the percentage of people who think the rich pay too much has held fairly steady at around 10% over the past decade – though it’s lower today than the 15% reported in 2010.

This is not to obscure the overall message: a majority of Americans support taxing the wealthy. As Gallup states: “As Republicans continue to resist any plan that would raise taxes on wealthy Americans, they face not only opposition from the Democrats and Obama, but the pressure of public opinion.”

But it’s worth noting that at a time of heightened coverage of the low taxes paid by some of the rich, there is no accompanying increase in public outrage over “fairness” in the tax code.

Why do you think American support for taxing the rich is declining?

Why Don’t Rich Women Give to Super PACs?

Women are gaining ground in almost every corner of the economy – except perhaps, for, Super PACs.

According to an analysis of FEC data by the Houston Chronicle, women make up only 14% of Super-Pac donors. In overall political giving, women make up about a third of political contributions.

Why the dearth of super-rich women donors?

Some analysts quoted by Chronicle say it’s a function of the gender imbalance of the super-rich. Indeed, women account for only about 10% of the Forbes 400.

Still, I’m not sure that quite explains it. While women may be under-represented in the world of billionaires, they account for about 37% of America’s millionaires. And plenty of Super-PAC donors are millionaires rather than billionaires.

There may be another reason. First, while men may be listed as the donor to a Super PAC, these donations are probably joint decisions – where both husband and wife support a candidate. Harold Simmons, for example, gave money to Santorum in conjunction with his wife.

Another reason is the gender make-up of the parties and Super PACs. So far, Super PACs have skewed right. Obama’s Super PAC has raised only a fraction of Romney’s. Some recent polls show that among women voters, Obama leads Romney by 19 percentage points. So the so-called “gender gap” in the political parties may also be reflected in the giving.

Why do you think women are giving less to Super PACs?

Is It Fair to Call Romney a ‘Silver Spoon?’

There’s only one insult worse for the rich than being called “rich.” That’s being called “silver-spoon rich.”

So when President Obama mentioned in a speech yesterday that he wasn’t born with a “silver spoon in my mouth,” the Romney campaign was quick to take offense and offer a counter-attack.

“I’m not going to apologize for my dad and his success in his life,” Romney told Fox. “He was born poor and he worked his way to become very successful despite the fact that he didn’t have a college degree.”

This defense is slightly beside the point. The silver spoon remark doesn’t refer to George Romney’s self-made rise – it refers to Mitt’s privileged birth. The argument is a bit like heiress Petra Ecclestone saying “I’m not a silver spoon. My dad earned the money he’s giving me.”

Yet the Obama comment strikes at the heart of a sensitive issue for the wealthy: How much of their success is truly self-made or how much was inherited?

Did Romney start on second or third base and claim to have hit a home run? Or did he simply make best use of an education, values and work ethic to reach a level of success that was far beyond anything transferred by his family?

Donald Trump, for instance, could well be considered self-made even though his empire started with his dad’s real-estate business. So could David and Charles Koch, since their multi-billion-dollar business started with their father’s company but grew under their management by quantum leaps.

As for the Walton offspring, or the Mars family or the Johnson family, well they would be more purely silver spooners.

Surveys show that more 75% of today’s millionaires didn’t inherit a material amount of money – thus defining themselves as “self-made.”

It’s unclear how much money Romney actually inherited. Given the fact that Mitt was already hugely wealthy by the time George Romney passed away in 1995, it’s unfair to say that Mitt’s financial success came from an inheritance.

Being the son of a rich governor clearly bestows vast advantages and guarantees against failure. Yet Mitt attained a level of financial and political success that went well beyond the privileges of his birth. If he had truly followed the mold of the mid-West blue-blood, he might have become just another semi-rich banker, lawyer or real-estate owner instead of a governor and presidential candidate worth more than $200 million.

Perhaps the term “silver spoon” is subjective – since it’s virtually impossible to say how much of a person’s success is owed to birth or character.

How would you define “silver spoon”? Is it someone who inherits their money? Or is it someone who uses the advantages of their birth to achieve even greater success?

The Real Tax Rates of the Rich

That fact that America’s tax code is progressive–i.e., the wealthy pay more–has been largely a given since the first income-tax was levied in 1862.

Yet the Buffett Rule and the ensuing debate over Mitt Romney’s  taxes has painted a picture of America’s tax structure as regressive. Polls show that many Americans think the wealthy now pay a lower share than the rest of America.

While this may be true for a small number of rich people, it is broadly inaccurate. According to the most recent data from the IRS, America’s tax code remains progressive all the way up the income ladder–until you get to a tiny sliver of Americans who earn more than $10 million a year (there are about 8,000 of those out of 104 million filers).

What’s more, the wealthiest earners are paying a higher tax rate than they did in 2008.

Consider the following chart, which shows adjusted gross incomes and average tax rates, i.e., total income tax as a percentage of adjusted gross income less deficit:

We all know that the one percent (those making around $340,000 a year) as a group pay a higher rate than any other income group. Yet the new IRS data show that even the $1 million-plus earners (the top fraction of the one percent) pays the highest rate.

It’s only when you get to somewhere between the $10 million-plus earners and the “Fortunate 400″–the 400 highest earners–that the tax rates paid start to dip. And when they dip, they still dip to levels far above the average rates paid by 90% of Americans. The Fortunate 400 paid a rate of more than 18% in the latest period.

This isn’t to argue against higher taxes on the wealthy. Nor does it deny that some rich people reduce their taxes to well below the official rates through tax avoidance schemes and capital gains.

Yet the charts do support the previous findings that a growing number of today’s wealthy make their money from salaries rather than capital gains. And those top earners as a group still pay the highest rates in the country.

Why the Wealthy Are Worried About the Economy

By most accounts, the wealthy should be feeling great about the economy and their finances.

Stock markets are still up for the year. Incomes for the highest earners are rebounding to pre-crisis levels. There’s little sign that Congress will raise their taxes. And the top one percent of earners captured 93% of the income growth in 2009 and 2010, according to Saez-Picketty.

And yet, the wealthy remain downbeat on the economy. According to a new report from Spectrem Group, 80% of millionaire investors (those with $1 million or more in investible) cited the sluggish economy as a concern in the first quarter of 2012 compared to 70% in the same period in 2011.

Among investors with more than $5 million in investible assets, the top concerns are a little different. These penta-plus investors cite the national debt (82%) and the contentious political environment (80%) as the chief concerns, followed by the economy.

More than 60% of the $5 million-plus investors are worried about maintaining their financial position – way up from 44% last year. The number of penta-plus and millionaire investors who say they “feel wealthy” is also down form last year.

Taxes are weighing on the minds of both wealthy and affluent investors. Fully 70% of the $5 million plus investors are worried about higher taxes, and 65% of millionaire investors are worried. On the flip side, a minority in both groups plan to change their investments based on tax increases.

“With the unemployment rate remaining high, the continuing volatility in the stock market and gasoline prices, and a high-stakes presidential election looming, wealthy investors are anxious about the country’s outlook,” said George H. Walper, Jr., president of Spectrem Group.

All of which makes sense for average Americans. But shouldn’t the wealthy be feeling better?

In the end, the survey points to one of the strange disconnects between Richistan and the rest. While the wealthy appear to be doing well from the outside, they remain anxious and pessimistic on the inside.

No More Nouveau Bordeaux for Nouveau Riche

One of the more rarefied markets of the rich is the “en primeur” system, also known as the wine futures market.

Each year, French chateaux sell vintages just months after the grape harvest, with the wine still in barrels. Merchants and investors buy the futures and take delivery of the barrels years later, when the wines are more mature and closer to drinking age.

The system was originally created to give chateaux money to finance their next year’s wine production. But like many of today’s trading markets, “en primeur” has become financialized, prone to wild speculation, manic price swings and over-pricing. As wine prices have soared in recent years, the system also cut the producers out of some of the gains, since they’re essentially pre-selling their wines.

Now, one of France’s more elite wine-makers is pulling out. Chateau Latour said it is no longer going to offer its wines to the “en primeur” system. Instead it will hold them until years — perhaps even up to a decade — after production.

It’s stated reason is that too many of the newly rich in Asia are drinking Latour wines before they’re mature. Apparently, the thought of a rich Hong Kong wine-buyer quaffing a 2009 Latour with their dumplings was simply too much to bear. So Latour is holding its wine until its time.

“From the 2012 vintage onwards, our wines will only be put on the market when they are ready to be drunk,” Frederic Engerer told the press. “Unfortunately, our wines are all too often drunk young. They keep for a long time and there is no point opening them too soon.”

Yet money is clearly a factor. The 1982 vintage Latour sold for about $400 a case en primeur. Now each bottle is selling for more than $1,000 – a 30-fold gain that went largely to investors and merchants, rather than Latour.

With so many newly rich Asians paying so much for the blue-chip wines, it’s only a matter of time before the other top wine-makers also demand more of their cut.

How do you think newly rich Asians are changing the wine market?

Do Higher Taxes Drive Out the Rich?

Today’s wealth headline out of London seems tailor-made for the anti-tax crowd.

According to a new study from Lloyds TSB, nearly one in five affluent Britons plan to leave the country in the next two years. That’s up from 14% a year ago. The study measured those with around $400,000 in investible assets.

Conservatives point out this sudden flight comes on the back of the 50% tax rate that was imposed on top earners during the recession. That hike was widely blamed for U.K. wealth flight and for not raising nearly as much revenue as expected.

But a closer look at the study provides a different picture. The top reason that the study group (it’s a stretch to call them “wealthy”) gave for leaving were crime and “anti-social behavior.” About the same number, however, cited the British weather as the top reason for leaving.

The study really gets interesting when you look at where these affluent folks want to go to. The top destination is high-tax France, where the leading Presidential contender is pushing a 75% tax rate on the wealthy.

The second choice is Spain, followed by the U.S., Australia and New Zealand.

When asked what would make the U.K. a better place to live, most cited infrastructure spending. That was followed by “cutting red tape for business.” Cutting taxes got about the same number of votes as “improving public services like healthcare, education and the police.”

In other words, the affluent want more government services not less. And taxes were a relatively minor concern in their decision to move.

Granted, the study doesn’t argue that taxes don’t matter in the decision on where people move. Taxes are clearly a factor – sometimes the biggest one. And the study group doesn’t reflect the super-mobile, super-wealthy, who tend to be more tax sensitive and more mobile.

Still, the survey shows that when it comes to where to live, “quality of life” factors may matter more to the affluent than their tax rate.

The Real Wealth Gap: Between the Rich and Super-Rich

Forget the 99 versus the one percent. Consider the economic battle raging between the one percent and the .0001 percent.

Scott Winship of Brookings has created a fascinating study and chart showing the distances between various high-income groups. Fittingly, he uses the Dubai’s Burj Khlaifa hotel – the 160-story symbol of super- wealth — as the model. As it turns out, the Burj is much more fitting to today’s income structure than the traditional wealth “pyramid.”

If the one percent were on the top floor of the Burj, the top 2% would be 67 floors down (showing much much richer then one percent is compared to the two percent). The top 10-percenters are on the 35^th floor, or 125 floors down from the one-percenters. The median household is all the way down on the 13^th floor.

If the top floor is represented by the 0.01%, the distances between groups grows even greater. When the 0.01% is the top floor, the one-percenters fall 150 stories, to the 10^th floor. Which means that a guy making $600,000 is stuck in the economic equivalent of a shabby little room next to the elevator with no view, no butler and way too much street noise – while the 0.01% guy is living large in the penthouse suite with his complimentary bottle of Dom next to the rose-petal bath.

You can see why some one-percenters feel poor and outraged.

But wait. Even the 0.01 percenters feel class envy in this new world of Birj-like stratification. If Mark Zuckerberg’s projected pre-tax income of $5 billion this year represents the top floor, then the 0.01 percenters fall close to the lobby level, while billionaire Larry Ellison falls all the way to the 18^th floor. Needless to say, Larry would not be happy.

What does all this tell us? That the real driver of inequality is at the very top, with a few one-time income wonders (ie Zuckerberg) that make their money from exuberant market events.

As Winship writes, this extreme inequality “could simply be tangential to the lives of most people. Will Americans be better off in 2013 if Zuckerberg does not exercise any more stock options? Did the rest of us benefit from 2007 to 2009 when the share of income received by the rich fell? If not, how do we know that we were hurt when the share they received was rising?”

Do you think inequality matters?

Can You Get Rich by Visualizing Yourself Rich?

The idea that you can get rich by picturing yourself rich has a long and oft-mocked history.

Even before “The Secret” — the blockbuster bestseller that said that good thoughts lead to success – there were similar tomes like “The Science of Getting Rich” published in 1910 and “Think and Grow Rich” in 1937.

All of the books have the same premise: You can visualize your way to wealth.

Hard work? Revolutionary ideas? Luck? Timing? Nice to have, maybe, but apparently not as powerful as picturing your way to riches, these books say.

It’s not hard to see why critics have often made fun of the theory as part of a “flight from realism.”

Yet Sara Blakely, the billionaire founder of Spanx, is apparently big on such visualization. In Jean Chatzky’s new book “The Difference,” Blakely says that “I believe you can take mental snapshots of your future and what success looks like to you. If you mentally see yourself in a scenario, you’ll start to make decisions in your life that get you there.”

She said that years ago, when she was going door-to-door selling fax machines, she visualized herself as the rich owner of Spanx. Of course, she said she had to take action and work hard to achieve the vision. But the visualization led her along the way.

Scott Adams, the Dilbert creator, is also a proponent. In the 1980s, he followed advice from a friend to visualize what he wanted and then write it down 15 times in a row, once a day. Within weeks, “amazing coincidences started to happen,” he says. “Within a few months the goal was accomplished.” He applied the same technique to get his MBA and become a syndicated cartoonist.

Again, it’s easy to make fun of the idea that people can have it all if they just change their thoughts. But apparently, it works for some people – like Scott Adams and Sara Blakely.

Do you think visualization can make you rich?