In a blog post entitled Rich vs. Super-Rich, WSJ blogger Robert Frank highlighted this very funny video produced by the folks at The Onion lampooning the pseudo class war brewing between millionaires and today’s super-rich class of billionaires. The video is hilarious, and well worth watching. On a more serious note, Frank notes that the joke plays off of the very real, and growing, wealth gap in the U.S. Here’s an excerpt from Frank’s blog post:
The main reason for all this class envy at the top is that inequality among the rich is now at its highest level in recent history. The economic distance between mere millionaires and the richest billionaires has more than doubled over the past decade. While the average income for the top 1% of income earners grew about 57% between 1990 and 2004, it grew by more than 80% for the richest one-tenth of one percent.
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The rich (or even affluent) may be feeling more and more class envy because of all the people around them who are even richer. But mere millionaires are still among the luckiest people in the world. Instead of always looking up and counting their fortunes, they should also look down and count their blessings. Because, as the Onion video points out, “not everyone can vacation in Italy. Some of you have to vacation on Martha’s Vineyard.”