Rich and Richer

This week we have been watching a movie about the lives of different classes. Currently, we are watching the part about the WASPs or the white Anglo-Saxon protestants aka the privileged rich snobs with old money. There is a huge gap between the rich and the poor. We looked at a chart and it compared the money people earned to different heights and the normal person stood 8 ft tall while the richest person would be as tall as Mount Everest. I never really knew that there was such a small number of very rich (income) and wealthy people out there. I mean, I watch plenty of TV shows that focus on the rich (Gossip Girl, 90210, Royal Pains) but I never knew that they actually made up such a small population of America. All of the actors and singers are only 1% of the population. However, we focus so much on them. As a society, we are interested in the rich because we value money. Thus, we like to watch television shows that focus on the elite. I remember reading an article in the summer about the TV show Royal Pains. Someone asked why it is getting so many viewers in these hard economic times. The response was that we Americans like to strive for money and we like to see rich people. Royal Pains was literally that 1%- these people lived in the Hamptons with these gigantic houses and very expensive cars. On Wednesday, Stevenson Gymnastics has a meet at Lake Forest. Wow, that school looks like 5 mansions put together. It is crazy big and extremely fancy on the outside. Lake Forest is Illinois' version of the WASPs featured in the video.