| Being able to afford air travel makes a huge difference to your life. Irish people used to hold wakes for emigrants, because they were effectively saying goodbye forever. Until a few decades ago, the only chance most working people had of travelling internationally was in the armed forces. How big is the difference between economy, business class and a private jet? You're a bit more comfortable for a few hours, but that's about it. The life-changing part of air travel has been democratised; the expensive add-ons are mostly status signals. The difference between owning a car and not owning a car is huge; the difference between driving yourself and being driven is a nicety that even a lot of billionaires forgo. Motor racing isn't a particularly expensive hobby if you're willing to do it in a used Neon rather than a race-prepped Porsche. I trained as an audio engineer and I can tell you that there's nothing in music that you'll hear on a $50,000 custom hifi system that you won't also hear on a $300 pair of Sennheiser or AKG headphones. I think there's a general principle here, underpinned by economies of scale. If you make a million of just about anything, you can make them really good and really cheap. There's just not a lot of extra value that can be added above and beyond that sweet spot. When our economy was mostly driven by labour, the rich got access to an array of luxuries that were completely unaffordable to the majority. Now that the economy is driven mostly by innovation and automation, you don't have to be that far above the poverty line to reap most of the benefits of our civilization. |
Some specific additional responses:
- private jet: With a private jet, time from car door to taxiing the runway adds about 5-10 extra minutes total on each side of the trip. On a commercial jet, that's more like 30-120 minutes extra on each side depending on the airport.
- audio: My most memorable listening experience was on a $100k+ system with B&W Nautilus speakers. I don't remember all of the peripherals, so I can't cost it out exactly. Anyway, we played some CDs (heathens!) of some baroque performances that I thought I knew well. When we started listening, I heard things that I had never heard before. It completely blew my mind. The music sounded totally different, and the subtle expressions of the performers via their instruments were far more obvious. I've listened to the same music on $300 Sennheiser headphones (which I love and recommend) -- totally not the same.
In general, extremely rich people are able to buy A LOT of time and very high quality experiences. Is this as much of a quality of life jump from upper middle class as a jump from limited means to middle class? I think it's a faulty comparison as the needs and wants (both practical and aspirational) of each of these starting groups is very different.
That said, ymmv.