How to be poor

of course; not everyone had a mink coat, various
qualities of material still existed, and so on, but the boundaries were fading
away and it was not enough just to throw a glance at a person to know all about
his or her financial and social status. Workers — even unskilled workers! —
started running cars and competing for parking spaces with the rich; the cri
de cœur of the threatened rich went up: “Today the poor demand a standard
of living formerly confined to the rich.”
    Slowly but surely attitudes were
changing and more and more people took up the defiant attitude of this book:
the rich are a vulgar and pitiful lot, full of worries, pursuing the wrong
aims, chasing after false values, worshipping false gods and have no idea how
to enjoy life. It is much better to be poor and carefree, and learn how to
enjoy your poverty. In the last few decades there have been three main
phenomena which have recruited many converts to this idea.

    1) It was probably James Burnham’s
book at the middle of this century which opened people’s eyes to the managerial
revolution and convinced us that power has slipped from the hands of
proprietors into the hands of managers — from the hands of people who had, into the hands of people who did. The shareholders of a company were
supreme on paper, but they were an amorphous and powerless horde without a
unified voice while the general manager did as he pleased. The power was his — and
so was the glory. When, from time to time, he ruined a company, the
shareholders had to pick up the bills while he moved on to manage and ruin
another company, at an increased salary. It was much better to be a poor
general manager than a rich shareholder.
    The managers took over everywhere. The
rich aristocrats who ran Britain even as late as in Disraeli’s time, receded
into the background, and professional politicians — too clever by half- took
over. The Trade Unions fell into the hands of a new kind of baron who in turn
is now being threatened by a wild, clever and manipulating minority. In other
words: the unions do not belong to their members; they too belong to managers.
    The truth is that power has become
much more interesting and exciting than sheer accumulated wealth. That is so in
western societies where everyone, or nearly everyone, can exist at a tolerable
level. It makes a great difference whether you are hungry or well fed, but it
does not really matter whether your belly is filled with smoked salmon or
bangers and mash, so long as it is filled. The real difference is between
having a motor car and not having a motor car, and not between having a Rolls
and having a second-hand Mini. It makes a tremendous difference whether you
stink or not, but only a small difference whether you are using an expensive
French perfume or a cheap English one.
    The hungry and stinking prowler
cannot laugh at the well-fed and well-dressed man whose Rolls Royce sprays him
with mud. But a well-fed, well-dressed and sweetsmelling poor man, who passes
the Rolls in his third-hand Cortina, may laugh at anyone. And he does. From
this point it was only a small step for the poor to laugh at the snobbery of
the rich and establish the snobbery of the poor.

    2) Another trait that has brought
ridicule and contempt upon the upstart rich is that he cannot find his place in
society. He always wants change. This is a truly basic difference between the
upstart rich and the downstart poor. The downstart poor — the formerly
well-to-do man who is sliding down the financial slope — will do his best to
maintain his former style and will resist all change. The upstart rich wants to change. Not only does he want a bigger house in a better district and a
larger and more expensive car; not only does he want to visit more expensive
restaurants, more exclusive holiday resorts and hotels — and mix with more and
more distinguished, or at least richer and richer people. He does want
all that, of course, but he also wants more fundamental changes. If he comes
from the working class he wants to lose his common accent — but that is only
one example, and not the most important. You would think that becoming rich has
a satisfying effect and enables you to settle down. Not at all. You must start
doing things you never wanted to do in the past. Aristocrats are invited onto
Boards in the City and they try to give the impression of being tough
businessmen; tough businessmen get rich, and try to look like landed gentry.
Getting