Mmm, I'd guess you're mostly right, but you might be skewing slightly by the advertising found in Forbes (and, gaaaah, The Robb Report): that of companies seeking to serve price elastic conspicuous consumers, and thereby separate them from (some of) their money (just what is it about watches with complications?).
I read Forbes for quite a number of years (both before and after Malcolm S. Forbes died), and have let the subscription lapse for a number of reasons. Steve Forbes is rather a bland character, and the magazine has suffered as a result. They have always been champions of the notion that the fortunes of a company are directly the result of the CEO and thus are a cheerleading section for that notion and the individuals who inhabit it. However, prior to Malcolm S. Forbes' demise, they were also not afraid to print articles saying, "this guy is a crook; avoid doing business with him" and dare the object of the article to sue them. Those articles are gone. They also don't cover things in as much technical depth as they used to.
By contrast, The Economist published a piece by Ben Bernanke about a month before he was appointed to be chairman of The Fed (on a global savings glut - I'm not sure I believe that and they seemed a touch skeptical too). I don't always agree with them, but they're a much more interesting read than Forbes, and have been for many, many years - that magazine was floating around the house when I was growing up; I remember reading it (and the late, lamented Punch) in my teens (though I understand it a lot better now than I did then).
I don't consider myself rich, although I am reasonably well off. For me, the amount of debt I can immediately incur is more useful for immediate needs (oh, dear, I need to go to NYC, right now so I whip out the credit card and charge airline tickets, hotel, etc.), rather than as a means to live beyond my means.
neonchameleonsaid that s/he considered the amount of time it would take to not work and thus fall into penury as a measure of being rich; if the period was measured in years, then you're rich. The catch with that measure is that it depends entirely on your run rate. Carefully done, I should be able to avoid any requirement to work for a living for the rest of my life, however, that doesn't mean I have no budget; if I wanted (or were foolish), I could probably blow it all within a month or three, living very profligately. The two things that prevent me from doing that are that conspicuous consumption for its own sake holds little or no appeal for me, and, damnit, I want value for my money! (odds are that those two attitudes are related).
One other data point that is tangentially related: my father once told me that of the characteristics crunched on in credit scoring, income bore absolutely no relationship to creditworthiness, i.e. ability to repay debt does not correlate to willingness to repay debt.
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Date: 2006-01-11 12:59 pm (UTC)I read Forbes for quite a number of years (both before and after Malcolm S. Forbes died), and have let the subscription lapse for a number of reasons. Steve Forbes is rather a bland character, and the magazine has suffered as a result. They have always been champions of the notion that the fortunes of a company are directly the result of the CEO and thus are a cheerleading section for that notion and the individuals who inhabit it. However, prior to Malcolm S. Forbes' demise, they were also not afraid to print articles saying, "this guy is a crook; avoid doing business with him" and dare the object of the article to sue them. Those articles are gone. They also don't cover things in as much technical depth as they used to.
By contrast, The Economist published a piece by Ben Bernanke about a month before he was appointed to be chairman of The Fed (on a global savings glut - I'm not sure I believe that and they seemed a touch skeptical too). I don't always agree with them, but they're a much more interesting read than Forbes, and have been for many, many years - that magazine was floating around the house when I was growing up; I remember reading it (and the late, lamented Punch) in my teens (though I understand it a lot better now than I did then).
I don't consider myself rich, although I am reasonably well off. For me, the amount of debt I can immediately incur is more useful for immediate needs (oh, dear, I need to go to NYC, right now so I whip out the credit card and charge airline tickets, hotel, etc.), rather than as a means to live beyond my means.
One other data point that is tangentially related: my father once told me that of the characteristics crunched on in credit scoring, income bore absolutely no relationship to creditworthiness, i.e. ability to repay debt does not correlate to willingness to repay debt.