Dollar Signs

Watching the documentary about the Roosevelts is a salutary reminder of a class of people who lived in a world where money was not talked about.  The established old families did not mention money, partly because they had a lot of it and didn't need to worry, partly because their tendency was to play down display even if they also believed in the finest ingredients and stuffs for their dinners and their possessions.  That ethos pretty much dominated the better East Coast teaching institutions; when I was interviewed for my first job neither I nor the Dean who interviewed me nor my senior faculty colleague who brought me to the meeting thought to mention what salary was attached to the job, and i never learned my annual salary until I figured it out from my first pay stub.  I never heard my mother mention money, certainly nothing we ate or did ever had a price tag attached to it.  When she took me on our annual trip to Chicago to buy new clothes I don't remember cost as being remarked upon when we dealt with our man in Marshall Fields. Nowadays everything is monetized.  There is no picture that comes to the attention of the newspapers that does not have a recent auction price or estimated future one attached to it, as though this were a significant feature of its definition, as important as the artist's name.  Houses are always introduced with their presumed selling price rather than any serious attention to what makes that dwelling desirable or aesthetically pleasing.  A college education is defined by the thousands of dollars of debt a student will acquire, and there is always rumbles of concern that he or she should be directed toward fields of study that will "pay off."  All of this is perfectly understandable since money does indeed make the world go around, yet, on the other hand, there was a class of people in this country who managed by virtue of their personal wealth to manage to refrain from monetizing everything that crossed their path.  Now the country belongs to the nouveaux riches who are intent upon thinking entirely in dollars, and with them goes the mad giddy expenditure that is constantly featured in The New York Times.  The price of stock is considered far more important than the product made, the benefit to the country, or the welfare of those employed to do the work: a company is not thought of as a social, political, environmental asset to the country, but rather simply a source of wealth whose stock is party of a money game played by its owners.  Street after street in Manhattan and London are lined with luxury apartment buildings where units cost in the tens of millions and the inhabitants visit only a few months a year.  The major attraction as reported by the press is the outsize price.  I loved the woman from a posh New Jersey suburb whose husband had bought her a thirty million dollar weekend getaway in the city where as she exclaimed "I can see Central Park" and Bergdorf's is only a few blocks away." What more could one want in God's world, especially when the needy are tucked away out of sight?