Not having money can be pretty stressful. But, then so can having some.
Take the first news today that house prices have started falling as the market get skittish about Brexit. What do you do if a lot of your wealth is locked up n brick and mortar?
Financial Times
It is not just leaving the EU that worries Rana Foroohar. It is the terrifying prospect of luxury pads just not keeping their value like they once did. The FT columnist, after all, “has a large percentage of her net worth tied up in a Brooklyn townhouse”.
Faroohar reports 10 quarters of falling prices for high-end Manhattan property (under the presidency of a New York developer). She wrote: “I think we could be at the beginning of a sea change in top markets, for a number of reasons.
“In the UK, Brexit has created huge uncertainties for prime London tenants and buyers.
“Meanwhile, in the US, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews and approves foreign investment deals, has proposed new rules that would expand scrutiny of such deals into real estate, an area that had previously been passed over.”
One of the little secrets not quite cited: the upper end of luxury markets in the US and western Europe are being propped up by the very rich from elsewhere.
The New York Times
The rich are facing terrible angst, wrote Richard V. Reeves in a weekend edition of America’s newspaper of record. Why? Because winning in life is as hard as losing.
“Seems like it’s getting tough at the top,” he said. “The winners in America’s meritocracy are suffering. Children in affluent homes are being hothoused through childhood, stress-tested into elite schools and colleges, and pushed to the brink of suicide or breakdown.
“Their highly educated mothers and fathers are putting in long hours in their chosen professions: money-rich, perhaps, but time-poor.
“The whining of the wealthy is getting louder.”
Mr Reeves was citing a new book by a law professor he called “the latest diagnostician of this elite malaise”, Daniel Markovits.
The Yale law professor reckons theories of meritocracy hurts everyone - rather than just allowing the rich a rationalise their consumption.
Mr Reeves is not buying the concept. He says: “But there is no moral equivalence between the stress of a senior executive staying up late to polish a presentation for a client and the stress of a retail worker unsure if she will get the shift she needs to make rent.”
The Times
Right-wing columnist Clare Foges has the same worries as everybody else about the world, and especially its climate.
But she reckons campaigners have to start talking a language Middle England can understand if they want to get their message across.
She wrote: “The same problem beset the Occupy movement.
“They had reasonable points to make about crony capitalism, but most people were put off by the rabble of protestors in unsightly tents mouthing ‘eat the rich’ slogans.”
She concluded: “If you want people to listen to your message, the messengers matter too.”
She explained: “Beneath there were ideas that we in the mainstream could nod along with; it was a shame these ideas were dressed up in the language of left-wing radicalism.”
The Scotsman
The wealthy were worried in the past too. Alison Campsie reveals new efforts to understand the “bad minister”, a churchman during the Highland Clearances called called Walter Ross who once found his home surrounded by women who wanted to kill him.
She wrote: “Employed by the Sutherland Estates, the minister was a deeply divisive figure within his community and now archaeologists are hoping to reveal a fuller picture of his life by excavating the remains of his former home, Greenan, near Brora.”
“The minister as a staunch supporter of the Sutherland Estate’s improvement policies which included the notorious and sometimes brutal Clearances.
“He was involved in the trial of factor Patrick Sellar for ‘culpable homicide, fire-raising and cruelty’ in Inverness in 1814.
“The minister sat beside Sellar in the defendant’s box for the entire duration of the 15-hour long trial, after which the factor was found not guilty with the clearance of tenants from the estate to last another seven years.”
Preaching was lucrative during the Clearances. The minister died with the equivalent of £100,000 in today’s terms.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here