Michael Mechanic > Quotes

“Sociologist Rachel Sherman, who wrote a book called Uneasy Street about the anxieties of wealthy Manhattanites, had one woman nearly cancel their interview because Sherman used the word “affluent” in an outreach email.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too. —STEVE MARTIN”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“Researchers have found we all have a tendency to emphasize obstacles and downplay our own luck and privilege. “I run on the beach,” Paul Piff told me by way of illustration. “Some days I feel like I’m going particularly fast, and on those very same days, when I’m coming back, I feel like, ‘Whoa, that is a heavy wind, and it’s making me go slower. I didn’t realize when I was going fast that there was wind pushing me.’ ”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“At the Concours d’Elegance, the annual auto show and zillionaire fest at Pebble Beach, I introduce myself to a woman in her early fifties whom I’ll call Sally.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“Fortunately, a woman he knew, Sara Hamilton, had just launched something called Family Office Exchange.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“CrowdSmart, which Polese cofounded in 2015, uses “human-powered AI” to help investors choose which young companies to bankroll. In 2016, to test its platform, CrowdSmart raised a small fund and invested in nearly thirty start-ups that its algorithm had rated highly. Within eighteen months, 80 percent of the companies went on to attract outside follow-up funding at an increased valuation—a substantially better result than most venture funds achieve, Polese says—and 40 percent were founded or led by women. That’s what happens when you de-bias the process.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“The sheer scale of the family wealth makes Jonathan’s concerns about losing it seem pretty irrational. But emotions are emotions. “You put the walls up and you want to guard it and protect it and defend it and heaven forbid somebody should take it from you,” he says. “You’re fear-based now.” In some ways, being very rich and very poor are strangely similar. Just as having not enough money creates fear and anxiety, so can having more than you know what to do with. At both ends of the spectrum, money tinkers with our notions of self-worth, our egos, our social lives, the stability of our marriages, our relationships with children, parents, and siblings—even our mental health. Raising that difficult child properly requires a network of friends and relatives, teachers and advisors, except in the ultrawealth world those teachers and advisors wear business casual and charge substantial fees. “I’m a lawyer, not a therapist,” one estate lawyer who caters to ultra-high-net-worth clients told me. “Although the fact of the matter is, you become one.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“As the cofounder and executive director, since 2003, of a nonprofit called Inspired Legacies, she has advised thousands of women, and hundreds of men and families and nonprofits, on philanthropic and financial matters. Her clients include several billionaires, and most have assets ranging from $10 million to $500 million. “Women are more intimidated by what they don’t know,” she says, “and doubt is cast on them: Are they crazy, or are they actually doing the right thing?”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“Average wealth per adult (not household) within the wealthiest 10 percent of the population was about $2.8 million in 2019. Move down one decile and average wealth plummets to about $555,000—then $293,600, then $152,000. If you ranked in the twenty-fourth wealth percentile that year, you had $199 to your name—about enough to buy one of the cheaper propane grills at Home Depot. This is how depraved things have become in a republic whose founding document asserted that all people (okay, all white male landowners) were created equal.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“You feel like you’re in a high-end furniture store, or even a spa, for that matter. Just very stately, appointed, everything is very intentional,” says forty-four-year-old Scott Pope. Pope is the CEO of ROAMD, a network of nearly one hundred membership-based concierge medical practices. He’s a pharmacist by training, and a concierge patient in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he lives. Joining ROAMD lets concierge doctors extend their wealthy clients the same level of attention while traveling that they enjoy at home. For annual fees typically ranging from $2,000 to $10,000 per head—some docs charge up to $40,000—a person can expect highly individualized, proactive, and unusually private primary care.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“We’ve heard the horror stories, too. Attorney Richard Watts, whom we met in the introduction, tells me another: One early client, three decades ago, was a working-class guy with a lottery win of about $60 million after taxes. He came to Watts in deep trouble, but he came too late: “It was all gone in five years: bankrupt, wife gone, kids gone, kids on drugs, kids in jail—really, truly a life he could not recover from.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“At that price point, open houses evaporate and the MLS listings often go away, too. Wealthy sellers don’t want commoners sniffing around their properties, and well-heeled buyers demand a realtor’s full attention. Showings are by appointment only, “otherwise it’s a petting zoo,” says Frank Nolan, co-owner of San Francisco’s Vanguard Properties, who does $150 million to $170 million in annual sales. Would-be buyers are often asked to show their money in advance, “because a lot of people would love to see a house like that just to see a house like that.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“They don’t work,” David Dai, the founder of a local supercar club, told the New York Times. “They just spend their parents’ money.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“Company founders and rich investors are often happy to chat about their business acumen and charitable activities, but asking questions about their wealth triggers defensive instincts.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“Piff and his colleagues also have found that wealthier people are more prone to entitlement and narcissistic behavior than poorer ones are. Literally narcissistic! In the classic myth, Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection. In a study of 244 undergraduates, Piff observed that “upper-class” individuals were more likely than their “lower-class” counterparts to regard themselves in a mirror before posing for a photo they were assured nobody would ever see. This was the case even after researchers adjusted the results to account for differences in ethnicity, gender, and the participants’ previously reported levels of self-consciousness. In another memorable experiment, Piff’s team placed a pedestrian at the edge of a busy crosswalk near the Berkeley campus and watched to see which drivers would stop and let the person cross. They recorded vehicle makes and models and estimated ages and genders of the drivers. It was impossible, of course, to know anyone’s true economic circumstances and motivations, but suffice it to say that Fords and Subarus were far more likely to stop than Mercedes and BMWs were. In a related experiment, people driving higher-end cars were more likely to cut off other drivers at a busy intersection.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“And remember how our friend Jonathan, who sold his online education company for $40 million, felt after his liquidity event: “You’re fear-based now.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“In 1906, by Reich’s account, Rockefeller’s trusted advisor, Frederick Gates, delivered him a warning: “Your fortune is rolling up, rolling up like an avalanche! You must keep up with it! You must distribute it faster than it grows! If you do not, it will crush you, and your children, and your children’s children!”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“Covey, who edits a U.S. Trust (now Bank of America) publication called Practical Drafting, realized that the changes would enable a new, more lucrative conduit for tax-avoidance: the GRAT. The cure was worse than the disease. “They completely blew it,” Covey recalls. “Instead of tightening up on the law, they loosened up on the law, and they didn’t know that!”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“CrowdSmart, which Polese cofounded in 2015, uses “human-powered AI” to help investors choose which young companies to bankroll. In 2016, to test its platform, CrowdSmart raised a small fund and invested in nearly thirty start-ups that its algorithm had rated highly. Within eighteen months, 80 percent of the companies went on to attract outside follow-up funding at an increased valuation—a substantially better result than most venture funds achieve, Polese says—and 40 percent were founded or led by women. That’s what happens”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“The sitting area at Griffin Concierge Medical in Tampa, Florida, has the vibe of an upscale bed-and-breakfast, with sunlight casting through double-hung windows onto warm hardwood floors. Nashville’s Brentwood MD feels more like a wealthy man’s living room, with a wide, brown leather sofa and an expensive-looking wooden coffee table with photo books.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“Among Amex’s rivals in the luxury space is Quintessentially Group, a members-only concierge network with offices in fifty countries. Quintessentially promises incredible access for its global clientele, which includes, its founders have claimed, hundreds of billionaires and thousands of hundred-millionaires. (Virgin Atlantic’s Richard Branson, rapper P. Diddy, Madonna, and author J. K. Rowling have reportedly been among its clients.) Want a last-minute table at Noma in Copenhagen on a Saturday night? No problem. A private performance by Elton John? Done that. A safe driver to pick up your kids from boarding school in a clutch and deliver them to your vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard? Say the word. Polo lessons from an actual pro? Ask Catherine Mills, head of equestrian services, whose duties have ranged from sourcing a top-notch steed for an international competition to showing up at a children’s garden party in central London with a bunch of ponies “and walking them through the front door.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“The reason it never occurred to her is that, when she was starting out, few in her field were even considering wealthy families. This lack of attention amounted to “an interesting sort of reverse classism,” she says. Like Kenny, she took flak from colleagues when she switched from studying the problems of the poor to those of the privileged. “Why would you want to work with them?” people would ask. “Don’t they have everything going? Why are you wasting your time?” The notion seemed to be that the rich people’s problems were not as real, or that wealthy people were unworthy of empathy. “There is a lot of judgment,” Luthar says. “And now we have the whole thing where the parents are ‘helicopter’ and ‘snowplowing.’ It’s relatively rare that someone comes along and says, ‘Can we talk about this stuff with some kindness?’ ”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“With Giddings’s properties, buyer and seller are brought together via a network of elite realtors who, like brand manager David Christiansen, nurture close bonds with their clients. These are multiyear relationships in which Giddings serves as matchmaker, advisor, friend, and de facto therapist. “I may even go home for Sunday dinners and put their children to bed and all of that,” she says. Some clients like her to be involved long after the purchase: “We’re thinking about this in this color. Can you just come by?”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“Economic uncertainty can trigger extrinsic values, which are heightened, Kasser and the University of Missouri’s Kennon Sheldon found, when people experience “psychological threat”—threats to our survival, self-esteem, social inclusion, and sense of order, control, and community. “Most really successful people are driven by fear, either economically or validation-wise,” says Doug Holladay, whose nonprofit, PathNorth, helps wealthy and powerful men find deeper meaning in their lives through “disruptive” experiences. “You can keep running and building and accumulating, but it’s all a pretense”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“But as he approached fifty, Kenny yearned to do something different. Someone told him that More Than Money—the same inheritors group Jeff Weissglass got involved with—was hiring an executive director. He landed the position and, in short order, discovered that his pregnant teens had at least one thing in common with these young heirs and heiresses: Society defined and stereotyped both groups by how much money they did or didn’t have. The foundations that funded adolescent pregnancy care assumed the girls were getting knocked up because they were poor, “which was not necessarily true,” Kenny says, whereas the inheritors were pegged as “entitled and spoiled and lazy—and there’s no basis for that.” The anti-inheritor bias proved so toxic that some of Kenny’s former colleagues shunned him after he took the new job. “They’re like, ‘What a sellout! What a cop-out! Why would you do that?’ ” he recalls. “What does it say about our culture that everyone wants to win the lottery in some way, shape, or form, and there’s a whole segment of our culture that hates people who win the big payout.” This is indeed a paradox. Oscar Mayer heir Chuck Collins gave away his $500,000 inheritance in 1986, when he was a young man. (Invested in the S&P 500, it would be worth about $14 million today.) He has since dedicated himself, through the Institute for Policy Studies, to educating the American public about inequality. His memoir, Born on Third Base, includes the following scene: Speaking to a crowd of about 350 people, he asks who among them feels rage toward the wealthiest 1 percent. Almost everyone raises a hand. He then asks, “How many of you wish you were in the wealthiest 1 percent?” They laugh, but again, almost everyone. “People are envious,” Kenny says. “And what you end up doing with envy is demeaning whoever it is that you envy, because they have what we think we deserve.” During his time at More Than Money, Kenny grew friendly with Paul Schervish, then the director of the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy, and when Schervish offered him the associate director job, Kenny jumped. He’d seen how inheritors grappled with their unearned fortunes. Now he wanted to better understand their parents. Havens was the numbers guy “and I was in charge of: ‘I’d like to know what these people are thinking, and nobody ever asks them.’ ”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“One thing I don’t see here today is customers. Luxury-car sales are “more lifestyle than automotive,” Christiansen explains. The vehicles follow the money. His team will cosponsor events with private jet manufacturers and fractional ownership services such as NetJets and XOJET, or with San Francisco’s St. Francis Yacht Club, to expose affluent people to vehicles “they don’t even know they want yet.” Customers wander in from time to time, of course. Rocker Sammy Hagar, a Ferrari collector who sold his Cabo Wabo tequila brand to Campari for $91 million, has been known to stop by the sister dealership in San Francisco “in flip-flops, torn shorts, ratted hair, and a T-shirt. You wouldn’t think the guy has two dimes to rub together if you didn’t know who he was,” Christiansen says. Another guy showed up at the Walnut Creek lot dressed like a plumber and configured a $260,000 Bentley. He was, in fact, a plumber—one who owned a thriving plumbing business. He’d arrived in another Bentley, now on consignment.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“The first hints of this emerged in the early and mid-1990s, at the tail end of the crack epidemic. Suniya Luthar is now sixty-two, with an infectious smile, bright brown eyes, and short snow-white hair. Back then, she was a fledgling psychologist working as an assistant professor and researcher in the department of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. She was studying resiliency among teenagers in low-income urban communities, and one of her early findings was that the most popular kids were also among the most destructive and aggressive at school. Was this a demographic phenomenon, she wondered, or merely an adolescent one, this tendency to look up to peers who acted out? To find out, she needed a comparison group. A research assistant suggested they recruit students from his former high school in an affluent suburb. Luthar’s team ultimately enlisted 488 tenth graders—about half from her assistant’s high school and half from a scruffy urban high school. The affluent community’s median household income was 80 percent higher than the national median, and more than twice that of the low-income community. The rich community also had far fewer families on food stamps (0.3 percent vs. 19 percent) and fewer kids getting free or reduced-price school lunches (1 percent vs. 86 percent). The suburban teens were 82 percent white, while the urban teens were 87 percent nonwhite. Luthar surveyed the kids, asking a series of questions related to depression and anxiety, drug use ranging from alcohol and nicotine to LSD and cocaine, and participation in delinquent acts at home, at school, and in the community. Also examined were grades, “social competence,” and teachers’ assessments of each student. After crunching the numbers, she was floored. The affluent teens fared poorly relative to the low-income teens on “all indicators of substance use, including hard drugs.” This flipped the conventional wisdom on its head. “I was quite taken aback,” Luthar recalls.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“At a certain price point, one is paying not so much for the actual quality of the wine as “the scarcity, the story behind it, the critical scores,” Mark Oldman, author of How to Drink Like a Billionaire, explained to Forbes. “Or, it could simply be priced higher so we value it more—the luxury good effect.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“Austin Forbord, a San Francisco businessman whose family company, DZINE, is the local pioneer of what one might call “bespoke staging”—outfitting hyper-luxury spec homes with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of art and high-design furniture manufactured specifically to match that particular project”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All

“A magnet on his mini-fridge reads: “Falling down is part of life. Getting back up is living.”
― Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All