Assignment #16 - Andrea Dubon - Speech

Misusing resources by the wealthy

Have you seen kim and kanye’s new plane? The Boeing 747. What a family vehicle. A 404,600 pound vehicle. Outside of the millions of likes it received on instagram and praise from the family’s closest friends this plane isn’t getting much use. At least no efficient use. The fact that celebrities purchase planes meant to house 524 to 660 passengers and use them  for trips that will at maximum carry 30 people, family, friends, and set crew included is ludicrous. Both Kardashian and West have, on multiple occasions, said that they average about 4 flights a week, most trips being domestic, but that averages to about 10-11 tonnes of gas being burned in an hour of flight. So? What does that mean. That would be equivalent to using a gallon a second. Now in comparison the average American uses 500 gallons…. a year. So why is the middle class the target for environmentalist ad campaigns? Why are we being bombarded with online messages about carpooling and metal straws when it’s clear that we don’t have nearly the same effect that the wealthy do. Why aren’t they being held accountable for their part? Or at least making better efforts towards helping communal causes such as humanitarian crisis or environmental issues.

For example the burning of notre dame. We all saw it in the news and retweeted it online but what actually happened? Well James McCauley of the Washington post cites the 177 year old monument being partially burned in Paris on April 15, 2019 along with around 1 billion dollars being raised within a 36 hour window. This appears to be the very definition of humanity pooling their efforts towards a single cause, saving a precious piece of history. But it isn’t  really. The majority of the funds raised towards the building’s restorations came from an exclusive circle of millionaires, most impressively McCauley reports French CEO Patrick Pouyanne’s $112 million dollar donation. How quickly the rich came to the aid of their communities, but why for this event? Why not for efforts to save the burning Amazon? Or for the famine in Yemen? Or even smaller causes like Flint Michigan who’s citizens haven’t had safe drinking water since 2014. It’s been estimated that with only 55 million dollars Flint’s water crisis can be fixed. So why have the world’s billionaires been so silent. Why have they been praised for flaunting their wealth online but remain impotent when it comes to taking actions that could better the common good and save the lives of actual people over architecture. When did we prioritize lining the pockets of individuals over assisting our fellow citizens in need.

But it would be unfair to generalize the wealthy. Within the top 1% percent there are a few who have hosted charity events to raise awareness for humanitarian issues. Particularly one hosted by none other than Shawn Carter, better known as rapper Jay z. In honor of the Shawn Carter Foundation gala, a charity made to provide financial aid for college students, dozens of A-list celebrities and businessmen of all calibers were invited to partake in the festivities and donate. The event was so successful that just this past November $6 million dollars was raised in the name of bettering the education of the nation’s youth. However boasting has once again taken center stage at this event. This time it takes the form of watches. Specifically, rolexes. Bypassing standard paper invitations Jay z sent out vip passes in the form of Rolexes, each individually costing 40,000 dollars. Now events like these typically have guest lists reaching far into the hundreds but with even with just 150 vip’s the amount raised in one night could’ve been paid off in Rolex watch invitations. While the end results of events such are incredibly beneficial for their charities, the flaunting in between shouldn’t be something that the public supports or encourages. Supporting and glamorizing exorbitant lifestyles will only end up making our collective futures more difficult. 

Writing for TheTimes.uk Rhys Blakely reports on Beyonce's new residence. Purchased for a stark $85 million including 23,000 sq ft with 8 bedrooms and 15 bathrooms and even a candy room stocked with $100,000 dollars worth of sweets. At first glance this seems like a middle class dream, but at a closer look it’s simply a gross waste of resources. 23,000 sq feet of space for a 5 member family that could have been used for public housing or a new school. $100,000 worth of sweets that could’ve been donated to feed the poor. The labor and resources used to construct the building alone shouldn’t be available to any individual, let alone spent for such impractical reasons. The strain from the wildfires and the drought in California could be lessened if the social expectations of having huge properties, requiring thousands of gallons of water yearly for upkeep, weren’t maintained. In not holding the rich to sustainable standards the steps we make towards aiding people and the planet will be ineffective in proportion to what could be possible with their help. 

So how do we get them to help us? Simple we hold them accountable, we boycott, we call them out for their actions. Recently the public has taken to twitter, a social media platform of about 330 million global users, to expose the wealthy of their unsustainable lifestyles and misuse of power. In the beginning of 2019 twitter exploded with various posts of the extremity that is the net worth of Jeff Bezos, so much so that people took to tweeting him link to charities for global issues and emailing him their gofundme accounts. Later on in August Bezos finally caves. Rebecca Aydin , of Business Insider, writes on Jeff Bezos’ donation of $100 million dollars to 24 different charities after months of messaging from millions of twitter users. While this is a monumental win for the public many users have stated that this price is equivalent to %0.01 of his total net worth. However, some people have argued that wealthy people like Bezos have earned their money therefore don’t have a responsibility to help people. Because of this, generational wealth  has been a leading argument to justify responsibility in the wealthy. The wealth that families accumulate over the generations of monopolizing business and inheriting companies refutes the arguments of the upper class having no responsibility to help the public because they earned their wealth through “hard work” and “good financial managing”. All in all events like this prove that if the middle and lower class band together and hold the rich accountable for their actions and promote the intervention of the wealthy on humanitarian issues then their can and will be change in our world. Even so remember to recycle! Carpool! Buy metal straws! But also email your favorite celebrities the links to charities and gofund ms because it’s going to take a lot of people to change the minds of a few.