Study of the super rich worth a read through

Tax season is upon us and if you’re staring at your W-2 wondering where it all went consider yourself lucky.

Lucky, that is, that you’re not part of the 10 million Americans who are worth more than one million dollars. Imagine keeping up with all of that income. What a hard life it must be — trading up for the latest Gulfstream jet, scheduling your calendar around the most important charity balls, and of course that age-old problem of finding “good help.”

Thankfully, though, these nouveaux riche aren’t alone, in fact their tax bracket is growing at the highest rate in the history of this country. Now they have their own chronicler, Robert Frank, the Wall Street Journal reporter who devotes a weekly column and daily blog called The Wealth Report.

Frank has come up with a new name for this mega-rich top 1 percent of the population - “Richistanis.” These people and their net worth make up a virtual country themselves that if viewed collectively would be worth more than the national incomes of France, Italy or Canada.

As with any group of people measured by net worth, there is a three-tier hierarchy: the lower Richistanis are worth $1 million to $10 million and number 7.5 million households, the middle Richistanis are worth between $10 million and $100 million and number just more than 2 million households, while the Upper Richistanis are worth more than $100 million and number in the mere thousands.

Frank’s book though is not so much focused on numbers or economic factors — though he has a firm grasp on both — it’s about the lifestyles of these super-rich people. If you’ve ever been fascinated by Robin Leach’s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or E! The Glamorous Life of (fill in celebrity name), then Richistan will take you beyond the palaces and pamperings into the hearts and minds of those poor shmucks who must decide every week which mansion to sleep in.

Frank’s job is to hang around the Ferrari dealerships in Greenwich, Conn., the yacht docks in Palm Beach, Fla., and the Four Seasons resorts around the country and get those shoppers and visitors to open up their lives to him. Apparently he’s very good at it because his writing is chock-full of details and anecdotes from around the country.

“The idle rich are being replaced by the workaholic wealthy. They don’t have the time or patience to putter around the croquet court or sip away the hours in the polo box like Old Money. They climbed their way up from the middle class and continue to define themselves by their 18-hour days and outsized productivity,” writes Frank.

He profiles more than a dozen of these millionaires and billionaires, sharing what goes on inside their homes and their hearts, how they break into the upper society social scenes (with plenty of cash), how they teach their children fiscal sense, and, of course, how they spend their time and money.

From Gulfstream jets to 400-foot yachts, birthday parties on MTV to adventure traveling, Frank details just how the top-tier lives in this country. Yet, he never drools over their excess nor does he condemn their extravagance. More importantly, he never loses sight of the disparities in this country and how stratified our society is.

The wealthy have been called “the most noticed and the least studied.” Frank now fills the gap with an entertaining and insightful look at the top tax bracket.

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Martin Winchester is a book critic for The Monitor. He is an English teacher at IDEA College Preparatory in Donna. Send comments to mwinchester@

ideapublicschools.org

Robert Frank

Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich

PUBLISHER: Crown

PRICE: $24.95

PAGES: 277

RATING: 3 out of 5