Eat the rich

Lately there has been a lot of anger and indignation about income inequality. Some blame this on . . . income inequality. I blame it on rich people in T-shirts.

I won’t mention Mark Zuckerberg by name. But, honestly, young man, you’re almost 35 years old, worth $72 billion, and you’re wearing your underwear in public.

There was a time when wealth was distributed far less equitably, but we weren’t as resentful of the rich. We resented our poverty, but we were relieved that we didn’t have to put on striped pants and spats to have breakfast.

Being rich looked very uncomfortable. Rich people’s clothes were stiff and starchy, and they wore lots of them.

Now we have Jeff Bezos in a New Kids on the Block bomber jacket, Bill Gates outfitted in Mister Rogers’ sweaters and Gloria Steinem’s old aviators and cutting his own hair, and Richard Branson looking like the guy at the end of the bar muttering lines from The Big Lebowski.

If rich people start getting any more comfortable, police will be shooing them off park benches.

Rich people are also having fun—launching their own rocket ships, sending lewd selfies, buying private islands (Manhattan, for example). Having fun was something rich people didn’t used to do, at least not as far as we poor people could tell.

They went to the opera. It was like vaudeville except without the tap dancing, acrobatics, magic tricks, jokes or entertainment.

They had to wait to eat dinner until 8 p.m. Table manners were complicated. Which knife do you use to eat peas? And strange foods were served—terrapin soup (boiled turtle), shad roe (eggs that not only weren’t fried but came from a fish) and pheasant under glass (dangerously breakable).

Even when relaxing they had to get dressed up according to strict social protocol.

These days rich people are behaving just like the rest of us. Or just like the rest of us would if we were rich. The trouble is we can’t afford to be rich slobs the way rich slobs can. (The wash-that-gray-away skivvies Zuckerberg sports are actually custom ordered from Brunello Cucinelli for upwards of $300.)

The rich aren’t satisfied with having all the money. They want all the fun, too. And that’s not fair.

Let’s make rich people uncomfortable again. Maybe tax the dickens out of them. But somehow taxation never enriches me. Let’s require everyone with a net worth over $100 million to wear a top hat at all times. This does nothing to fix income inequality—but what a swell target for snowballs.