Haves & Have-Yachts

The majority of the better-off keep gazing at the 1%. Our fascination has many layers

Whether or not the number makes sense – and it likely doesn’t, given massive levels of financial illiteracy – it’s sexxxxy. $692mn. Yes, over three years. Yes, there are performance targets. Yes, a lot of it is company stock. But but but…someone born in sadda Madurai and schooled in sadda Chennai, is now drawing this kind of salary. It’s mindblowing. Pundits say Sundar Pichai deserves it, having led the massive rise in Google’s market capitalisation and its AI pivot. Gemini says this compensation package is up to 180,000 times larger than the average annual salary in India. As the headline sinks in, emotions get complicated. Does admiration prevail, or indignation? It’s different strokes for different folks. But for sure, this 1% lot, the have-yachts, has the rest of us, the haves even more than the have-nots, all mesmerised.

Some still rage against ‘filthy lucre’. Others, as Niall Ferguson points out, nowadays see the ascent of money as essential to the ascent of man. This means people can feel a complicated sense of identification with the ultra-wealthy.  Maybe, watching the 1% is like keeping tabs on a version of a life, which they half-dream could have been theirs. Less envy. More something wistful, and harder to 100% explain. There’s also something anthropological, about watching someone who makes more consequential decisions before breakfast, than others make their whole life. It’s frontier gazing, of a kind.

In earlier centuries, ordinary people related to extreme wealth via distance and deference. Today, there is an illusion of proximity. A billionaire with a social media account feels subject to pile-ons, like anyone else. Elon Musk is a strong expression of this. There is his huge wealth. Then, there is the huge volume of public psychological energy he absorbs and generates. Btw Tesla shareholders have approved what could be a $1tn pay package for him. Smoke that, Pichai.

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