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Squandering time is a luxury of profligate youth, when the years are to us as dollars are to billionaires. Doing the same thing in middle age just makes you nervous, not with vague puritan guilt but the more urgent worry that you're running out of time, a deadline you can feel in your cells.
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Tim Kreider (We Learn Nothing)
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In general, poor is polite and rich is rude.
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
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But not having cable or the Internet turns out to be cheaper than having them. And nature is still technically free, even if human beings have tried to make access to it expensive. Time and quiet should not be luxury items.
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Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
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It is only natural that difficulties arise if we must fight day by day in order to survive while another human being, equal to us, is effortlessly living a luxurious life. This is an unhealthy situation; as a result, even the wealthy — the billionaires and millionaires — remain in constant anxiety.
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Dalai Lama XIV (An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life)
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But such people (Moderate Conservatives) aren't liberal. What they are is corporate. Their habits and opinions owe far more to the standards of courtesy and taste that prevail within the white-collar world than they do to Franklin Roosevelt and the United Mine Workers. We live in a time, after all, when hard-nosed bosses compose awestruck disquisitions on the nature of 'change,' punk rockers dispense leadership secrets, shallow profundities about authenticity sell luxury cars, tech billionaires build rock'n'roll musuems, management theorists ponder the nature of coolness, and a former lyricist fro the Grateful Dead hail the dawn of New Economy capitalism from the heights of Davos. Coversvatives may not understand why, but business culture had melded with counterculture for reasons having a great deal to do with business culture's usual priority - profit.
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Thomas Frank
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Till luxury becomes a thing of the past, equality will remain a thing of the future.
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Abhijit Naskar (Good Scientist: When Science and Service Combine)
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Humans have these notions of power, control, hierarchy, greed, anger, envy, lust, etc. It really is quite bizarre where these tendencies lead us. We have human billionaires on planet earth who choose to gather more and more wealth at the expense of everyone else. But why? Once all of a person's human needs have been supplied, to unimaginable levels of luxury, what is the point of having more? To have power and control over other humans?
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Marshall Brain (The Second Intelligent Species: How Humans Will Become as Irrelevant as Cockroaches)
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He would expose, remorselessly, those hypocrites and cynics who publicly denied the catastrophe of climate change while secretly short-selling that very same position and hedging all their bets; the millionaires and billionaires who preached self-reliance while accepting vast handouts in the form of subsidies and easy credit, and who bemoaned red tape while building contractual fortresses to shield their capital from their ex-wives; the tax-dodging economic parasites who treated state treasuries like casinos and dismantled welfare programmes out of spite, who secured immensely lucrative state contracts through illegitimate back channels and grubby, endlessly revolving doors, who eroded civil standards, who demolished social norms, and whose obscene fortunes had been made, in every case, on the back of institutions built with public funding, enriched by public patronage, and rightfully belonging to the public, most notably, the fucking Internet; the confirmed sociopaths who were literally vampiric with their regular transfusions of younger, healthier blood; the cancerous polluters who consumed more, and burned more, and wasted more than half the world’s population put together; the crypto-fascist dirty tricksters who pretended to be populists while defrauding and despising the people, who lied with impunity, who stole with impunity, who murdered with impunity, who invented scapegoats, who incited suicides, who encouraged violence and provoked unrest, and who then retreated into a private sphere of luxury so well insulated from the lives of ordinary people, and so well defended against them, that it basically amounted to a form of secession.
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Eleanor Catton (Birnam Wood)
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Letter to the tech giants:
When fame and abundance kiss somebody’s feet before that person is wise enough, he or she is very likely to lose track of what’s necessity and what’s luxury. And modern society is filled with examples of such intelligent stupidity – stupidity that is carried out by apparently smart humans. Because being smart is not the same as being wise. The world has enough smartness, but not enough wisdom to bring that smartness into proper productive practice – and I mean productive practice not sophisticated practice – there is a difference. A person smart enough to visualize a Falcon rocket engine can easily pinpoint the locations of various organizations that spread terrorism, yet the person chooses to explore the space further instead of prioritizing the technological advantages to first fix real issues of the human society that inflict harm to the humans every walk of the way.
The world is a miserable place not because we have lack of resources, but because those who have an abundance of resources do not have the slightest idea of true human need. The resources needed for colonizing Mars if put to proper practice can fix the world’s global warming issues – it can fix the world’s climate change issues – it can fix the world’s terrorism issues, yet people are more interested in the pompous idea of living in Mars for whatever reason, instead of paying attention to improving human condition on earth. I am not against technological advancement, for I am a scientist, but my soul aches when I see smart people are dumb enough to chase after illusory glory of doing something different and innovative instead of focusing the powers of their soul on cleaning up the misery business on earth. You can, yet you don’t. Why?
Smartness without wisdom is stupidity. You are smart – yes indeed – but I am sorry – you are stupid at the same time. How can you dream of having a cheese burger on Mars when your own kind on Earth is suffering! How can you think of taking rich kids into the orbit just so they can admire the beauty of earth from the heavens, when that very earth is infested with the primordial evils of human character! Awaken the human within you my friend, and pay attention. Awaken the human within and let it consume all the miseries from the world that you live in. Say a member of your family falls ill, would you ignore his or her misery completely just because you want to make life more comfortable for others than it already is, or would you first try everything in your capacity in order to heal your loved one!
Be wise my friend, for it is not enough to be smart. You are smart – there is no doubt about that – so utilize that smartness for humanity and heal your own kind. Heal your kind with your capacity my friend. It is wailing for healers – not some delusional faith healers, but real tangible healers. Would you not do anything! Would you not give your soul to fix the broken soul of this world! Arise my friend, Awake my friend and work for humanity, not to make it sophisticated, but to make it peaceful first. Remember, humanity first, then everything else. Peace first, sophistication later. Harmony first, luxury later.
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Abhijit Naskar
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Wine is a grocery, not a luxury.
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Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
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As much as I wanted to savor my time with her, drink in her knowledge and learn all the things she surely had it in her to teach me, I didn’t have the luxury. Instead, my eyes went straight back to my laptop, closed out the reports as I typed the final details, and hurriedly tried to finish a few more emails before the six-year-old standing across from me would cause any more distractions. Mom life, right?
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Max Monroe (Broody Billionaire : The Wes Lancaster Collection)
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I don’t have the luxury of wasting time on subpar ideas and missed opportunities.
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Lauren Asher (The Fine Print (Dreamland Billionaires, #1))
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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.
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Michael Mechanic (Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All)
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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.
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Michael Mechanic (Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All)
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A billionaire's idea of vacation is in space, whereas a regular person's idea of a vacation is on some island or in another continent. And if the billionaires are abusing resources for personal enjoyment, so are these regular people. You have no right to demand moral accountability from billionaires, if you yourself don't mind engaging in your everyday luxuries – for your luxuries may seem dim compared to those of the super-rich, but still the resources you spend on them could feed and clothe at least ten families in developing parts of the world for a year.
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Abhijit Naskar (Gente Mente Adelante: Prejudice Conquered is World Conquered)
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Many people are mad at the escapades of billionaires in space, but the fact of the matter is, had they been invited to go with the billionaires themselves, most of them would be thrilled to their bones, for they are not really mad at the billionaires, they are mad because they can't afford such fancy travel.
You see, they are the same people who save up their hard-earned money so they could have a relaxing or thrilling vacation somewhere, even though their version of vacation turns bleak in front of the glorious space vacations of the super-rich.
So to those who pompously ask the question, "should people travel to space for fun", I ask, “should you have a vacation on an island for fun - should you have dinner at a fancy restaurant for fun – when countless souls are suffering from the lack of the very essentials of life?”
It's all about status. A billionaire's idea of vacation is in space, whereas a regular person's idea of a vacation is on some island or in another continent. And if the billionaires are abusing resources for personal enjoyment, so are these regular people.
You have no right to demand moral accountability from billionaires, if you yourself don't mind engaging in your everyday luxuries – for your luxuries may seem dim compared to those of the super-rich, but still the resources you spend on them could feed and clothe at least ten families in developing parts of the world for a year.
The very existence of billionaires is a sign of economic disparities, but they are not the sole cause of those disparities. Every individual engaging in luxury beyond necessity is as much responsible for the economic disparities in society as the super wealthy. So till you learn to distinguish between necessity and luxury and thereafter abolish all trace of luxury from your own life, you are the problem yourself, as much as the greedy capitalists and politicians.
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Abhijit Naskar (Gente Mente Adelante: Prejudice Conquered is World Conquered)
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The New Rich (NR) are those who abandon the deferred-life plan [save and retire after 20–40 years] and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility.
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Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
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Think about it. Jeff Bezos, the richest man in America, has an estimated net worth of $110 billion. How many fewer cars, swimming pools, tennis courts, or luxury vacations will Bezos purchase after 2 percent of his wealth is taxed away? The answer is not many. A small, annual tax on a fraction of his net worth isn’t going to crowd out much of his spending. When it comes down to it, he’s more of a saver than a spender. Billionaires save their wealth in the form of financial assets, real estate, fine art, and rare coins. A wealth tax might make the infrastructure bill appear fiscally responsible, but it makes a lousy offset if the government wants to increase spending in an economy that doesn’t have much available slack.
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Stephanie Kelton (The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy)
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Squandering time is a luxury of profligate youth, when the years are to us as dollars are to billionaires.
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Tim Kreider
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Her frustration frothed like the luxury bubbles still foaming on her loofa, and she turned to wash off, wishing her negative attitude and desperation would go down the drain too.
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Elana Johnson (The Billionaire's Enemy (Getaway Bay, #1))
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True luxury is worth the spend.
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Molly Bloom (Molly's Game: From Hollywood's Elite to Wall Street's Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker)
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As anyone who’s been in rehab or sat in AA meetings will tell you, addiction doesn’t give a fuck who you are. It doesn’t care what you do or where you’ve been or what you’ve done. I know this because the billionaire’s son with no teeth reminds me. We’re an unlikely collection of people who would otherwise never meet, all in various states of disrepair and dishevelment. Shaving is the least of your worries when you’re trying to kick a heroin habit. No matter how much you pay for luxurious surroundings, recovery is hard, and if you think it’s easy, you’re probably not really serious about it.
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Cory Richards (The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within)
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I don't have the luxury of wasting time on subpar ideas and missed opportunities.
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Lauren Asher (The Fine Print (Dreamland Billionaires, #1))
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Last night… I felt like Cinderella. I felt beautiful, carefree, and being with you was amazing. But my life is not that, Harrison. It’s none of that. I haven’t felt carefree in forever; I never wear pretty clothes; I never feel beautiful. I needed to get home to my reality, which is far different than your luxury penthouse with its perfectly curated art and luxurious amenities.
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Samantha Skye (The Charming Billionaire (The Baltimore Boys, #1))