Gov. Bob McDonnell is not commenting on a $6,500 Rolex watch that published reports say he received from a major campaign donor who has lavished his family with thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts he has not disclosed publicly.
I don’t understand why anyone wants a six thousand dollar watch. I mean, it doesn’t do anything but tell the time. It doesn’t tell the time any better than a fifty dollar watch does. Hell, it doesn’t tell the time any better than the free Ninja Turtles watch my niece got in a cereal box.
And walking around with $6000 on my wrist would just freak me out – I mean, what if it gets broken? What if I misplace it? It’s worth six freaking thousand dollars! I’d just be a nervous wreck.
There’s a lot of rich people stuff I can see the appeal of; I love going to Broadway shows, living in a good house or in a gorgeous area is nice, etc. But I’m never going to understand why anyone wants a six thousand dollar watch.
Re: But I’m never going to understand why anyone wants a six thousand dollar watch.
To demonstrate that you can afford a six thousand dollar watch.
It’s the same reason people buy a lot of expensive things.
Expensive watches, are, supposedly, a kind of jewelry – you buy them because they’re works of art which are “pretty” and “elegant”.
In practice, though, yeah, they’re status markers.
Some status markers make sense to me. “This is my season pass to Disneyworld. I drive there in my bitchin’ mint-condition classic Camaro. Sometimes I sail there in my awesome yacht which has a laser cannon. And a shark tank. Grovel before my wealth, peasant.” I hate that guy, and I want his stuff.
“Behold! I have a six thousand dollar watch!” I don’t hate that guy. I think, “so you don’t know any good drug dealers, or what? Because what a dumb-ass thing to buy. Six grand worth of cocaine, you’re at least going to make a couple of impressively hot friends, however temporarily.”
Robert:
And then he looks pityingly at you and says, “Please. I have people for that sort of thing. I can throw pocket change like six kay at my watch. You think I’m going to notice another six kay for blow?”
Ampersand:
Yes, but that’s because $6000 is real money to you. It would make a difference in your life. Would you worry excessively about a $60 watch, especially if it was a gift from a close, personal
acquaintancefriend who wants you to remember them in yourlegislationprayers? No; you can probably afford to lose $60 once in awhile, and easy come, easy go.Grace
First of all, no, you cannot get as good as watch for $50. You’d have to spend at least $200 or $300.
Second, yes, it is one Hell of a status symbol. It is always with you, even when you are wearing only your Speedos. Many times you will be the only one with the time – on a kayak, when scubadiving, etc. But mostly, when you are up to your armpits in lubricant or coolant, and crawling with your ass up out of a CNN machine, you can put it back on, and have it remind you life is good, and remind those who hired you that you are not one of their maintenance guys.
Third, Grace, as usual, has got it exactly right. If you have $5000 in your saving account, you get a $50 watch. When I paid back my best friend the $120,000 he gave me to start my business, I spent $2,500 on a watch. It was not particularly rational, but I would do it again. It was one of the cheapest Rolex, but I like it on my arm.
And for all of you who talk how it is a dumb ass thing to do… I know people who have put $15,000 in cars they bought for $4000, or who have thousands of trade paperback comics they bought new for $15-$20 each, or who smoke a pack a day (I don’t know who much that’s today in California, but it’s something ridiculous) I don’t think their actions are strictly rational, but the last one is the only one on which I would comment… if I did not think she knows the risks, and does not need my preaching. Her husband does more than enough of that.
So, yes, an expensive watch is an indulgence, but never indulging into anything is not something to boast of. I thought that people around here are not supposed to judge others’ choices when they don’t hurt anyone, especially when they don’t understand them.
So, good people, do not judge those wearing Rolexes unless you have worn one for a few years.
Well, in a face-to-face interaction I can’t imagine that I’d ever judge someone for wearing an expensive Rolex watch, because it would never occur to me that it WAS an expensive Rolex watch. I can’t tell the difference between a $200 watch and a $20000 watch – they both look like watches to me.
As for people who own a wallful of graphic novels – (walks away, whistling innocently.)
Sebastian –
You are exactly right. If you get joy from your watch or wallful of graphic novels or room of hot and cold running prostitutes, then you get joy from it and the money was well worth it, and I stand corrected.
I guess what I was meaning was that if you DON’T get joy from it, then it seems dumb to me. But if you do, then more power to ya.
Amp, a wallful of graphic novels is a signal to people in your social class/occupation. A pricey watch is a signal to people in McDonnell’s social class/occupation.
Sebastian,
I don’t especially care how people choose to spend their money, but if someone buys a $6,000 watch then that’s a ‘signal’ to me that they have too much spending money to begin with, and it should be taxed away from them.
Yes, because the NSA has decrypt operations to pay for, and Hellfire drones aren’t free either.
The notion that someone who has “too much” money needs to have it taxed away from them is simply bizarre. “I think that person really ought to have considered sending that money to a Guatemalan village to pay for a schoolteacher” is one thing; “I think categorically that the state would spend that money more wisely” is nuts.
Robert,
The state doesn’t need to spend the money, they could literally just redistribute it.
Don’t worry Hector, if you have spend $50 on anything in the last year, you can be damn sure that there’s someone who’ll see it as a sign that you have too much money, and it should be taken away from you. Not necessary through a civilized method like taxation, either.
Oooh, look at the rich man with his $50 watch. $50 is three months wages some places. Let’s tax it away from him, because it’s too much money!
Catholic theology is a subtle and intriguing body of thought, which – even if you come to view it as totally wrong and evil – is still a rich place for debate that gets down to nitty-gritty fundamentals. Except when it comes to economic applications, where it goes straight to mind-boggingly dumb right away.
Robert,
There’s actually no need for the government to *spend* it, it can redistribute it. Seriously, dropping money out of helicopters might not be the best means of redistribution, but it’s better than nothing.
For what it’s worth, I’m not Catholic. Christian thought more broadly though, takes economics (and the corrupting influence of wealth, and of practices like usury) very seriously, and always has.
Say the libertarian, who should know mind-boggling dumb economic theories quite well…
Nah, I stopped studying your preferences when it became clear that they’d failed to gain purchase in the marketplace of ideas.
Yeah, I think back on the days when all state regulation of industry was abolished and weep at how Libertarianism won. Then I think of how social security was abolished, along with the minimum wage, and how the insurance mandate was swept from the world stage, and I weep some more bitter tears. Then I think of how continuing to allow racist housing policies from tyhe 70’s onward magically prevented the housing bubble and the huge inflation of derivatives, and how we never had an economic crash in 2008. Oh, how glorious the victories of Libertarian economic theory have been!
Then I remember the days when bond vigilantes brought about hyper-inflation in the US, and I think, “Oh how wrong I was to doubt the economic wisdom of the Libertarian Jesus.”
Don’t take any of this as a defense of Catholic Stalinism, by the way. I’m not an expert on the absurdities of Catholic economic theory.
Nice comeback by the way, not quite “that depends on whether I embrace your principles or you [spouse],” but nice none the less.
Was that Calhoun or Stephenson? Or someone else altogether? Parliamentary wit is so very very witty but I always forget who said what.
I like the Churchill-Astor exchange myself:
Lady Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee.
Churchill: Madame, if you were my wife, I would drink it.
I think Elkins taught me that one.
It is attributed to John Wilkes and the Earl of Sandwich, or possibly to Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau and Cardinal Jean-Sifrein Maury, and often to Disraeli and Gladstone. Of course, I got it wrong, it is “mistress”, not “[spouse]”.
The dubiously attributed quotes makes me think of Whistler’s decidedly nasty exchange with Oscar Wilde:
Oscar Wilde: “I wish I had said that”
Whistler: “You will, Oscar, you will.”
It’s a good line whoever said it.
Not quite as witty, but ice cold, was John Randolph of Virginia, a colonial-era Virginian who was widely known to be impotent. Someone made a slanting reference to that, and he responded “Sir, you pride yourself on an ability in which any barbarian is your equal, and any jackass your immeasurable superior.”
Asimov says that the gallows/disease/principles/mistress line was Wilkes. He’s never wrong, and he’s dead, so arguing with him would be in bad taste.
Robert,
They don’t have to spend it, they can redistribute it.
Hector, I know at least a dozen people who lived in Eastern Europe while it called itself Communist, and when I write ‘know’ I do not mean that I work with them or that they’re my neighbors, I mean that at least twice a month, I see Sunday’s sunrise with them while discussing anything under the Sun. I did this morning.
Russians, Bulgarians, Ex-Yugos, Poles, Czechs… the only ones we lack are Hungarians. They hardly ever agree on anything, but there isn’t one who disagrees that what brought the Commies down wasn’t corruption, planned economics, political oppression, the apparatchiks’ luxury life style, etc… It was the common citizens total lack of interest in making any effort to do a good job at whatever they were being employed. When the government provides for everyone, when incompetence is no reason for dismissal, when the janitor makes 60% of the chief engineer’s salary, when the only luxuries are sold for hard currency, the possession of which is illegal for the common citizen, when there is simply no reason to do one’s best… one does not.
Now, I firmly believe in taxation, and I find the personal income US tax rates ridiculously low, or rather not progressive enough. Yes, that includes the bracket in which I was, and now our household is. And no, I do not donate to charities, but I do donate to the Institute (which really does not need it), I have earmarked ‘extra taxes’ for NIH and NASA before, I will probably do next year, and I throw as much money at Kickstarter as my wife permits. But I really hate the ideas that :
1) People should be taxed until they are unable to afford expensive indulgences/irrational luxuries.
2) The tax intake should be distributed in order to achieve equality as opposed to give people a chance to excel.
And that’s what you seem to be pushing for. In my opinion, it would only serve to allow many people to only do the bare minimum they can get away with. “We pretend to pay us, we pretend to work” is an old Eastern European joke, but I sure hope it’s never relevant to where I live.
A mere $6,500 for a watch? Peasant.
This beauty will set you back $44,300.
Dung farmer.
http://famousdiamonds.tripod.com/chopard201watch.html
Is it bad that my first reaction to the last two links was not “that’s horribly decadent” but rather “now that’s just tacky”. And when a nouveau riche (well, at the very least nouveau borgeoise) calls you tacky, you’re really being tacky. Rich people have no taste.
Wait, wait –
Amp –
What if the watch costs $6,000 because your favorite graphic novelist inscribed his or her greatest work in microscopic form on the face, so that (with a magnifying glass) you could read the entire book on the watch?
OR what if the watch cost $10, the engraving cost $990, and the $5000 was to have [insert Will Eisner updated reference here] create a customized inner face for the watch with an adventure story about you and your friends that you had exclusive display rights on, so that you could read the story whenever you wanted, as could anyone you showed it to.
Well, in that case it would be worth any amount of money, plus I’ll gladly drain all the blood from your body and thrown that in too, just in case the people selling me the watch are vampires.
I want a watch like that now. Stupid imagination.
It actually tells time worse than a fifty dollar watch. The fifty dollar watch is probably a quartz watch, the newer, more accurate technology, whereas the Rolex is the old-fashioned mechanical clockwork watch.