But....isn't coffee supposed to be hot?

 

I saw something in the Wall St. Journal this morning that gives me pause. Probably not a good subject to discuss on a photo-oriented blog but I was surprised to see statistics showing that 16 million families in the USA have a net worth of over one million dollars. Which, of course, makes them millionaires. Eight million people over the age of 50 are multimillionaires...  Far more than the 1%.

We are routinely deluged with stories about poverty and deprivation and so it's interesting to see these kinds of statistics. Especially so for people who've spent their careers in the commercial arts industries where there is a prevailing mythology of people mostly working for peanuts. The article goes on further to say that this increase in the number of families achieving this net worth rose rapidly from around 8 million only a few years ago to the current 16 million (12% of American families). The statistics also pointed to a relative (tiny) narrowing of the "wealth gap"; meaning that middle class made more advancements than the vilified one percent in that window of time. 

Of course a lot of the increase in wealth is less liquid with most of the gains occurring through the course of home ownership and rising real estate prices. But college graduates; especially those between 50-70 years of age, also saw increases in net worth because 80+% are invested in equities which also rose from 2019-2022. There was an average increase in net worth of 37% in the USA between 2019 and 2023, adjusted for inflation!

It's interesting to me to write a blog for an audience that is almost completely opaque to me. In advertising we targeted our messages and chose our media based on accurate analysis of demographics. We had a good (now great?) idea of how well educated our target markets were, how wealthy they were and what their overall spending patterns were. With current analytics (via web experiences,  data rich transactions, etc.) marketers have a much clearer picture of their customers. But as a single person blogging operation I have none of those numbers or trends at my disposal. I can only make wide ranging guesses.

Based on comments ( which are a small fraction of total visitors ) I can guess that most of my readers are between 50 and 80 years old. Predominantly men. And most worked in professional jobs ( medicine, tech, law and as executives in various other industries ), are currently retired or nearing retirement and have enough disposable income to at least "consider" non-essential camera purchases. 

I make bad assumptions from time to time. My current potentially flawed assumption is that the majority of us were not wealthy during most of our working years and lived, well enough, in the middle strata of income. Able to afford a decent house, a working car and all the necessities but not "big spenders." I further conjecture that compound interest, inheritances from parents who were part of "The Greatest Generation" combined with the appreciation of house values and 401K holdings, have made many of you relatively wealthy but you have not fully embraced the reality of those rather recent increases in your net worth. After a life time of budgeting, saving, sometimes scrimping, that it's hard to think about spending any of the new wealth you've been lucky enough to accrue. We seem unable to process that times and our fortunes have changed. And, if you are like me, you are probably worried that this is a temporary bit of financial euphoria that could vanish overnight.....

My interests in photography are wide ranging. I love the history of the photo industry and also the art of it but I also like the technical side and, especially, the art of cameras and lenses. I like using different cameras and I like writing about them. But even though I seem to plow through cameras like crazy the reality is that I purchase only a handful per year, mostly used, and constantly sell off the ones that I've tired of. 

When I write about new camera purchases there is always, ALWAYS someone in the audience who takes me to task for being a compulsive consumer, a spendthrift, a capitalist tool, and they seem to take pride in the fact that they are still using a camera from a decade ago and that the idea of prying open their change purse to actually buy a new camera is so abhorrent to them as to make us enemies. Hardly a week goes by without someone jokingly blaming me for their own camera purchase. As though I had grabbed their last dollars from their shaking hands and forced them to buy a new Sony or Leica camera instead of bread for their family. Always posited as a joke. But always with the underlying message that spending their own money is somehow bad. Or wrong. And that my example is consumerism at its worst. 

It's a precarious position. To now have the means to buy whatever you want but being emotionally unable to pull the trigger and enjoy it. But I think this is a condition that's widespread. 

I understand that people with close family ties are hellbent on leaving everything they can to the next generation but.....wouldn't it be fun to loosen up just a little bit and have some fun? Just askin'. 

I'm sure there are many readers who are not in the demographic described above and who are dealing with real challenges. I don't mean to minimize their situations. But it amazes me to live in the middle of the most affluent society/nation in the history of the world and yet, at the same time, to feel like you're barely getting by when, in fact, many of you are actually.....wealthy. (statistics, statistics).

So, (smiley emoticon implied) next time I buy a used Leica just let it go.....

Here's the WSJ headline: 

"Never Mind the 1%. Mini-Millionaires Are Where Wealth Is Growing Fastest."