Rodney

Goes back to the old argument over the productivity of defense spending. You build an a-bomb for deterrence, and it sits there for 20 years, deterring. Sure, money's spent guarding it, maintaining it, and moving it around, but it doesn't create or promote _new_ wealth.

Take that same money and build a bunch of industrial machinery, and you've created something that continually create things that can be sold or used or, even better, something that can create other machines to create more machines that create things that can be used productively. There's a breeder effect there.

A big 'ol house makes the rich man spent to build it and maintain it, with money he's obtained elsewhere. And there is some redistribution of wealth to others. But there's no breeder effect from the capital used to build the house that will create new wealth, for the rich man or for the economy.

Eh, I'm sounding kinda Marxist even to myself. And people should have their toys. But I continue to hold that the reason that some very rich people -- especially newly-rich people -- spent a lot of money on baubles and mansions is a lack of imagination. That's the only way they know how to enjoy that ungodly pile of cash they've somehow accumulated.

On the other hand, you've got somebody like Ted Turner who's bought his own prairie kingdom, hundreds of thousands of acres -- because he likes it out there, I guess -- and is trying to both preserve it and make it into some kind of eco-tourist attraction. And Paul Allen, Bill Gates' old partner, who sunk $20 million into building a (successful) suborbital manned spacecraft with Burt Rutan, and who used some of his considerable cash to buy another bauble he liked: the Portland Trailblazers! And there are other examples.