Readers of the WSJ

[question everything]

Some of us often say that while the editorials of the WSJ are as reactionary as they come, the rest of the paper is of high quality. I often post stories that get reactions like: "this is from the WSJ??"

Last month I posted a story about how many spend millions on yachts - it is in the archives now, I am sure, and the archives search if off now.

Anyway, I just now saw several letters in reaction to that story - letters that will make all DUers proud.


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The Wall Street Journal


An Obscenity of Luxury and Vanity
January 4, 2005; Page A13

Your Dec. 14 page-one article "Making Waves: New Luxury Goods Set Super-Wealthy Apart From Pack" broadens the definition of obscenity.

Let me see if I've got this right: almost half a million dollars for a Mercedes to keep up with the fellow in the McMansion next door; $200,000 to strap on a new Rolex watch; and a quarter-billion dollars to build a boat (OK, a yacht), which will then suck up $10 million a year to operate, including $12,000 each time it pulls up to the harbor gas pump? It's humbling to think of how many college tuitions, rescue mission meals or low-income apartments those extravagances could pay for.

Someday, people will look at this folly and say the same thing my wife and I did last fall when we visited Versailles, that humble retreat for Louis XIV and his fellow royals. In trying to absorb all of the blinding gold, marble and crystal, all purchased or commissioned while many 17th century Parisians were starving, the only words my wife and I could muster were, "What vanity." Then again, perhaps people are already realizing that.

Ed Klodt
Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Glorifying the self-indulgences of the super-rich hardly seems appropriate anytime, but certainly not at the holiday season. Having your humanity defined by the size of your yacht is very sad. Overpaid executives and the Journal have learned little from the excesses of the 1990s. People can spend their money as they wish, but publicizing the toys that feed their insatiable egos is indicative of sadly misplaced values.

David Miller
Brush Prairie, Wash.

Gee, and here I thought I was hot stuff, sitting in my living room looking out my new bay window that I saved three years to buy! I guess that Chardonnay I'm sipping from my Pier 1 wineglass isn't so great either. Thanks for bringing me down to earth and reminding me that I'm just a lowly 8-to-5 worker.

Patricia Whitener
East Lansing, Mich.

I can't help but draw a comparison between the people worrying about the status their yacht conveys and our soldiers worrying about their status in terms of armor plating for their vehicles. Perhaps Paul Allen and Larry Ellison could give up a few feet of yacht to improve the status of some of the folks who are fighting and dying so they can maintain their status as Americans.

Chet Brewer
Severna Park, Md.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110479716575315907,00.html