£500 A DAY

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 181, 2 May 1925, Page 18

£500 A DAY

THE WORST OF RICHES When I read in the papers that Miss Gloria Swanson was now earning, or about to earn, £5OO a day, I confess my Heart bled for her. If the papers had only given her annual salary, I should probably have envied her, for I always envy the very rich in a vague sort of way if their riches are computed in vague round figures. I do not hate the notion even of possessing £1,000,000 a year, because £1,000,000 is to me so fantastically unreal a sum that it dances before my imagination like a fight of soap bubbles. I feel that anybody could be a millionaire without needing to worry about it. £5OO a day, however, is a different matter. £5OO is a sum that comes within the grasp of my understanding. It is the sort of sum I could imagine myself , spending—spending ’without difficulty, indeed, if I did not get it too often. Hence the prospect of having it to spend—which is the same thing as having to spend it—every day in the -year would fill me with "alarm and horror.

I know that for the first few days 1 should enjoy myself tolerably, we'll, buying a motor-car one day and a new sort of pianola .-the next, an-l all kinds of microscopes and telescopes, and a vacuum cleaner, and giving a few really good dinner parties. But gradually the catalogue of the filings I wanted very badly would run cut. Spending at the rate of £5OO a day, I should soon have all the pianolas : .md the lawn mowers and the pictures I could find room for. J should find, indeed, that I was a man rich in money but poor in resources for getting rid of niy money. I should have heaps pf money and frothing to spend it-on. Do yoi wc ne'er that I feel sorry for Miss Swansori,?— My own view is. that, after a certain point, a pound ceases to have • the value of a pound. 'Tlie first few pounds, with which j’ou can buy things that you urgently need, are worth about ten pounds each. Become a little richer, and your pound gradually sinks in value till it sis worth about five pounds. Then, when you are what I should call comfortably rich, the pound is worth exactly a pound. Get richer than that, and every extra pound you possess buys less and less for you, till, I honestly believe, the millionth pound of a man who has £1,000,000 a year is scarcely worth sixpence. The decreasing return of the increasing income is one’ of ’the roost melancholy facts in a world in which most of us would like to be millionaires. Our appetities, whether for food or for pleasure, or for works of art, are all easily exhausted. My own could be more than satisfied on £2O a day, and I should find some difficulty in getting rid of that. lam sure that I should not enjoy a £5 dinner ten times as much as a ten-shilling dinner. That is what makes me believe in the law of diminishing return in regard to riches. Of course, there are ways of getting rid of superfluous money, such as giving it away to people who would really enjoy spending it. But, though some human beings are wise enough to do good openly or by stealth, their number is few, and the ordinary rich man is left with his wealth hanging round his neck like a burden. That is "where, I-think, the income tax and the supertax have proved such a blessing to the very rich. These taxes have enabled the rich man to get rid of a great deal of money vbich he himself had not the courage to throw away as worthless, and 'so have increased the value of every pound' that is left to him. My only objection to the income tax is that it comes down on those of us who need the money for other things. But, if I were Miss Swanson, I should not mind how high the income tax was,' so long as it helped me to get rid of my income.—Robert Lynd, in the “Daily News.”'