‘It’s very hard to spend $20 million a year, even $10 million’
April 5th, 2011Via: AP:
While most of the country is still dealing with the daily realities of a struggling economy, University of California, Berkeley professor Robert Reich said the super-rich are richer today than they have ever been.
“It’s very hard to spend $20 million a year, even $10 million,” said Reich, former Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration. “The super-rich are always on the lookout for new thrills and new expensive thrills.”
High-end retailers such as Tiffany & Co. and Neiman Marcus continue to do well despite the economy, he said. And even as NASA experiences budget cuts, the extraordinary wealthy are willing to pay small fortunes to go into space or into the depths of the ocean, said the public policy professor.
“People who are selling to the super-rich basically can’t lose,” he said. “Richard Branson can dig a hole to the center of the earth and charge a million dollars a day to go through it and he’d find people to take him up on the offer.”
