Essay:
The Anxieties of the Ultra-Rich How do you start closing the wealth gap? Convince the rich to do it themselves.

Earlier this year, 47,000 Norwegians won the lottery. Many won the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars; some even became millionaires. The good news had been delivered by a text message from the state-owned gambling operator, Norsk Tipping. Three days later, it sent another message: The company had made a mistake, mangling the currency conversion from kroner to euros, and most were only a few dollars richer. Many spoke to the media about their excitement and subsequent disappointment. For Lise, who had spent the time thinking about how she was going to spend $185,000, “it was a very fun minute.”

Lise had found herself playing a real—if short-lived—version of a game that almost everyone has played at some point: If you won the lottery, what would you do with the money? Most answers tend to be quite similar. A new house for yourself, or your parents. An upgrade of your old car. That piece of furniture you always wanted but couldn’t justify buying. If you won millions, perhaps you’d quit work and tell your boss what you really thought of them, or take all your friends to a villa in the South of France. You might even buy the villa.

Once you got used to being rich, however, the nicest thing would probably be the ability to detach yourself from ordinary problems. Everything on your to-do list can be made more bearable with money: You can either pay someone to make a situation go away, or upgrade to a better version of it. Activities like cooking, DIY and even some aspects of parenting could all be made to disappear. But would this make you happy? After all, if you could pay someone to fulfill each of your needs, there would be no reason to learn how to fulfill those needs yourself, and this, in turn, could leave you feeling alienated and useless. You might come to miss the satisfaction of completing mundane tasks.