Careless

Wealth can make one careless. Too much pushes other priorities aside and weakens those who eventually must encounter life’s realities. And by comparison, too little might heighten feelings including empathy and caution. Insecurity abounds in either camp. 

Johnny Careless by Kevin Wade is the story of two friends on who met as teens on an elite-league lacrosse team based on the North Shore of Long Island. One comes from old wealth and the other is solidly middle-class. In the background are two fathers, a New York City police officer, who worked the remains of the twin towers post-9/11, generous with advice and love for his only son until early death, and the other controlling and persistently disappointed.  

Johnny Chambliss and Jeep Mullane fix situations for each other, with little imbalance in that regard though Johnny tends to act before asking: Jeep claims to be a driver when Johnny crashes a new Porsche, and Johnny blows off a playoff match for a family ski trip but points out that his absence will help Jeep gain notice from college recruiters attending the games.

Johnny leaves it to Jeep to inform the coach who then confides that staff had long nicknamed his friend Johnny Careless – “He could care less, the wake he leaves just walking around.”  Jeep, also annoyed by his friend, too, is troubled: “it seemed wrong to me for the adults to brand you for how you were when you were seven or eight.” 

Jeep does win a college scholarship and follows in his father’s footsteps by joining the NYPD, hard-working, thoughtful and considerate with perps and victims alike. Involvement with a victim of domestic assault and a subsequent attack prompt him to quit the NYPD and become chief of police for the small North Shore community where he grew up, regularly reminded of words of wisdom from his father about smart policing, including always thinking twice and being generous with favors. Candid with judgment and opinions, Jeep regularly gives breaks to perps as well as annoying citizens and officers. He sees irony in Long Islanders suffering from the lifestyle choices they embrace, traps they may well be.  

The town is not sleepy for long with a South American gang targeting luxury cars and Johnny’s battered body washing up on shore. Nassau County police take the lead on such cases but Jeep knows Johnny, his parents and ex-wife, as well as his darkest secrets which he can help hide or expose to show the true character of his best friend. 

Being careless extends to both sides of the wealth divide, and Jeep observes that “Being careless wasn’t a crime around here, just a tribal custom.”

Thankful

Thanksgiving is a time for pausing and giving thanks for our many blessings. It's also a time entertaining visitors and calling family and friends, and so it's natural for comparisons to be made.

Social relativity comes into play. "That is, only the relative wealth of a person is important, the absolute level does not really matter, as soon as everyone is above the level of having their immediate survival needs fulfilled," writes Tor Nørretranders for edge.org.  "There is now strong and consistent evidence (from fields such as microeconomics, experimental economics, psychology, sociolology and primatology) that it doesn't really matter how much you earn, as long as you earn more than your wife's sister's husband."

So consider the graph. US citizens should be quite pleased with their relative wealth in comparisons with other countries. The US share of global personal wealth is 42 percent, up a percentage point from the previous year, according to the Allianz Global Wealth Report 2016, and the per-capita share is hefty, too.

The media often described US voters as yearning for change from the 2016 presidential election. "Trump's victory is widely attributed to the public's thirst for something new, which he represented and Hillary Clinton didn't. It would be more accurate to say the outcome stemmed from too much change - which has discombobulated conservatives, as well as liberals," notes Steve Chapman for Reason. He goes on to explain that is why the Trump campaign with the slogan "Make America Great Again" resonated with so many voters.

What rankles, though all voters may not realize, is the distribution of the US share of 42 percent wealth - which totalled $67 trillion in 2013. CNN covered the Congressonal Budget Office report on wealth and inequality: "The top 10% of families - those who had at least $942,000 - held 76% of total wealth. The average amount of wealth in this group was $4 million. Everyone else in the top 50% of the country accounted for 23% of total wealth, with an average of $316,000 per family. That leaves just 1% of the total pie for the entire bottom half of the population."

The nation selected billionaire Donald Trump to solve the conundrum. And remember, relativity can take multiple paths - the country's share can decline with either increased or decreased inequality or the country's share of wealth rises with either increased or decreased inequality.

And I must conclude by confiding that writing mystery novels about daily life in a small village in Afghanistan that lacks most of the modern conveniences we take for granted in the United States has made me feel very wealthy and thankful.  Thank you to all my readers.