It’s a fac­toid only Scrab­ble devo­tees might know, but there are more than 1,000 words that end in ‘ism’, which indi­cates a spe­cif­ic prac­tice, sys­tem, or phi­los­o­phy.  Here­with two addi­tions, one of which has a less than slim chance at suc­cess, the oth­er I just invent­ed as a hope­ful­ly viable alternative.

“Lim­i­tar­i­an­ism” is based on the idea that to close the gap between peo­ple with mon­ey to squan­der and those whose lack of it puts them in rel­a­tive squalor, there should be a cap on the amount of wealth any one per­son can have. As an arbi­trary fig­ure, its lead­ing cam­paign­er, Dutch author and pro­fes­sor Ingrid Robeyns, sug­gests $10-mil­lion.
“Squan­derism” – apart from being an even high­er Scrab­ble point-scor­er – is my “ism” for the obses­sion of celebri­ties and oth­er nou­veaux ultra-rich to flaunt their excess wealth with bling and lifestyles that reach the point where many of them are saved from bad taste by hav­ing no taste.
And yet it is all but wor­shipped, the stu­pid­est exam­ple of which must sure­ly be “Fast Fash­ion”, buy­ing clothes online and throw­ing them away after a few wears, because “out­fit repeat­ing” is a fash­ion faux pas. To stay “rel­e­vant”, you have to sport the lat­est looks “as they happen.”
A far more moral, eco­log­i­cal­ly-friend­ly and classy fash­ion phi­los­o­phy was that of C.Z. Guest, one of the so-called “Swans” writ­ten about by Tru­man Capote from the glo­ry days of the inter­na­tion­al best-dressed list.
Hailed as one of the mon­archs of New York soci­ety, Mrs. Guest “…was so under­stat­ed she was once mis­tak­en for her own maid, and she thought noth­ing of wear­ing the same suit for a decade. Her rea­son­ing was “clothes don’t wear out if you hang them up.”
The author F. Scott Fitzger­ald once alleged­ly said ; “The rich are very dif­fer­ent than you and me,” to which Ernest Hem­ing­way rejoined; “Yes, they have more money.”
He could have added that those with the most, waste the most, while those with the least, tend to  share the most.
The exam­ple that sticks most promi­nent­ly in my mind was when the Serbs drove eth­nic Alba­ni­ans out of Koso­vo. Hun­dreds of them end­ed up penned in a mud­dy field in Mace­do­nia. As we walked among them, video­tap­ing their mis­ery, a man sit­ting in the mud with his fam­i­ly, sur­round­ed by all their world­ly pos­ses­sions in a few wretched bags, and no idea what the future held, smiled and offered me a piece of the bread they’d just been giv­en by aid workers.

                         TO MAKE A START

The poor­est 50% of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion share just 8% of total income. At the same time, the rich­est 10% of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion earn over 50% of total income.
Chang­ing tax struc­tures, an idea beloved by we who feel we pay too much and vig­or­ous­ly opposed by those who earn the most and pay the least, is one way to “even the score” a little.
Lim­i­tar­i­an­ism removes incen­tives to make tonnes of mon­ey, which from the point of view of the need to col­lect tax­es is counter-intu­itive. It might be more pro­duc­tive to add incen­tives to use excess wealth well.
As a start­ing point, how about requir­ing full dis­clo­sure on “soft mon­ey” con­tri­bu­tions to politi­cians. That way we’ll know owns them and what agen­da they’re serv­ing, and donors might find it bet­ter for their image to sup­port more use­ful, deserv­ing and moral causes.
Fero­cious tax­a­tion on obscene CEO bonus­es, an extreme exam­ple of squan­derism, would also be in order.
No less than the rest of us, the very rich shouldn’t be denied the right to spend their mon­ey on what amus­es or makes them comfortable.
But it ought also to be clear that the greater the dis­par­i­ty in wealth and the more peo­ple who can’t afford ever small indul­gences, the worse the world is going to be.
Eco­nom­ic migrants aren’t flee­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty, they’re on a des­per­ate quest for it.

                      NOT PAYING UP ISN’T AN OPTION

And if they find it, I’m will­ing to bet they won’t mind pay­ing tax­es, but like the rest of us, they won’t appre­ci­ate the tax dodges enjoyed by the ultra-rich.
Those who have enough to rev­el in squan­derism gen­er­al­ly don’t use pub­lic health ser­vices, and usu­al­ly send their kids to pri­vate, not tax-fund­ed schools. But the future tal­ent pool they need to help them keep doing so includes the seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion that needs tax­pay­er-fund­ed ser­vices and institutions.
The rich also need things like police and fire ser­vices on call, and are ben­e­fi­cia­ries of envi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship, smooth-run­ning gov­ern­ment and on and on.
So they ought to pay their fair share.
Any who think or try to do oth­er­wise, would ben­e­fit from a year or two in places where the ide­al isn’t squan­derism, it’s get­ting a notch above squalor.

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