"Excessive Wealth Disorder"??

Stifle your giggles and guffaws over the latest clinical nonsense from the left

Editor’s note: Max Cossack’s ‘Notes from Upstream’ column is not appearing today as he is observing Yom Kippur. Not to worry: He’ll be back next week.

—Steve

Here is the newest thing I know exists from the therapeutic left: “Excessive Wealth Disorder.” There’s even a website for something called the “Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute.” Naturally it seems to be based in San Francisco, maybe the most unequal city in the nation. Click through if you dare, but I’ll save you the trouble. Here’s the summary of EWD:

We define Excessive Wealth Disorder (EWD) as a societal sickness resulting in the insatiable need to acquire more. EWD affects not only the excessively wealthy, but everyone in our society.

EWD poses a massive threat to our planet, our society, and our wellbeing as individuals. We live on a planet with finite resources, yet EWD pushes the people who own corporations toward unfettered growth and unrestricted extraction of natural resources. As Americans with EWD, we are more interested in glorifying billionaires than supporting solutions for the public good. It doesn’t matter how much we have, we always feel that it isn’t enough.

So is EWD like ED? According to this definition, they share the problem of, um . . ., inflated expectations, “individualist fantasies,” and lack of satisfaction. I can already see the TV ads: “Do you suffer from EWD? Symptoms include buying Nvidia stock, voting for Trump, and turning off late night TV.” The background will be a heavily tattooed couple in individual wooden bathtubs, with rainbow “In the house we believe” signs in front, sipping kombucha smoothies.

So what is the cure? I’m hoping for a pill, like the one I take to help me come up with reflections for this Substack, which includes a warning label that for reflections lasting longer than four hours, I should contact my doctor. In the case of an EWD pill, there’d need to be a warning label that for feelings of wealth envy lasting longer than four hours, call 1-800-GO-MSNBC. I can see Robin Leach as the pitchman for the pill on the cable news ads.

But no. Here’s what the EWDI says:

“The cure for this disorder exists. We must change the American Dream from an individualist fantasy to one that defines success by how well we care for each other.”

And thus the cure is: higher taxes on the rich. Betcha didn’t see that coming. I’m surprised Lizzie Warren hasn’t grabbed on to this, except that her hatred of the pharmaceutical industry, despite the lavish protection money they have given her, will cause a severe case of cognitive dissonance. In any case, forget the “little blue pills;” the Rx for EWD might be understood as “little Blue-state pills.”

I can easily imagine this disorder, and its institute, receiving funding from the National Institutes of Health and the CDC under a Kamala Administration. At the very least we need a clinical trial! I, for one, would willingly sign up to be given excessive wealth (it would need to be at least two-private-planes-wealth to test the effectiveness of any cure) and even pay the high taxes to remedy my disorder. And I nominate multi-millionaires Lizzie Warren and Bernie Sanders to be in the control group that gets the placebo of having to live only on public welfare and in public housing, though they are such miserable people already it will be hard for clinicians to conclude EWD is really making them unhappy.

Deserved mockery aside, this ridiculous effort is one more data point that the left always proceeds from the assumption that their views are the only possible correct views, and that whatever failures of the world to heed their vision is the result of defective “messaging.” In other words, the left will never consider arguing with anyone about whether it is not their “messaging,” but the message itself which is defective.

And thus the chief product of the EWDI is a report on how improved “messaging” can get them to the goal line of socialism (a term they never use, of course). From the summary

One of our key findings–and an important distinction for advocates and movement builders–is that the messages that inspire and motivate our base are not the same messages that convince persuadable Americans to join our fight. In fact, these base-building messages often alienate persuadable folks who are not already part of our base audiences.

I did note that the lead researcher for this report makes sure we use the correct pronouns:

I got curious about Ms. Meraay’s background and experience, and found this:

Hibba obtained her B.A. from Boston University with a double major in Economics and International Relations.

That rings a bell. That’s the same double-major—with honors!—that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez earned at Boston University. Maybe AOC (she/her) and Meraay (she/her) were classmates, in which case we really need to wonder more about the they/them that run BU.