But are Jared and Ivanka happy? OK. Enough of that. This is a news story. But in our gilded era, there has to be room for a jaw to drop and to say enough already. Some perspective is needed. A million dollars today is what $300k was worth in 1980. $1 million in 2000 would be about two-thirds its current value. Today you need several million just to put a roof over your head in more and more cities. To call a person rich in 2017 you might start somewhere around $5 million.

A matter of scale?

This exercise is merely a prelude to considering today's amended news.

Yesterday Ivanka-Jared total wealth was the high figure of $741 million. Today that figure has been downgraded to a mere $240 million. There are pedophiles and Presidents with more, but that is still a respectable measure of wealth. As to whether wealth makes for happiness the answer is simple. It makes some miserable but in general, it is regarded as superior to having nothing. This is why more and more are thinking about some form of Universal Basic Income.

High low and oh the hotel

The high was the New York Times estimate and the low came from AP as reported by Axios. But the remaining part of the story touches on the whole matter of whether it is appropriate to have in the West Wing a woman who has points in the hotel next door.

Is it not possible that every diplomat and potentate who arrives in Washington will be salivating over the possibility of staying in the Trump hotel? Would that fact not creep into any small talk that passed between the president and his wealthy and powerful guests?

Some pay to play perspective

Just to provide some perspective, Ivanka is said to have earned up to $5 million from the hotel in the last fourteen months. Isn't it the case that the simple sense that the Trump family with Kushner in tow alters the reality of everything.

Instead of some separation between our government and the gilded world, we have a symbiotic relationship. Even the Kennedy's could not match it, though there are some similarities, Let's not call it Pay To Play. A more appropriate phrase might be pay to deal.
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