For people of a certain age and temperament, there is a wonderful Chris Farley and David Spade movie called Tommy Boy, made in 1995. The duo are on an epic roadtrip to sell brake pads and Tommy (Farley) has a hard time containing his natural exuberance. Spade, on the other hand is a cynical young man who finds everything Tommy does as some combination of distasteful and idiotic. In one scene, Tommy is trying to cheer up Spade by putting on his sports coat, which is at least five sizes too small, and waddling around the room singing, “Fat guy in a little coat, fat guy in a little coat…” right before he bursts the jacket down the back seam. As a lifelong member of the fat guy club, I have always found the scene hilarious, as is Farley’s overall ability to laugh at his own physical attributes (something I think he learned from some combination of John Candy and John Goodman, two of my other favorite and relatable fat actors). Even with my recent weight loss (I’m on the cusp of breaking into the 250 zone and wearing size 38 pants), I am still and will always be a fat guy in a little coat.
But that expression is in my head this morning for a different reason. Yesterday I wrote about the anthropological origins of wealth accumulation and I must say, that is not a casual and passing topic to me. I have thought a great deal about it my whole adult life and I feel like I am forced to think about it more and more both due to being in retirement, watching the world catch up to and surpass my old standards of wealth accumulation, but also because I believe that wealth disparity in the world may be one of the two or three most existential threats to our species that exists (along with climate change and our history of violence). I’ve written on the violence theme recently (gun control being a big bugaboo to me) and touched on climate change (I’m not enough of an environmentalist to do it real justice), but wealth and its disparities and “root of all evil” aspects are a constant theme that I feel I need to express. How does all that connect to a fat guy in a little coat? Well, fat guys generally symbolize wealth and excess, which I am well aware of, being a fat guy for so long. And every time My liberal tendencies get vocalized, someone is bound to suggest that I do not fully practice what I preach since I wear my affluence around my waist. Of course, that is far less the real connection between corpulence and wealth when you stop by the 7-11 for a Slurpee or take a walk through a Disney theme park with mustard dribbling down your too-tight polo shirt.
Wallis Simpson (Duchess of Windsor) is attributed the saying that “you can never be too rich or too thin”, but that is almost certainly wrong. It actually comes from a July 1963 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, in an article called High Living on Low Calories, where the line was already presented as “that wise old adage”, meaning it predates 1963 and was anonymous. A similar phrase turns up even earlier, in a 1920 ad for a Zenith Carburetor, which claimed the mixture was “never too rich, never too thin,” giving “uninterrupted efficiency”, showing that “rich/thin” was a stock juxtaposition pattern in mechanical/technical contexts too. In April 1967, gossip columnist Suzy Knickerbocker attributed a version of the line, “a woman can never be too thin or too rich” to a Newport socialite, Mrs. J. Gordon Douglas Sr., after she said it at a private dancing club. Truman Capote insisted he coined the phrase himself on the David Susskind Show in 1958.
But that’s not really the concept that is stuck in my head today. I care a lot less about weight and corpulence than I do about the harm of wealth. When I hear minorities say that they want to achieve a position of intergenerational wealth, I cringe. I hate seeing slaves wish that they could be masters. I want masters who want to see the value of not being masters and slaves who want to help other slaves be free. But wealth is still a lot like food, its a necessity of a prosperous and happy life and its negative aspects have only to do with its excess, understanding full well that such measurement will always be subjective. Excess wealth is like pornography according to Justice Potter Stewart in his 1964 decision…so, I guess, I feel like I know it when I see it. But I go a bit further in a self-assessing way. I am simply not a wealth accumulator by instinct. The Scrooge McDuck image is one I have eschewed since I was a child. I have less problem with Richie Rich than I do with Scrooge McDuck because using wealth seems less troubling than accumulating it. While I’m no fan of billionaire yachts and weddings, its the process of limitless wants and enough never being enough that concerns me the most.
Long ago, I came to a realization about myself, and that was that I am more inclined to be a hard-working professional who accumulates modest wealth through what the tax people call earned income, than I am to be an investor who seeks wealth accumulation through passive income. Indeed, strangely enough, my biggest hits (besides my reasonably successful executive career and the incentive compensation associated therewith) came from private equity carried interest, which can be considered passive, but which I have always considered my wages for hard work on behalf of my investors. Not thinking of myself as an investor is quite ironic given that I have made my living in finance, and specifically running asset management businesses that are all about investing. Investing is what I taught for 13 years and it is what I opine on as an expert, but its simply not what I choose to do for the most part. When I ponder the ills of excessive wealth accumulation and the problems of wealth disparity in the world, I imagine people looking at my credentials and even my lifestyle (which is affluent to be sure, but I would claim not excessive by most standards) and figuring me for a fat guy…and yet here I am, claiming to be wearing a little coat as a service professional. Fat guy in a little coat. See, it really is quite funny.