What do you do if you have a lot of money and want to escape from COVID-19 hotspots? Travel. When everyone else is at home, you have an advantage.
The Los Angeles Times recently featured an interesting story discussing travel patterns of the super rich during this time of sequester and quarantine. While most of us are staying at home, some of the wealthiest members of society are jetting to scenic resort towns and coastal cities.
Fly to Sedona, Arizona during boom times and you’ll see a fleet of private jets parked at the airport. It was a favorite getaway spot of the elite. Flying to Sedona today and you’ll also find a number of private jets, even though most businesses establishments are closed and there are few super rich permanent residents.
They’re not staying in hotels, though, which are closed. If they do not have their own vacation properties, they are renting opulent houses to wait out the virus in some of the nation’s most beautiful locales.
Quite a juxtaposition to much of the country, as unemployment quickly rises to the highest number since the Great Depression and uncertainty abounds.
Speaking of juxtapositions, this anecdote from the Oregon coast:
Gina Sjolander, her husband and their three adult children are hunkered in their second home, where they pass the days playing board games, gazing out across windswept dunes as elk wander by, and ordering takeout from the Astoria Golf & Country Club.
They’re visiting from the Seattle area — the first hot spot for the virus in the U.S. — where Lil’ Jon Restaurant & Lounge has been in their family for three generations.
The restaurant is closed for now.
“For us,” Sjolander said, “it hasn’t been too much of a hardship.”
Head a couple hours south along the coast to Lincoln City, Ore., and you’ll find Diana Hardy, a cashier at a grocery store. She spends her days sweating behind a mask and wiping down counters with bleach.
“I feel in danger every day,” said Hardy, 66, a coastal resident since 1986. “Those of us that live here full time and wait on them are the ones that are at risk.”
Are stories like this unnecessarily fueling resentment and a more bitter class divide?
That’s not my point in discussing this story, even though I do heap scorn on large companies who took advantage of the PPP at the expense of small businesses.
Rather, it is interesting to me that the suspension of commercial air service does not hurt you if you have your own yacht or private jet. The closure of hotels and resorts is not that big of a deal when you own multiple properties or can take on huge additionally monthly expenses without flinching.
Even in the COVID-19 era, travel and vacation continues. Or is not really vacation if you are just traveling to your second and third homes?
> Read More: Luxury Hotel Group Skims $59 Million From PPP While Firing Staff, Enriching CEO
It very clearly does exist, as evidenced by the examples you quote.
“Are stories like this unnecessarily fueling resentment and a class divide that does not exist?”
Wtf man.
I agree that I wasn’t clear in that sentence. Is it clearer now?
I personally don’t care if the rich can get around the quarantine, but it does bother me when they spout PSA’s telling us to stay home, while they bunker down in their mansions, vacation homes, and yachts via private jet.
Like Ivanka…
The ultra-rich are our most precious national asset and should be protected at all costs.
So what? This is purely motivated by jealousy. These people are still social distancing, so what’s the problem? If you have your own private jet and vacation home, you can do it too. Very few people are actually bunkered down 100% of the time anyway, so enough with the preaching. These are just guidelines anyway, we are not under martial law yet. This is a downside of having civil rights… government cannot so easily just impose it’s will, even in times of crisis.
The problem is when it is done on the backs of workers, to their detriment. But people like you probably see private jets and vacation homes as a sign of hard work, not oppression of others.
Globalism has largely fed the wealth disparity…along with a Federal Reserve that has pumped trillions of dollars into the economy since the Lehman Bros. collapse. It inflated assets and made the rich even richer with their ability to buy assets that inflated by tremendous amounts.
Globalism allows the super rich to divorce their emotions from the US worker because their wealth is ultimately not solely dependent on the US worker thriving.
Ok Komrade. You fall for the zero sum game fallacy. People earning money aren’t taking it from others. It’s wealth creation, not theft. The people who worked for the companies these wealthy people created or grew aren’t victims of their wealth, they benefitted from it by getting a job, Nor are the customers who willingly bought their products, because whatever they were selling made their lives better. It’s why socialism doesn’t work every time it has been tried…and no, Europe isn’t socialist, they just have an expensive social welfare system and high taxes, big difference. So enough with your empty leftist chants.
Key phrase: “these wealthy people created”.
Who created it? The wealthy people as you contend or part hard work and part infrastructure (roads, Internet, etc) that was created by governments as public goods? A good business is about more than a good idea. It is about using public resources, which are not properly supported to the detriment of the most vulnerable through tax havens, tax cuts for the rich, and other loopholes that widen the gap between rich and poor. Any person who believes that wealth is created independent of the environment around them is very confused. Taxation should better reflect that it is a lot more than hard work that drives a business to success.
No one is saying that this a zero sum game. Rather, the rich should not be feasting while a huge underclass fights for crumbs in a land in which there is actually enough wealth to go around.
The entire private equity industry belies your statement.
Marxist and Communist sounded EXACTLY like you. You should know the results by now.
Agree with WR2. Each and every person on this blog would do the same thing if they had the resources. Stop being jealous and go out and create such a lifestyle for yourselves.
How is such a lifestyle created without workers and resources to exploit? Should people be enjoying multiple vacation homes and private jets while others are starving?
Or let me guess. Those poor people should just work a little harder, right?
So rich plague rats move around rather than working or hunkering down like normal people have to. Just proof that rules don’t apply to the rich.
This became an issue in Australia this week: one of the country’s wealthiest men was able to avoid the mandatory quarantine after arriving from Aspen on a private jet. It makes a mockery of the Premier’s so-called hard-line “ everyone must follow the rules” statements.
what exactly is the point of this article? you sound jealous
Of course the rich are retreating to these enclaves. The businesses must play hard ball and milk these people. Trust me they shouldn’t pay market price. Take care of the year normal folk and gauge the fuck out of the wealthy second homers. They would do the same to their adversaries in commerce. You’re grocery order is 10x peak in season fuck you go somewhere else: they will pay it and in cash if you demand it. The leveragers are now powerless you have their food water and booze babe