REFLECTIONS ON WRETCHED EXCESS

The World of Reality Television, seems to offer us a glimpse into the world of wealth and privilege. We can allow ourselves to believe that we are being given a front row seat which lets us experience vicariously the lives of the rich and famous.

Recently, Documentaries have been added to 'Reality Show' experience. These are made as first person narrative events and released in film length features such as: The Queen of Versailles, Maxed Out, Inside Job, and Capitalism, all dealing with finance and wealth. A variety of other subjects are also being presented in feature length documentary format, such as ones about food (Supersize Me); while others highlight concerns about health care, global warming and the environment.

One of the most excessive, and I think successful, documentaries recently must be a full length documentary titled The Queen of Versailles. This documentary premiered at the Sundance Movie Festival in 2012. 

We are introduced to self-made Billionaire David Siegel, founder of Westgate Resorts (vacation time sharing) and his wife Jackie. They have been building a 90,000 square foot house, which when completed, will be America's biggest house, newly built. The house is called Versailles. It is a French chateau style mansion begun in 2004 in Windermere, Florida. When completed it will have cost an estimated $100 million to build.

However, the real estate market crash, caused Siegel to lay off thousands of employees, and try somehow to recover from the massive debt he owed, particularly on a Las Vegas building. Siegel put the unfinished new mansion up for sale at $65 million as is, or $100 million finished. However, in 2012,  he announced that construction on the house had been restarted and that the Siegels expected to complete it within two years.

Versailles in Florida, makes such buildings as the 55,000 square foot White House seem small. It also makes Bill Gates 66,000 square foot house in Medina Washington seem medium sized.

One of the Sultan of Brunei's houses in Las Vegas Nevada at 65,000 square feet, or Junk Bond kingpin, Ira Rennerts upstate New York house at 67,000 square feet, look small also when compared to something like the 72,215 square foot house being built by Steve Huff of Overwatch Intelligence in Montana. Versailles in Florida is bigger than all of these.

In 2011, a television special documented the late television mogul Aaron Spelling's house, Spelling Manor (56,000 square feet, 123 rooms) being packed up in 30 days by Aaron Spelling's widow Candy, after it had been sold for $85 million dollars. Strangely enough, these new houses, are actually considerably smaller, and possibly less opulent than Historical American Houses such as Alfred Vanderbilt's Biltmore in Asheville, North Carolina which is 175,000 square feet, has 250 rooms and was built between 1889 and 1895. While The Breakers, a Newport Rhode Island 'summer cottage' built between 1893 and 1895, is smaller than many of the houses mentioned above at (approximately 65,000 square feet), it cost about $331 million in today's dollars to build. The great great granddaughter of Commodore Vanderbilt, the Countess Szapary lived on the top floor, until she died in 1998. Considering that the median sized home in America is 2,135 square feet, it is hard for most of us to understand how big these houses must be. I have some idea since I toured The Breakers in Newport Rhode Island. It is a singular experience. As you walk around these amazing rooms, you are not surprised when your guide tells you that an entire railway car was used to transport their silver service to their summer home. A March 6, 2011 online article by Leah Goldman on Business Insider showed the 10 Largest Homes in America at that time. http://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-homes-in-america-2011-2?op=1#ixzz2Qk375ABI Trying to find out something about what the world's largest house was, led to a fantastic photo cornucopia of big houses, such as Spelling Manor, Biltmore and others. Ultimately, however, a 'house' called Antilla in Mumbai is a 26 storey building being heralded as the world's first Billion Dollar House. http://curiousphotos.blogspot.ca/2010/10/antilla-worlds-largest-private-home.html Today, Television also shows us what are called Extreme Houses. These are usually very unique and unusual houses which people have built all over the world. Although many of these are not gigantic houses, they are usually custom built to their owners personal specifications and requirements. Meanwhile, another shows us Million Dollar Rooms, which their owners say are 'worth every penny'. As I mentioned earlier, the median home size in America is a house of 2,135 square feet. It is hard to compare how the average person might live, to people who spend between $100 Million and a Billion Dollars for one of their residences.  Seeing the housing market collapse and a lot of your fortune being, at the very least, frozen, while building such a house as Florida's Versailles, are a reflection of a time when our value system and our priorities are skewed and unreal. Generally, I am inclined to feel that people who earn their money, are entitled to do what they want with it. As the saying goes, 'Knock yourself out'. While overleveraged people, such as the Siegel's, undoubtedly originally created employment for thousands of people; they are now largely responsible for mass layoffs and hardship. This seems particularly true when they egregiously, and somewhat disingenuously, blame the banks for 'letting them' borrow too much money. Documentaries such as Inside Job blame a succession of politicians of both major American political parties; Maxed Out however, seems to think that George Bush was responsible for most of America's credit card debt. Others who are blamed are corporate CEO's, Lobbyists, and Economists in Academia. Bankers and officers of failing corporation's gave their top employees, some of whom others consider responsible for Bankrupting their companies, fortunes in Bonuses. That this money was Bailout money from the Government taken from taxes, meant that the very people impoverished by these corporate officers, were giving Bonus/reward money to them. It is not hard to blame those rewarded rather than prosecuted for enriching themselves, particularly when they do so with bonuses comprised of publicly funded Bailout Money.  At the very least, this is decadent Greed, illustrated by wretched excess.  Possibly we have already reached a point when we should not attempt to evaluate a man's true 'worth', until after we learn to soberly reconsider what it is that we actually believe is worthwhile.