Bernanke's co-author:

Wealthy Are Afraid They’ll Run Out of Money
Robert Frank, Wall Street Journal

"It’s not just the middle class that has money worries. Even the affluent are worrying about running out of cash.

"According to a new survey from American Express Publishing and the Harrison Group, nearly half of respondents with incomes of $250,000 or more agreed with the statement that “I worry that at some point I could run out of money.”...Fully 69% agreed with the statement that “The recent real estate and banking crisis has affected my sense of financial security.”

"Of course, $250,000 is only “Obama wealthy.” And running out of money “at some point” is a long time horizon...The categories most likely to be hit hardest: SUVs, jewelry, handbags, leather goods, and private jet usage. Areas not as affected: hybrid cars (the new status symbol), children’s clothing and business travel....Fully 30% are in the market to acquire real estate this year."

In 2005, Frank noted:
"...the wealthy have been made worse off, on balance, by recent tax cuts. The private benefits of these cuts have been much smaller, and their indirect costs much larger, than many recipients appear to have anticipated.

On the benefit side, tax cuts have led the wealthy to buy larger houses, in the seemingly plausible expectation that doing so would make them happier. As economists increasingly recognize, however, well-being depends less on how much people consume in absolute terms than on the social context in which consumption occurs. Compelling evidence suggests that for the wealthy in particular, when everyone's house grows larger, the primary effect is merely to redefine what qualifies as an acceptable dwelling."

"...As the economist Richard Layard has written, "In a poor country, a man proves to his wife that he loves her by giving her a rose, but in a rich country, he must give a dozen roses.""

Layard goes on:"So now we can see why happiness increases so little, when countries get
richer. People get hurt as their own experience raises their required income in ways
they did not foresee (a form of self-pollution)."