YOU AND I have heard of Scott Fitzgerald telling another American novelist, Ernest Hemingway, “You know, the rich are different from you and me.”
Hemingway replied, “Yes. They’ve got more money.”
The two late novelists, however, did make enough money through wise use of time – writing novels that still sell today. As a more familiar quotation, says, “Time is gold.”
Lucio Tan, one of the richest Filipino-Chinese businessmen, maximizes use of time by flying on his helicopter from one of his Metro Manila offices to another.
The ability of the rich to expand their material wealth in the shortest time amazes employees who work eight hours a day for sheer survival. While their bosses play golf, they work overtime but still wallow in debt.
It’s not correct to say, however, that the rich always use time wisely. Time, unlike money, could not be recovered once spent. Take it from American statesman Benjamin Franklin. In 1787 at age 81, having been elected to the Constitutional Convention that would frame the Constitution of the newly-created United States of America, he sat on the porch and contemplated that he had not spent enough time for his wife and children in his younger years. He wanted to make up for it but could not due to failing health.
A thought-provoking proverb attributed to 19th-century English poet Henry Dobson says, “Time flies, you say? Ah, no. Time stays, we go.”
We know of hard-working lawyers and doctors who make hundreds of thousands of pesos a month but don’t have enough time to accommodate all their clients and patients, respectively.
There are those who, for lack of sufficient patrons, do not make enough money to maintain a decent lifestyle.
Burke Hedges, an American economist, wrote: “Where would the highly paid doctor be if he developed arthritis in his hands and could no longer create income because he had to stop working? If you don’t have any income other than income from your job, you’re heading for disaster.”
This explains why the so-called urban poor who receive no regular monthly income, thus unable to rent a home, squat on other people’s real estate.
Economic inequality persists even in the United States, the supposed land of milk and honey. Said an article in Business Week magazine, “It takes the average worker half his lifetime to purchase a home, accumulate some savings and retirement benefits. It takes about six months of unemployment to lose it all.”
With worse scenario here in the Philippines where even the middle-class lack sustainable monthly pay, the more creative ones strive for a second or third income.
Take for example my kumareng Marilou, an office secretary who used to worry over not having enough income to see her children through college. But if she were earning well, she might not have launched what is now a profitable sideline with habitual regular customers — selling beauty products.
Obviously, however, the bigger windfall goes to the corporation manufacturing the beauty products. Anyway, so what?
I once asked a bar owner over beer whether he was satisfied with his sales.
“It’s just enough to enjoy life,” he quipped. “I don’t have to be a Henry Sy to sleep on a comfortable bed. I eat the food that Lucio Tan and John Gokongwei eat. I also travel abroad. It’s okay that they have more of everything. Who knows? They probably have more problems than I have.”
Korek siya diyan. (hvego31@yahoo.com/PN)
