Lauren Sánchez, the fiancée of Jeff Bezos, the former richest man in the world, showed a Vogue reporter around the huge ranch and the Blue Origin base that they own together, using her personal helicopter. She then claimed that she was just an ordinary person. “We have a normal life,” Sánchez said, “Our kids are our priority.”
Their day begins with one of them making coffee for the other (Bezos likes it black or with a special creamer from surfer Laird Hamilton). Sánchez sometimes cooks fried eggs on tortillas for breakfast. Bezos sometimes makes churros with a deep fryer on weekends.
The couple says they exercise together regularly and watch some TV before going to bed at 9:30 pm. They have a typical suburban tradition of watching movies as a family on Saturdays. They also have piano lessons, drop-offs and pick-ups, and family dinners “every night.”
According to Vogue, Sánchez and Bezos spend their weekdays around their kids. They travel between LA, where the youngest ones live, and the Lake Washington estate, and visit the colleges of the older ones. Sánchez also says she drives her kid to school herself.
Sánchez and Bezos seem to be like any average middle-class family when they talk about their morning coffee, school drop-offs, and evening TV. But he is, of course, one of the wealthiest people ever, and the article ignores the reality of America’s inequality problem—and what the super-rich don’t want to face.
The internet is amused by this portrayal, as a viral tweet of one of the Vogue photos shows Sánchez and Bezos wearing jeans and cowboy hats: “America is amazing. A man who was once the richest person alive still feels the urge to cosplay as a working class stiff.”
Huge ranch and paid staff
Sánchez used her Bell 429 helicopter to give Vogue a bird’s eye view of their Texas ranch. The price of this ranch is unknown, but The Wall Street Journal said in 2019 that it covers 30,000 acres and Bezos bought it because he missed the 25,000-acre ranch his grandfather had in Texas.
This is just one of many homes that Bezos owns. The billionaire, who is the second-richest person in the world with more than $166 billion, had 420,000 acres in 2022, making him the 24th biggest landowner in the country, according to Hayden Outdoors’ 2022 Land Report.
Think about how they drop off the kids, too. They have a huge carbon footprint, like most ultra-rich people, and they fly from LA to Lake Washington every two weeks. And they have staff for their homes. Bezos and Sánchez pay people to help with their house, and one of them, Mercedes Wedaa, sued Bezos last year for racial discrimination and making her work long hours in bad conditions without breaks or meals.
Loss of American Dream causes anger
Bezos is not the only American billionaire who acts like he is just like us. This is a common thing in our country and it is called “quiet luxury.”
It is a way to act modest, even though they have a lot of money. “Theodore Roosevelt said: ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.’ The very rich version of this is ‘Don’t show off, and hide your wealth,” David Sadkin, the president of Bel Air Investment Advisors in Los Angeles, told Fortune. He said that many clients do this to avoid making others feel bad.
As wealth inequality rises and billionaires face more backlash, some of them try to act like ordinary people and hide their lavish lifestyles. The pandemic has made the rich richer, as a study by Oxfam revealed that the top 1% gained almost twice as much wealth as the rest of the world in that period. On the other hand, the average American struggles with high living expenses, unaffordable housing, and huge student debts.
The gap between the wealthy and the poor becomes more evident when a small portion of a billionaire’s fortune could solve many of the world’s urgent problems. For example, Mona Chalabi from the New York Times shows that just 1.9% of Bezos’ wealth could pay for a year of Pre-K for every child in the U.S. As the rich keep getting richer and enjoy favorable tax policies, people’s views on billionaires have worsened. Since the pandemic started, Americans have become more negative about billionaires, as the percentage of those who say billionaires are harmful for the country has risen from 23% in 2020 to 29% in 2021 according to Pew Research Center.
Younger generations are more likely to feel angry towards the wealthy, as the Cato 2019 Welfare, Work, and Wealth National Survey suggests. This makes sense because these generations have faced more challenges to build wealth and secure their financial future, as they grow up to realize that the American Dream that boomers used to talk about is gone. Even if it never existed, life is definitely harder for millennials and Gen Zers who often need help from older generations to buy a house, and still end up losing to higher bids.
All this makes most Americans (69%) believe that the economy is rigged to favor the rich and powerful, according to an Ipsos Poll. Maybe that’s why Bezos and Sánchez pretend that they are just like us. But it’s all, a bit too much, and most Americans don’t fall for the billionaire’s charade.
Video Source: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mx4F3tK2Jow
