Cutting down the tall poppies

Press, 26 December 1987, Page 12

Cutting down the tall poppies

Share market morality

This I’tlHe- wen! - Io mad<E.*h..

There are none so smug as those who watch other people's lives crumbling while theirs stay firmly intact. I refer, of course, to those who have taken absolute delight in seeing investors in the share-market lose the shirts off their backs. It would appear that even normally well-balanced people have become savage in their glee to rip shreds off those who chose to take a punt. “I always knew it wouldn’t last,” is the usual line that gets trotted out whenever the sharemarket is discussed. Ahh, the wisdom of hindsight. What is it that makes people machete their way through the tall poppies with such enthusiasm? Envy? A screaming inferiority complex? A desire to be wise after the event? The difference between these machete wielders and the idiots who scrape coins along the sides of RollsRoyces is almost negligible. They are both labouring under the false impression that no one deserves to be that rich. Being young and rich is apparently even worse. The managing director of a very successful real estate business once told me to press my thumb and index finger together as firmly as I could. The gap between the two, he told me, is the difference between being a millionaire and a bankrupt. In short, everyone makes mistakes. Some we pay harder for than others. Playing Lotto to get rich quick is socially acceptable. Playing the sharemarket for the same results is apparently not. My, how moral we have become since the share-market crash.

Somehow it is so much easier to stay friends with those who fail. We can commiserate, console and ever patronise to our heart’s delight. How much harder it is to admire their new car, home, yacht and high-rise penthouse ... all bought with profit made on the share-market. The jokes about bankrupt yuppies came thick and fast after Black Tuesday. It is surprising what people can come up with when presented with such an easy target. The real joke is that some of these cracks are coming from those who made the most money out of these same yuppies when the share-market was really peaking. Car dealers. The same car dealers, incidentally, who will be facing huge losses themselves in the coming months when their $150,000-plus cars start collecting dust in their showrooms. Still laughing? Contrary to popular belief, yuppies did not have the corner on the sharemarket. People like you and I did. People with mortgages >to oay and children to raise. People who to make a future, not just accept it. For a country which fought two World Wars for the right to live in a democracy we are very quick to condemn those who choose a better way of life for themselves. Democracy means choice'. The right to send your children to State or private shools. The right to ski at Mount Hutt or Switzerland. The right to.sail a yacht around the bays ... or;the bathtub. Apparently climbing the ladder of success is fine. Just so long''as you don’t reach : the top. (