Luxury

Is it morally wrong to be “filthy rich”? Researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of Massachusetts Amherst examined how people across 20 countries judge excessive wealth. People in wealthier, more equal societies are actually more likely to view having too much money as morally wrong compared to those living in poorer, more unequal countries.

The research involved over 4,300 participants from nations as diverse as Belgium, Nigeria, Switzerland, and Peru. While you might expect people in struggling economies to resent the ultra-rich more, the opposite appears to be true.

The study found that people do not find excessive wealth very immoral across all countries. But more equal and wealthy societies like Belgium and Switzerland consider having too much money more wrong than less equal societies.

This suggests that when basic needs are met and inequality is lower, people become more sensitive to the potential harm caused by concentrated extreme wealth. Meanwhile, in developing nations where billionaires might represent hope for economic advancement, excessive wealth is viewed more favorably.

The researchers reference a 2023 statement by Elon Musk, currently the world’s richest person, who said it’s morally wrong to use the word “billionaire” as an insult if the individual uses their wealth to create products making millions of people happy. This perspective aligns with Western thinking that prioritizes happiness maximization as a moral good.

The luxury of moral criticism of excess may be more affordable for wealthier communities. Meanwhile, in developing nations, billionaires might represent aspiration rather than moral failure.

Possible Preaching Angle: Money; Money, love of; Wealth – The Bible does not condemn wealth, as such, since Abraham, Job, and Solomon, among others, were very wealthy individuals. The Bible does warn about the love of money (1 Tim. 6:10), the oppression of the poor, and making money ones security (Matt. 6:19)

The hottest travel amenity is getting your time back—because we all hate to wait!

In November 2024, Walt Disney World began piloting a new paid service that allows visitors to the Florida resort’s four theme parks to bypass regular lines for popular attractions. Vail Resorts introduced a gear membership program meant to let skiers skip rental lines. More hotels are charging for perks like early check-in.

About half of the more than 650 theme parks, zoos, aquariums, monuments and observation decks surveyed by the travel-research firm Arival offered skip-the-line or VIP access tickets in 2024. Of those not offering these options, 18% said they would introduce similar access in 2025.

The trend highlights how cost and comfort are becoming more intermingled for travelers, especially those hitting crowded destinations. And how those with tighter budgets risk ending up worse off.

These offers are often aimed at families. Rochelle Marcus, a stay-at-home mom in Oxford, N.C., says parents have extra incentive to pay up for a pass during school breaks, when crowds are larger. “That way everyone’s not tired, cranky, and grumpy at the end of the day,” she says. And as someone else in the article concluded: “Life is too short to be spent waiting in line all the time.”

Possible Preaching Angles:

You can approach this illustration from two angles: 1) Impatience; Waiting – This shows the negative side of human nature that is impatient and wants favorable status. This status is gained by payment. 2) Advocate; Invitation; Rights - The positive side is that we have an advocate who gifted us with priority access to the Father (Eph. 3:12; Heb. 4:14-16). This status is all due to God’s grace. You cannot buy your way into access with God.

Fine dining typically means splurging a little for high-quality meat or fresh seafood. But what if money were truly no object?

Restaurant owners and chefs around the world create original dining experiences for those who want unique experiences. You know, like spending nearly $10,000 on a pizza or $1,000 on an ice cream sundae.

Here are a few of the world’s most expensive meals:

• Masa — New York. Dinner Omakase menu per person: $750 sushi-eating experience.

• SubliMotion —Dubai. Dinner per person: around $2,000. That’s more than the average family will spend for an entire month on food.

• De Daltons – The Netherlands. The Golden Boy Burger: $5,532.79. Chef Robbert Jan de Veen’s “The Golden Boy” is made with 100% Wagyu A5 meat, as well as Beluga caviar, king crab, Spanish Paleta Ibérico, white truffle, and English cheddar.

• Renato Viola — Salerno, Italy. Louis XIII Pizza: $9,184.32. Pizza toppings include: mozzarella di bufala, lobster, and caviar all flown in from all different parts of the world.

• The Fortress Resort and Spa — Sri Lanka. The Fortress Stilt Fisherman Indulgence Dessert: $14,500. The dessert features Italian cassata flavored with Irish cream with a pomegranate and mango compote. The base is adorned with an 80-carat aquamarine stone.

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) Salvation and The Lord's Supper—They're both offered free of charge (although Jesus paid the price that we could never have paid), and the Lord's Supper is better than anything on this list. (2) Social Justice—While millions of people are malnourished, a few people can afford outrageously expensive, luxurious meals. (3) Simplicity; Provision—God promised to provide daily bread, not daily slice of "Louis XIII" pizza. (4) Hospitality—Hospitality is more about love and openness than about trying to offer a "world's best meal." Encourage people to keep it simple.

Palmer Luckey, is a billionaire tech entrepreneur who founded Oculus and parlayed that fortune into a career as a Silicon Valley defense contractor. Luckey collects cars and he needed a place to store them. According to Forbes, when his classic car collection had outgrown his $12.5 million oceanfront mansion in Newport Beach, California, the solution was obvious: Buy the $3.8 million house across the road, demolish it, and build an elaborate 7,000 square foot building with four car elevators.

The project went smoothly — until Luckey got trapped in his own car elevator for 10 minutes. That’s according to a new lawsuit Luckey took out against the contractor responsible for building the elevator.

According to the lawsuit, this has happened more than once and led to millions of dollars in damages. Custom Cabs and construction company WT Durant, who are the defendants in the case, have denied Luckey’s allegations. Custom Cabs told Forbes that it had filed a motion to strike the lawsuit’s claims. WT Durant said it had worked with Luckey several times before this incident and that he’d never before had an issue.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Wealthy people are often tempted to spend their money indulging in luxuries and extravagant items. On the other hand, the poor are struggling more and more. They experience severe challenges like hunger, lack of housing, and inequality. This situation highlights the growing divide between the rich and the poor which is a significant issue in our society. God’s people are called to be generous and share the blessings God has given to them (Luke 6:38; 1 John 3:17)

Bonnie Crawford was in danger of missing a connecting flight for a board meeting last week when a United Airlines customer-service rep saved the day. She got rebooked on a pricey nonstop flight in business class. For free.

You’re probably thinking, “No airline ever does that for me.” Crawford isn’t just any frequent flier. She has United’s invitation-only Global Services status.

It’s a semi-secret, status-on-steroids level that big spenders strive for every year. American and Delta have souped-up statuses, too, with similarly haughty names: ConciergeKey and Delta 360°. The airlines don’t like to talk about what it takes to snag an invite, how many people have such status, or even the perks. Even the high rollers themselves don’t know for sure.

Get into these exclusive clubs and you get customer service on speed dial, flight rebooking before you even know there’s trouble, lounge access, and priority for upgrades. Not to mention bragging rights and swag. People even post unboxing videos of their invites on YouTube.

Anyone with this super status needn’t fret about the value of airline loyalty or the devaluation of frequent-flier points.

Crawford was invited to Global Services for 2017 and was hooked. “It was the first taste of this magic, elusive, absolutely incredible status,’’ she says. She wasn’t invited again until this year and fears she won’t be invited back next year due to fewer costly international flights in her new job.

Possible Preaching Angles:

You can approach this illustration from two angles: 1) Boasting; Pride – This shows the negative side of human nature that loves to boast about their favored position and humble-brag about their status. This status is gained by merit. 2) Advocate; Grace; Invitation; Rights - The positive angle is that we have an Advocate who gifted us a special relationship with the Father (Eph. 3:12; Heb. 4:14-16). This status is all due to God’s grace.

Giant companies that study us in hopes of unearthing insights that can help them sell more potato chips, laundry detergent, and lipstick have reached a conclusion that economists and pollsters have also found. We are unhappy—squeezed by inflation, troubled by global conflicts, and worried about an acrimonious election season. The companies are calibrating their pitches to entice us to open our wallets as a way of improving our collective mood.

Clorox thinks it can help with a new toilet bomb, a tablet of cleaner that foams and fizzes in the toilet bowl and releases a pleasant scent. “People are looking for a spark of fun and joy,” said Clorox’s general manager of cleaning. “We all know the world can get messy, but we understand the link between a clean environment and one’s physical and emotional well-being.”

As part of what Clorox calls a “consumer-obsessed” approach, staffers started using artificial-intelligence tools to scan digital media for new ideas. The Foaming Toilet Bomb is its first product from this initiative.

Procter & Gamble combs societal trends to select a scent of the year. So, P&G declared “Romance & Desire” its scent of the year, and bequeathed it to anxious Americans in the form of new Febreze air fresheners with a fragrance of pink rose petals and champagne spritz. The product line is intended to offer a sensory reminder of the importance of human connection, the company said.

On Sept. 29, 1916, newspapers across the country announced a wealth milestone once thought to be unreachable: the world’s first billionaire. “Standard (Oil) at $2,014 makes its head a billionaire,” blared The New York Times headline, adding that Standard Oil’s soaring share price “makes John D. Rockefeller, founder and largest shareholder, almost certainly a billionaire.”

Now more than a century after the first U.S. billionaire, the question of who will be first to reach the trillionaire mark continues to fascinate. According to a new report from Informa Connect Academy, Tesla CEO Elon Musk will likely be the first trillionaire sometime in 2027, assuming that his wealth continues to grow at an annual average rate of 110%.

The second person projected to reach trillionaire status will be India’s Gautam Adani, founder of the Adani Group conglomerate, in 2028. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, who has seen his wealth skyrocket from $3 billion to more than $90 billion in five years, would become a trillionaire by 2028. Fourth on the list is Indonesia’s Prajogo Pangestu, founder of the Indonesian energy and mining conglomerate Barito Pacific, who could reach trillionaire status by 2028.

Tied for fifth would be LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg who are forecast to become trillionaires sometime in 2030. Some top billionaires who seem like strong candidates to quickly reach the four-comma club don’t make the top 10. Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Google founders, are all slated to wait 12 years to become trillionaires.

So, more than 100 years after the first billionaire, the first trillionaire could well be crowned in the next decade.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The Bible does not condemn wealth, as such, since Abraham, Job, and Solomon, among others, were very wealthy individuals. What the Bible does warn about is the love of money being the root of all kinds of evil (1 Tim. 6:10), the oppression of the poor by the rich (Jam. 5:1-6), and placing faith in the earthly “security” of wealth, rather than in God (Prov. 18:10-11, Matt. 6:19-21). The warnings are intended to encourage a balanced approach to wealth and possessions, recognizing that true fulfillment comes from a relationship with God and serving others.

People living in remote Indigenous communities are as happy as those in wealthy developed countries despite having “very little money,” according to new scientific research. This could challenge the widely held perception that “money buys happiness.”

Researchers who interviewed 2,966 people in 19 Indigenous local communities across the world found that on average they were as happy – if not happier – as the average person in high-income western countries.

According to researchers, “Surprisingly, many populations with very low monetary incomes report very high average levels of life satisfaction, with scores similar to those in wealthy countries. I would hope that, by learning more about what makes life satisfying in these diverse communities, it might help many others to lead more satisfying lives.”

The study found that people in the 19 isolated communities reported an average “life satisfaction score” of 6.8 out of 10 “even though most of the sites have estimated annual monetary incomes of less than US $1,000 per person.”

This is roughly the same as the 6.7 average life satisfaction score for all countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Surprisingly, four of the small communities reported average happiness scores of more than 8, which is higher than that found in Finland, the highest-rated country with an average of 7.9.

The report says its findings proves that wealth – as generated by industrialized economies – is not fundamentally required for humans to lead happy lives.

Susan Mettes, Associate Editor at CT magazine, writes:

I have a clear early memory of first learning to ride a bike. When I had finally found enough balance for a few seconds of forward movement, my beloved brother toddled into my path. There was plenty of room for both of us on the sidewalk, but I mowed the little guy down and we both fell onto the lawn, sobbing.

Now I know that the reason I couldn’t avoid him was something called “target fixation,” which means that we aim for what we’re focusing on—no matter how much we consciously try to avoid it.

Jesus keeps telling us to take our eyes off money. In many places—including in the church today—we see people falling into the trap of requiring more and more of it to feel good. But on the flip side, we too often think that the change we must make is from lusting after money to avoiding money. However, thrift can also become a target we fixate on, disorienting us, and leading us to crash right back into Mammon.

Jesus’ words to his followers showed his disapproval of hoarding money, making wealth the capstone of a life, and believing that money will make us safe. But we sometimes miss another aspect of Jesus’ teachings: the importance of where we focus our attention.

As Christians around the world live through a period of discomfort in their household budgets, even thrift can bring them dangerously close to the errors often attributed to greed. Thrift can make austerity seem like a virtue for all times.

One story of the early church says that a fourth-century monk, Macarius, got a bunch of grapes and sent them to another monk, who sent them to another, and so on. Each craved the grapes, but none ate them. They eventually returned to Macarius, who still didn’t eat them. The monks had proved their ability to deny themselves.

Such denial can be a response to a belief that possessions are hot potatoes, things to be divested of before they ruin us. But far from solving an obsession with money and possessions, this form of living on as little as possible can result in miserliness.

Author Lucinda Kinsinger says, “If you’re focusing on thrift for the sake of being thrifty, you’ll just end up being a tightwad. If our focus is being a good steward, then we’re in a good place.”

A beautiful wedding does not a wonderful marriage make. We know that and yet many couples get drawn into the business of weddings and the price tag can create a burden and stress for years. According to The Knot, the average cost of a wedding in 2022 was $30,000, including the ceremony and reception.

Just for reference, warehouse workers, nursing assistants and shuttle drivers make less than $36,000 a year on average. You also could buy a new car for $30,000 or pay for the cost of tuition, housing, and meal plan at a major university for the same price. There is also a massive cost burden for attendees. According to The Balance it costs individual members of a bridal party more than $700 to attend a wedding, including travel, accommodations, and clothing.

But, hey, you can always read up on the dozens of articles highlighting how to save money when planning a wedding … such as “open a new savings account earmarked just for the wedding.” Is that what we have allowed the industry to push us toward? Opening a new savings account just to finance a wedding?

Possible Preaching Angle:

Maybe it is time for us all to rethink our cultural obsession with elaborate weddings – and the staggering financial behemoth it has created.

Pets these days are living more luxurious lives than ever as humans increasingly pour money into making their properties fetching for nonhuman family members. For instance, Robbie Timmers went all-out adding a contemporary-style house on his property in Thailand. White with chic black trim, the two-story, air-conditioned abode has security cameras, smart lighting, and a sliding door to the porch. Mr. Timmers would have added a swimming pool, too, but his wife objected. Her reasoning? It seemed unnecessary for the home’s intended occupants: the couple’s five dogs.

Mr. Timmers love his dogs’ house, but he adds, “I have to be honest, my dogs never set foot in the house,” says Mr. Timmers, who spent about $10,000 on it. The mini-house mostly sits empty. “It has everything,” he adds. “Just no dogs.”

Then there’s Doug the Pug, a lovable pooch whose penchant for wearing elaborate costumes has earned him over one billion viewers across social-media platforms. At the Nashville, Tennessee home Doug shares with his owners, the pug has his own 15-foot closet for his outfits, including tiny cowboy hats, cashmere sweaters, a rainbow of sunglasses, custom harnesses from London, and a Boda Skins leather jacket.

Among other perks, Doug also only drinks purified water at home and routinely sees a canine herbalist and acupuncturist.

Possible Preaching Angles:

This is extreme, but are we excessively spending on the things that don’t ultimately matter?

A Wall Street Journal article begins with this story about the increased debt load many Americans are carrying:

Danielle Smith and her family thought they had finally escaped the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle they had fallen into. They saved money during the pandemic while they were stuck at home. They used stimulus checks to chip away at $20,000 in credit card debt and enjoyed a reprieve from monthly payments on their $160,000 in student loans.

Lately, they have been hit with one unexpected expense after another, from an out-of-pocket MRI to a broken water heater. They also took trips with their four children that they had put off because of Covid, including to Walt Disney World, local museums, and the zoo. By 2022, their credit-card debt had doubled to nearly $40,000. Ms. Smith said, “It’s just a never-ending cycle of playing catch-up.”

The article noted that American millennials in their 30s have racked up debt at a historic clip since the pandemic. Their total balances hit more than $3.8 trillion in the fourth quarter, a 27% jump from late 2019. That is the steepest increase of any age group. It is also their fastest pace of debt accumulation over a three-year period since the 2008 financial crisis.

Advertising is big business today. There are over 350,995 billboard signs throughout the US (more than any other country.) Google holds about 28% of the online market share, and Facebook controls 24.5%. Enormous amounts of money are spent annually on advertising, YouTube made over $28.8 billion in revenue in 2021.

In the 1970s, the average American saw anywhere between 500 and 1600 ads per day; by 2017, the number increased to 4000-10000 ads daily. Even though we see thousands of ads daily, we notice less than 100 and only remember a handful of ads. There are a lot of messages that are reaching our attention.

Possible Preaching Angle:

While we don’t “advertise” the gospel, Jesus commissioned us to preach the gospel, the most needed message today! We have been commanded to spread the message (Matt. 28:19-20).

Starbucks first turned regular drip coffee into a $5 half-caff, extra whipped cream mocha latte. Now they’re producing dozens of bizarre concoctions dreamed up by social-media stars. These complex drinks include a Triple Caramel Threat––cold brew with caramel syrup, vanilla sweet cold foam blended with dark caramel and caramel drizzle––and a Matcha Pink Drink featuring the chain’s Strawberry Açaí Refreshers Beverage with green tea powder and sweet cold foam added. Their complexity is lengthening lines and driving baristas nuts.

“It is a bit exhausting,” said a Starbucks barista in Buffalo, N.Y. The drinks treat Starbucks’s menu less like a lineup of drinks and more like a buffet of ingredients to be mixed together in crazy ways to create off-menu drinks that may list 10 separate customizations on the side of the cup.

The customized beverages center on a Starbucks mainstay––customers’ ability to tailor any drink to their tastes––and take it to the extreme. Starbucks says in addition to the beverage options listed on its menu boards, there are 170,000-plus ways baristas can customize beverages.

American society suffers from a plague of things that are far too complicated

Many Americans struggle with clutter. This is one reason for the popularity of the simplicity movement. And it’s why books like Marie Kondo’s, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, become popular bestsellers.

Researchers from UCLA visited the homes of 32 typical American families. They wanted to look at how people interacted with their environments, at how they used space. They went through each room, closet, and shelf in the home and systematically documented the stuff people own.

Researcher Jeanne Arnold said, “Contemporary US households have more possessions per household than any society in global history.” Her colleague Anthony Graesch notes that our homes reflect this material abundance. “Hyper-consumerism is evident in many spaces, like garages, corners of home offices, and even sometimes in the corners of living rooms and bedrooms.”

The researchers continued, “We have lots of stuff. We have many (ways in) which we accumulate possessions in our home, but we have few processes for getting rid of them … The United States has 3.1% of the world’s children but consumes 40% of the world’s toys.” Children’s toys and objects spill out of their bedrooms into living areas, kitchens, and bathrooms. The push to become consumers, to value stuff, starts at an early age.

Why do modern kids have so many toys? It may be because there are so many playthings available, so cheaply. There’s more stuff available for kids than there was fifty years ago, and that stuff costs less. Plus, priorities seem to have shifted. Modern parents see spending on kids as a priority; parents fifty years ago did not.

You can watch the video here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Is clutter a uniquely American problem? Probably not. But because of our sheer material abundance, more of us struggle with clutter than folks in other countries. But this is an area in which we can take charge of our lives. As we purge stuff from our lives, and take control of our spending, we can gain a sense of satisfaction and self-control.

In 1977, Sandra Ilene West, a flamboyant Beverly Hills oil heiress, was buried with her baby-blue 1964 Ferrari. Her grave is next to her husband’s at Alamo Masonic Cemetery in San Antonio, and it has become a tourist attraction.

In 1984, Willie Stokes Jr. of Chicago was interred in a coffin styled like a Cadillac Seville with functioning head and tail lights, an event immortalized in song by Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Another Cadillac fan was Aurora Schuck, a native of Cuba who was buried in Aurora, Indiana, in 1989 with her red 1976 Cadillac Eldorado convertible. With the top down, the coffin was placed over the rear seats. Sixteen gravesites were required to fit the car, one of the largest Cadillacs made.

George Swanson of Pennsylvania had his ashes interred with his 1984 Corvette in 1994.

In 2009, Lonnie Holloway and his 1973 Pontiac Catalina went into the ground together in South Carolina. His sister said, “It’s something he always wanted to do, but I didn’t like it.”

Editor’s Note: Notice the title of the article —“You Can Take It With You, if the Grave Is Deep Enough.” Nice try. Of course, the following saying is far more biblical—“You can’t take it with you.”

It has been said that everything rises and falls on leadership. Leadership occurs at every level of any organizational system. You don't have to be the CEO or part of the management team to make a difference.

Over the last decade, we have seen the exponential growth of social media. According to the We Are Social report, 3.484 billion people actively use social media - that is 45% of the world population. This social media boom has given rise to the Social Media Influencer.

Influencers leverage their knowledge and expertise to shape and mold culture. They build credibility and trust through regular posts and blogs that impact our thoughts, feelings, and responses. Name brands love influencers because they create trends and fads that bolster sales.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The bottom line is that leadership in its purest form is influence. The old African proverb says, “He who thinks he leads and has no one following is only taking a walk.” The Great Commission calls us to be influencers in the world. Who is going with you on your journey?

John de Graaf and his co-authors report in their book, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, that four million pounds of raw material, such as mined metals and oil, are necessary to provide for one average American family’s annual consumption. Americans spend more on trash bags in a year than 90 of the world’s 210 countries spend for everything.

Consumption is a major component of the gross domestic product. So, it seems undeniable that Americans, including Christians, will eventually have to learn to live with less. We will have to treat our gifts from God—whether natural resources or material well-being—with reverence rather than abandon.

Evidence suggests that the rich steal more than the poor. Although shoplifting transcends categories, the rich actually do steal more than the poor. The study cited most often, in the American Journal of Psychology, states that people with incomes of $70,000 shoplift 30% more than those earning $20,000 a year.

A federal lawyer proved that point when she was caught swiping $257.99 worth of cosmetics from a store in Virginia. Sgt. Eva Pena of the New York police department was suspended from her job after she was allegedly caught stealing clothing valued at $359 from a Macy’s store. This wasn’t a crime of poverty. Pena, whose salary was over $100,000 a year, drove to court in a white Mercedes to enter her not guilty plea.

Psychologist Stanton Samenow tells of a patient that he treated several years ago:

He had more than enough money to buy the item. He took it for the thrill of it, to outsmart the establishment. He enjoyed every aspect of shoplifting: scanning the aisles for the objects, looking for the exits, trying to outsmart the surveillance and store personnel, the theft and the getaway. This was all about excitement and building up one’s self-worth.

One theory suggests that low-income people are less likely to cheat and steal because they are more invested in their communities and fear being publicly humiliated. Conversely, the rich harbor feelings of entitlement and self-interest, which weakens their moral compass.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The story demonstrates that the emptiness of riches drives people to pursue of any kind of euphoria, even if it is illegal. There is no satisfaction in money and possessions (or any temptation of the flesh) only an endless desire for more. “Whoever loves money never has enough” (Eccl. 5:10)

The Atlantic ran an article that calls attention to the fact that American homes are a lot bigger than they used to be. In 1973, when the Census Bureau started tracking home sizes, the median size of a newly built house was just over 1,500 square feet; that figure reached nearly 2,500 square feet in 2015.

This rise, combined with a drop in the average number of people per household, has translated to a whole lot more room for homeowners and their families. By one estimate, each newly built house had an average of 507 square feet per resident in 1973, and nearly twice that—971 square feet—four decades later.

But Americans aren’t getting any happier with their ever-bigger homes. Clement Bellet, at a European business school, wrote “Despite a major upscaling of single-family houses since 1980 house satisfaction has remained steady in American suburbs.”

It’s a classic, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses type report about how we Americans are building bigger homes than ever—and yet our happiness tends to be inversely proportionate to the square footage of our new real estate. As usual, the dynamics of comparison, judgment, and self-justification are at play.

Bellet continues:

To be clear, having more space does generally lead to people saying they’re more pleased with their home. The problem is that the satisfaction often doesn’t last if even bigger homes pop up nearby. If I bought a house to feel like I’m “the king of my neighborhood,” but a new king arises, it makes me feel very bad about my house. It is an unfulfilling cycle of one-upmanship.