With some of the toniest neighborhoods in the country (the world?) burning in a sea of flames, you’d think their wealthy residents would pay just about anything to get a little extra attention from the fire department.
Yet these desperate cheap skates are only offering $2,000 an hour for private firefighters, according to the New York Post.
OK, I get it – that’s a lot of money for most people. But these are the same people who pay $1 million for an exclusive parking spot or $6.2 million to eat the art world’s most expensive banana. You’d think they’d be willing to spend just about anything to not only avoid the nuisance of rebuilding their house, but to hold onto their cherished home. $2,000? Try $20,000. Try setting up full-ride college funds for each fireman’s children. Paying off someone’s mortgage goes a long way. Existential crises demand existential solutions.
TOPSHOT – A home burns during the Palisades Fire in Pacific Palisades, California, on January 8, 2025. At least five people have been killed in wildfires rampaging around Los Angeles, officials said on January 8, with firefighters overwhelmed by the speed and ferocity of multiple blazes. (Photo by AGUSTIN PAULLIER / AFP) (Photo by AGUSTIN PAULLIER/AFP via Getty Images)
As always, it comes back to utter hypocrisy and there are so many layers to unpack here. It’s not just the phony egalitarianism of the most elite of the coastal elite. They’ll lecture us on our privilege, and how we must subordinate our interests to the less fortunate. But then after sending their kids to private schools and building walls to keep the riff raff out of their own neighborhoods, they’ll turn around to privatize critical resources that could better serve the public need. The kicker is then having the audacity to not even pay these firefighters at the level this crisis demands. You don’t get much clout from saving your house as the rest of your neighbors’ homes burn. You don’t get the feeling they’d look on impressed or jealous as they would when they see you walk down to that million dollar parking spot. If anything, you come off looking like a pretty selfish person.
And for the Los Angeles elite, as with the rest of America’s ruling class, we all know that being seen as good is far more important than actually being good.
