As was the case with his peers, bluesman B.B. King (1925-2015) came from humble beginnings – to put it mildly. Born to sharecroppers on a Mississippi cotton plantation, his mother deserted the family when he was four years old. Thereafter, he was raised by his grandmother. His first job was working in a cotton gin. I’d say that qualifies as humble.
Without delving too deeply into King’s musical career, he started performing in the mid-1940s and it was onward and upward from there. His R&B recordings had a great deal of crossover appeal and he often performed with white rockers. Over time he had enough pulling power to move on from blues bars to arenas and concert halls and music festivals. He kept on performing almost to the day he died in 2015. His name lives on, however, in the form of B.B. King’s Blues Club franchises in such cities as Memphis, Los Angeles, Nashville, Orlando, Las Vegas, and New Orleans.
I don’t have access to B.B. King’s tax returns, so I can’t testify as to his income, but the length of his career indicates he must have earned a lot of money during his life. I have no idea how he spent it or invested it, and it’s possible that the reason he kept performing so long was that he spent it and didn’t invest it, or didn’t invest it wisely, all of which is beside the point. When you make a lot of money, you are entitled to do what you want with it. But many people, particularly those in the female faction, don’t feel that way. As is often noted, in married couples, what the woman earns belongs to her but what the man earns belongs to both of them.
In 1968 B.B. King wrote a song called “Paying the Cost to Be the Boss.” I don’t know if that was a phrase in common currency or if he originated it, but it caught on, perhaps because it rings true. The song deals with a working man responding to a demanding woman. Let’s sample a few verses to get the idea:
I’ll drink if I wanna
And play a little poker too
Don’t you say nothing to me
As long as I’m takin’ care of youAs long as I’m workin’, baby
And payin’ all the bills
I don’t want no mouth from you
About the way I’m supposed to liveBut I tell you, I’m gonna have all the money
And I don’t want no back talk
If you don’t like what I’m doing, baby
Pick up your things and walkAnd the chorus:
You gotta be crazy, baby
You just gotta be out of your mind
As long as I’m payin’ the bills
I’m payin’ the cost to be the boss
In 1968 you could offer such a song with minimal pushback. Yet three years later, we got “I Am Woman” from Helen Reddy, and we’ve been going downhill ever since. If B.B. King were still performing today, he would likely be confronted by a platoon of females wearing T-shirts saying “A Black Woman Is Speaking – Listen and Learn.”
Above and beyond the song, “paying the cost to be the boss” is pretty well understood above and beyond the battle of the sexes. Even Google gets it:
The cost of being the boss means putting in the hard work, making tough decisions and, sometimes, sacrificing comfort for growth. Leadership often comes with a glamorous image, but the truth is being in charge requires sacrifices, resilience and an unwavering commitment to your vision.
Most people get it too. While your peers were out partying, you were studying. Perhaps you started a business, put in the hours, invested your money, took risks. Or maybe you went to work for an established business and worked your way up by going above and beyond the call of duty. You didn’t expect to be the boss without paying the cost. About the only way you could do that was through nepotism, but you are not well-connected. You could be envious of those born into such circumstances, but you choose to be realistic. You play the hand you’ve been dealt and get to work rather than whine about how unfair the system is.
The concept of the Seven Deadly Sins is almost as old as Christianity. Envy is one of them, so we know it’s been a problem long before anyone heard of Karl Marx. But it’s not necessary to be a rabid leftist to suffer from envy. Many people of modest means eyeball a palatial mansion and think “No one should have so much” while simultaneously envisioning themselves so housed and thinking, “It must be nice.” But they have no idea how many hoops the owner had to jump through to obtain such a domicile. It’s a bit like theater. All the audience sees is what’s on the stage. They have no idea how many hours of work it takes backstage to put on a show that amuses the audience for two hours.
It’s difficult to put a dollar sign on paying the cost to be the boss, but I’m going to take a stab at it. As is the case with most of you, my experience with the monied elite is minimal – with one exception. My boss, whose origins were as humble as B.B. King’s, realized his ambitions, became a multi-millionaire, and lives in a mansion. Occasionally, for Christmas parties or other functions, he invites staff and employees to his home. At one of these functions a number of years ago, I was chatting with the company controller, who also handled the boss’s personal accounting. “I’ll bet the property taxes on this place must run $50,000,” I said, probing for a response but not really expecting one. Normally, such information would have been the corporate equivalent of a state secret. Lubricated with a couple of drinks, however, the controller snickered and said, “How about twice that much!” This was 15 years ago, so given the escalation of real estate in my city, I guess that now my boss is paying at least $150,000 a year and maybe closer to $200,000, just for the privilege of living in his own home.
Wandering the boss’s mansion and grounds, one can’t help but fantasize about living in such splendor. Who wouldn’t? The question one should ask is not whether or not one would like to live there. The question is would one like it enough to scrape together $150,000+ this year…and next year…and the year after that, etc. Keep in mind that annual assessment has to be paid, even if one suffers a severe income disruption. If you lose your source of income, you will pay no income tax. If you have to tighten your belt, you will pay less in the way of sales taxes because you’re spending less. But property taxes are the gift to the county that keeps on giving. And after you die, your estate must pay them till the property is sold. Paying the cost to be the boss doesn’t end even when you’re dead.
Taxation aside, how would you like to come up with the dough to pay for the cost of maintaining and repairing the mansion and its grounds, or for the utility bills that keep all that interior space cool or warm, as the case may be? It costs more – a lot more – to live in a mansion than in a bungalow. Who would have guessed? Add up all the costs you must pay to be the boss and you might discover that easy street is not without potholes and speed bumps.
As further evidence, I offer the HGTV (Home & Garden Television) channel. Once a year HGTV has a lottery for a “dream home.” Most winners end up selling the home because of the financial burdens of maintaining said “dream home.” In one case, an Illinois man won a 5,500 square foot lakefront home in East Texas. After he moved there he found he didn’t have the income to maintain it. Appraised by the county at $1.85 million, it sold at auction for $1.3 million. He hadn’t paid the cost to be the boss so he couldn’t live like the boss…not for long anyway. I suspect he would not be a candidate to join the “Tax the rich” cult.
There will always be people offended by the fact that someone – if not their boss, likely someone else’s boss – has more than they do. Consider the case of actor Michael Caine, who was Cockney-born and always had a populist bent in his social attitudes. By the late 1970s, Caine had become an international superstar of the cinema. He was paid accordingly, but he was residing in England, where his income was subject to an 82% tax rate. For that reason, a number of British rockers, movie stars, and other celebs had moved away from the UK. Caine, however, chose to remain.
Then one day he hired an electrician to do some work at his house. When the workman saw that Caine was living in relative comfort despite his heavy tax burdens, he stormed away, informing Caine that no one should live in such luxury. “It’s people like you who are ruining this country,” he fumed.
When you only get to keep 18% of the money you earn, and the rest is going to pay for the cradle-to-grave welfare state that serves the likes of the electrician – and he still feels aggrieved – the situation is untenable. So Caine decided the time had come to leave the UK. He described the UK as “a communist country without a dictator.” Contemporary Brits might feel Caine’s 45-year-old assessment is still accurate. Just because Caine was paying the cost he had no right to think he was the boss. Just as the wage-earning man turns over the bulk of his paycheck to his wife, the high-income man is expected to turn over most of his income to the state. The woman sees no problem with such an arrangement; neither does the state – perhaps one reason why women seem to be drawn to jobs in government bureaucracies.
And that brings us to Justin Trudeau. It seems like ancient history now, but when Justin Trudeau was first elected prime minister of Canada in 2015, he was asked why half the members of his cabinet were female. “Because it’s 2015!” was his answer. In other words, he was invoking an egalitarian quota system. In days of old, it was a given that if you aspired to high office, such as a cabinet position, you would have to pay the cost to be the boss. Old-timey feminist dogma used to assert that you had to be twice as smart as a man and work twice as hard as a man to get ahead in this world. My, how times have changed!
Quotas are another way of saying it’s not necessary to pay the cost to be the boss; in fact; in fact, if you cut to the front of the line in front of smarter, better qualified people, there’s nothing wrong with that. Like the peasants trooping through the palace and thinking it must be nice, women look at men in positions of authority – or the so-called wage gap – and see injustice in the disparity. They think men shouldn’t have that much power…but it must be nice. Men shouldn’t make that much money…but it must be nice. The “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” concept is lost on them. All they see is conspicuous consumption. “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” ran for 11 years on TV. The pilot for “Struggles and Sacrifices of the Previously Poor” was never greenlighted.
I think it’s fair to say that B.B. King was rich and famous. In fact, as he got up in years, he assumed the status of national treasure. Among his tokens of recognition are several honorary doctor’s degrees, induction into the Blues, R& B and Rock & Roll Halls of Fame, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I have to believe that the people who vote to bestow such honors had never heard “Paying the Cost to Be the Boss,” or if they did, they conveniently overlooked it. Then there is the matter of his fathering numerous children with numerous women, though he supported them all – which may be one reason he never retired.
If B.B. King’s attitudes toward women had been brought up when he was nominated for all the honors he received, would he have received them? Of course, he could be stripped of them posthumously. It’s been done before. And B.B. King is a candidate for cancellation, given his harem of baby mamas and the fact that his lyrics reek of misogyny and toxic masculinity.
At least he wouldn’t have to contend with accusations of white supremacy.
