Rusty Saber: To many people have too much money

Since this is the Springfield Business Journal, the Rusty Saber should occasionally focus on business topics. Right?

This item comes from the business category: Too many people have too much money to spend. According to the Wall Street Journal, it's possible to live in a penthouse apartment, even if the building housing the penthouse doesn't have a penthouse. Confusing? Not really. A couple of Swedish engineers are manufacturing prefabricated penthouse apartments. That's right, prefabricated. The company is called First Penthouse LTD and operates in London, but it hopes to expand into America. Here's how it works: the apartment is prefabricated, and subsequently attached to the top of a building by cranes; abracadabra, a complete penthouse apartment is born.

The guys at First Penthouse appear to be a bit sensitive about the use of "prefabricated" a word not normally associated with high-dollar home construction. They take great pains to overly explain that there is nothing cheap about their creations. Oh, did I mention price? These prefab jobs range from $3.9 million to $5.5 million. (Do you doubt that too many people have too much money?) My mind's eye is at it again; I see a crane plopping down a multimillion dollar double-wide mobile home on the top of a building. And my mind's eye asks a question: Is there a limit to the number of penthouses that can be placed on a building?

Let's say a $5.5 million penthouse is in place, affording the lucky owner an unobstructed view of hourly muggings in an alley below and a bird's-eye view of traffic gridlock. Along comes another person with too much money to spend who wants to share the view and is willing to pay for a penthouse atop the existing penthouse. Can one be plopped down on top of another? If I were the owner of the first penthouse, I'd want it in writing that I am the first, and only, sucker er, sorry penthouse owner on the building.

Hey, I'm on a roll with the Wall Street Journal; it recently reported on a topic whose category's name I stole from Willie Nelson: "Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys."

It seems that Shirley Chen, who graduates from Stanford this spring with a master's degree in computer science, will drive away from campus in a new BMW 323i, which she won in a recruitment raffle; to enter, all she had to do was submit her resume to an Internet placement group. The article didn't indicate whether she received a job offer along with the car, but she apparently won't be on the job market for long. She is quoted as saying, "If you know how to program, people just go nuts."

Another Internet group attempts to woo promising grads with business and computer science degrees with a new BMW 323i as a signing bonus for an entry-level position paying $200,000 yearly. That's not a typo; it's an entry-level job, the salary, sans BMW, $200,000. The article goes on to mention other perks to graduates, such as all-expense-paid trips to Cancun just for allowing recruiters to talk to them. I conclude Willie Nelson's warning to mamas of would-be cowboys/cowgirls with this paraphrase: "let em be MBAs, computer nerds and such."

This from the category "And You Think Your Small Business Has Troubles." Richard Starner is about to sue the city of Concord, N.H., because it ordered him to close his tattoo parlor, which he opened in January with proper authorization from the city. He was going merrily on his way, tattooing arms, legs, backs and other less public parts of the body, when the city shut him down.

When granting a business permit, the city thought an ordinance that allowed only doctors to do tattoos had been revoked. Say what? Body piercing I might understand; but tattoos? In which semester of medical school do you suppose doctors learn tattooing? What were the city fathers thinking of when they passed the ordinance? When they learned they had failed to revoked it, why didn't they go ahead and revoke it so the important work of tattooing could continue in Concord? Why close him down when they were willing to allow him to open in January?

I wouldn't be surprised if the judge in the lawsuit asks the same questions.

(Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University and a Springfield public relations consultant.)