What merriment we find in smirking at the everyday life of Donald Trump. He is the image of capitalistic excess, a volcano of money, erupting for some of the most garish and least useful items on earth. He calls press conferences to discuss — or not to discuss — his marital life. He is very loud.

As the immensely rich go, Trump is a mere 19th on the world list, according to Forbes, which estimates his level of worth at $1.7 billion. Tabloids and everyone else track Trump as if some momentous event were imminent: the announcement of a Trump Mega Mall, perhaps.

His potential divorce from Ivana, with all its lawyerly contracts and the inevitable other woman, really isn’t so different from many other divorces of the well-heeled, but its pulse is monitored daily for any signs of weakening into reconciliation.

What keeps Trump talk alive may be his evident nastiness. He appears to be a difficult boss, no doubt keeping countless minions working late into the night in his large Trump factory stenciling the letter T or perhaps the entire Trump name onto countless objects: the Trump lamp, the Trump ottoman, the Trump floppy disk.

There is something comforting in the predictability of money spent for all the wrong reasons, and that may be what most attracts us to Trump. It is a pleasure to watch a man with such great power waste his money so publicly because it assures us that, in comparison, we’re fairly sensible folk, whatever our shortcomings.

In our relative poverty, we eye Trump and his fortune with satisfaction, content that all the money that chokes his bank account, but will never inhabit ours, hasn’t made him an enviable man.