Man Builds Huge Home In Connecticut

Sounds pretty cool to me:

WEST HARTFORD, Conn. – The enormity of the house Arnold Chase is building on Avon Mountain isn’t fully apparent from the outside, where only 17,000 square feet of it lies in plain view.
It’s the two-level, 33,500-square-foot basement complex, complete with a 103-seat movie theater, ticket booth, concession stand, game room and music annex, that will make it New England’s largest occupied single-family home.
At nearly 50,900 square feet, the Chase home will be slightly larger than billionaire Bill Gates’ home in Washington, about 4,000 square feet smaller than the White House and 20 times larger than the average-size home in America. . . .
Besides the two-tiered movie theater, soda fountain and men’s and women’s bathrooms, the Chase home will include a 400-square foot “observatory,” five bedrooms, eight full bathrooms and five half bathrooms, according to documents filed with the West Hartford planning office. The game room, in the “upper” basement, will take up nearly 4,900 square feet — nearly twice as big as the average-size house.

What caught my attention though was the reporter’s repeated comparison of this home to the “average-size house” in America. It’s almost as though the reporter thinks the story here isn’t the novelty of the home but rather that anyone would dare to build a home so much bigger than the average Americans’.
Indeed, a sociology professor quoted in the article makes exactly that point:

Some question the morality of building a private home that large.
“Do you actually need to have that amount of space to live a good life?” said Susan A. Eisenhandler, a sociology professor at the University of Connecticut. “There are homeless people. There are impoverished people. There are serious social concerns, and we’re not addressing that.”

I fail to see how such a large home is immoral. If this guy can afford it, why not? Are we to deny ourselves the pleasures our hard work and industry can purchase us simply because others have not attained that same level of success?
There’s also the idea that this man’s home does actually do quite a bit to help those around him. After all, one can imagine that there is a legion of carpenters, laborers, maintenance workers, plumbers, carpet-layers, painters, etc. all of whom have and will make a good deal of money building and maintaining this home.
And then there’s the enormous property tax bill he’ll inevitably have to pay.
Regardless, for some people big displays of wealth like this mansion represent crass immorality. For others it represents something to shoot for. We should ask ourselves which kind of person ultimately contributes more to society.