Do rich people and their immense privilege bother you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only rich/wealthy people who annoy me are the ones who believe everyone could have what they have if they just "worked hard enough". That type of lack of nuanced thinking bothers me in anyone though.

Nailed it! The superior attitude is what bothers me most about some rich people.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t mind wealth. Wealth is great; luxury is great if that’s what you want.

It’s the all consuming greed that is destroying this country.

Squeezing your workers for the absolute maximum with minimum benefits; lobbying for deregulation that will hurt the environment when you already have a healthy profit. It’s airlines nickel and diming passengers when my ticket was $200. It’s millionaires lobbying against the estate tax.

Poor or middle class people can be greedy too; they just have less individual power to destroy things. It’s people abusing the LL bean returns policy until it went away.

There’s less and less social cohesion and less of a sense of duty towards our fellow citizens.

[phone]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most very rich people have done immoral things to become wealthy. I don't envy people like that. I have things that they don't.

- my wife loves me not my money
- I have had one wife
- I know who my true friends are and aren't
- my kids have a good work ethic, responsible and respect a dollar
- no one has ever tried to sue me
- no one hates me for screwing them over
- my customers are happy to see me
- I sleep well at night

I am rich in life.

I started out with nothing and built a business that has made me wealthy. I can check the same boxes you posted.

Then go run your business and stop wasting time on here being a smug asshole.

How am I being a smug asshole? By mentioning I’m wealthy?

No, by refusing to acknowledge that, in addition to a lot of hard work, at least some good luck factored into your success.

-You born with the amount of intelligence required to be a smart businessperson? That was good luck.
-Did you ever have a teacher/relative/boss/neighbor along the way whocame into your life & inspired you? That was good luck.
-Were you free of a serious illness (excluding those entirely related to lifestyle) that would have taken you out of the workforce for a significant amount of time during your young 20s &/or 30s (ie your prime "career building" years)? If not, that was good luck.
Do you have any serious psychological illnesses that effect or have ever effected your ability to fuction (including work) on a day-to-day basis? If not, that's good luck.
Etc, etc, etc...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most very rich people have done immoral things to become wealthy. I don't envy people like that. I have things that they don't.

- my wife loves me not my money
- I have had one wife
- I know who my true friends are and aren't
- my kids have a good work ethic, responsible and respect a dollar
- no one has ever tried to sue me
- no one hates me for screwing them over
- my customers are happy to see me
- I sleep well at night

I am rich in life.

I started out with nothing and built a business that has made me wealthy. I can check the same boxes you posted.

Then go run your business and stop wasting time on here being a smug asshole.

How am I being a smug asshole? By mentioning I’m wealthy?

No, by refusing to acknowledge that, in addition to a lot of hard work, at least some good luck factored into your success.

-You born with the amount of intelligence required to be a smart businessperson? That was good luck.
-Did you ever have a teacher/relative/boss/neighbor along the way whocame into your life & inspired you? That was good luck.
-Were you free of a serious illness (excluding those entirely related to lifestyle) that would yhave taken you out of the workforce for a significant amount of time during your young 20s &/or 30s (ie your prime "career building" years)? If not, that was good luck.
Do you have any serious psychological illnesses that effect or have ever effected your ability to fuction (including work) on a day-to-day basis? If not, that's good luck.
Etc, etc, etc...

^ Hardship doesn't completely negate luck, btw. Even those successful who've worked really hard & experienced a great deal of hardship on their way owe a certain percentage of their success to luck/food fortune (&, in my experience at least, will usually readily admit this well before those who have struggled little).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No. In high school I was friends with three girls named Allison, Stephanie and Heather.

Heather was beautiful and had the coolest clothes, everyone wanted to be friends with her, she was tough, her mom was pretty and cool, and had a gorgeous older boyfriend who sent her flowers at school. I became friends with Heather and found out that her father killed himself when she was a baby, when she tried to talk to her mom her mom ignored her for the mom's boyfriend, she felt stupid and her boyfriend was abusive.

Allison was very rich. She lived on the same street as Howard Stern, she had a housekeeper, she had a lovely life. Then one day Allison started crying in health when we were talking about eating disorders. She cried so hard the teacher excused her, and then excused me and another friend to go help her. Allison told us her mom had an eating disorder and she was scared her mom was going to die.

Stephanie was also very rich. She lived in the Hampton in a mansion. She had every single thing I ever even thought about wanting, let alone asked for. Stephanie's mom overdosed on cocaine and died. Stephanie's dad gave her mom the coke. Stephanie still lived with her dad.

My best friend in high school was Jen, who shared a room with her sister. Their older brother lived on the couch, and Jen's mom was a school custodian. Every single time I went over there, there was a lot of laughter and food. Once we had to go outside and help push Jen's mom's car down the block because it had died. I asked why they didn't just call AAA. They couldn't afford it.

So no, I'm not resentful of rich people getting expensive things. Objects don't mean everything. These people don't all have glamorous perfect lives just because we see them in pretty dresses smiling. I know that they might go home and get beaten or cry themselves to sleep because they're worried about a family member or missing a parent or whatever other problems are plaguing them. Beats headphones won't solve those problems.

Poor and middle class people also deal with dysfunctional families, abuse, eating disorders, drug problems, etc. The only difference is that wealthy people have more resources to deal with their problem (i.e. therapy, rehab, etc). And if they screw up as a result of their problems, it has less of an impact on their lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Rich people and their privilege don't bother me until they start acting like everyone else doesn't deserve what they have, so they use their influence to enact laws and policies to undermine opportunity.

+1

[Anonymous]

Rich individuals don't bother me. Living in a system that fuels gross inequality and that enables the wealthy and powerful to corrupt politics to sustain and further inequality does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe I’m in the minority but I just don’t feel this way. I grew up poor, now make more money than I thought possible, and have always viewed the wealthy as people who have something I can learn. I’m not at all like the cynical pp who thinks that only the wealth can get/stay wealthy. Really rich people are an inspiration.

Me, too. It's interesting to me that most of the resentment being expressed here is from people who grew up UMC around generational wealth. I think it's because the UMC kids are entitled, themselves, and it makes them furious to find out that there are people who were given more. If you grow up poor, you realize that you're not entitled to anything. If you grew up UMC in New York, you're probably not going to know many people who moved up in life, because you're already so near the top. The "rich" people in my home town were poorer than the "middle class" people in DC. I know lots of people who are better off than their parents, because I know people who grew up poor or lower middle class. Yes, luck is part of it, but they all worked extremely hard, because they realized that they had no room for error, and no one was going to give them anything.

I’m the pp you’re responding to. Good point! Growing up poor, EVERYONE had more than me. Only a few people had less. So I didn’t focus in on the rich as a target to hate. On the contrary, by high school I was hanging out with rich (not UMC- rich) kids from a few private schools. They had no problem showing me the ropes and they explained why I should have hope for my future. I don’t harbor any resentment at all- I am grateful. A lot of rich people are more than happy to help other people figure out how to get ahead.

Showing you what “ropes”? How to seek a disbursement from the trust to pay for law school? Those are the rich kid ropes. I know because I was one. None of my rich friends had any additional smarts or savvy. They did, however, have a line in with the good internships.

[Anonymous]

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I learned that Oscan nominees will receive goody bags worth 100k tonight. I understand that they’re hard working and deserve their success and riches but I think 100k in gifts for already very wealthy individuals is so excessive.


I grew up middle class but my parents made a lot of sacrifices to send me to a private school with Uber rich kids. That was hard. Just seeing how easy life was for them and how privileged they were.

I don’t know why I feel almost...resentful? Even though of course it’s theirblife and they should enjoy it. It just bugged me how they were in a bubble and assumed their life was normal.

As long as they enjoy their privilege and don't whine about "abject poverty."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only rich/wealthy people who annoy me are the ones who believe everyone could have what they have if they just "worked hard enough". That type of lack of nuanced thinking bothers me in anyone though.

+1

+2

Being rich, in and of itself, doesn't bother me.

But people who think that their wealth is an indication that they are somehow morally superior, or are the kind of person who was born on third and thinks they hit a triple, or otherwise is blind to the fact that their wealth isn't just the result of their hard work, but has a large element of luck--those people bother me. Rich people make bad choices, too, but their money cushions them from the effects--if a poor person made the same mistake, or even a lesser one, the consequences are usually much more serious.

Money is just money. It doesn't make you a better person, and it's not distributed based just on hard work and who deserves it. If you're wealthy and you're also humble, kind, and thoughtful, your wealth doesn't bother me. It's just something you have.

[Anonymous]

I’m bothered by the wealth inequality in our society, but not by (most) rich people in themselves.

For instance, it just seems gross to me that CEOs, celebrities, sports stars, etc. make more money than most people could spend in a lifetime, yet social workers, caregivers, teachers, firefighters, etc. do not make a fraction of that money. Our priorities are so screwed up. I don’t even watch the Oscars and all those award shows because I find them gross. Yes, there are a lot of talented actors, but they are entertaining us, not curing cancer. Why the star worship?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m bothered by the wealth inequality in our society, but not by (most) rich people in themselves.

For instance, it just seems gross to me that CEOs, celebrities, sports stars, etc. make more money than most people could spend in a lifetime, yet social workers, caregivers, teachers, firefighters, etc. do not make a fraction of that money. Our priorities are so screwed up. I don’t even watch the Oscars and all those award shows because I find them gross. Yes, there are a lot of talented actors, but they are entertaining us, not curing cancer. Why the star worship?

+1

[Anonymous]

Most of our friends are quite wealthy but none of them give off the aura of immense privilege. If they did they would not be our friends. Wealth and narcissism are a bad combination with Trump and his cronies the best examples.

[Anonymous]

It doesn't bother me, per se. I just find it ironic and interesting how the world works that way. Brands give the freebies because they want to get their name out there and get social media photos/mentions by the celebrities...so they can sell more... to the poorer people buying those magazines wanting to emulate the rich people who got those things for free.

Same logic as the multimillion dollar economy of football. All over a $100 leather ball.