Until about a year and a half ago I was just scraping by. I lived in a small 850 sq. ft. rental house. Had a 1 year old. My wife and I both worked full time(full time for me is 60 hrs a week). I still had the same beliefs back then as I do now.

Things have changed...

I have become very successful in what I do. My wife no longer works and we now own a nice home in a much better neighborhood. I am by no means rich, but I no longer have to worry about living paycheck to paycheck.

With this new new success I have also found a new bitterness towards myself and my wife. Friends that I once had now resent me because my wife no longer works. Or they make comments about the nice car I now drive. What amazes me is that some were in a better position than me just 2 years ago, and now they are bitter towards me because of my success.

I was not born into money, infact it was quite the opposite. I know what it is like to be evicted from the place you live. I had no special helping hand or knew anyone, I just worked hard and made my own way.

Question for debate: Because you may not be successful, do you have a right to be bitter at those who are?

I don't think so. There's an old saying, "When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade." I'm not trying to simplify things, but it comes down to attitude. It doesn't matter what station in life you are in as long as you're happy with yourself. Heck, you could be flipping burgers at McDonalds, but as long as you're doing it and have self respect, it shouldn't matter what others have. You don't know if that successful person has sacrificed other aspects of their life to attain the material things in their life. I personally have had a very rough life and only now at 28 do I have a house and a decent job. I used to couch hop and be reckless and irresponsible and that was why I didn't have anything in life, my priorities. But in a matter of 3 years of straightening my life out and putting things in perspective, I've made vast improvements in my life.

I think it comes down to this, "What you put into something is what you'll get out of it." If you want you're life to change and you're tired of struggling, you'll search out the resources. I'm a big believer in, "Thou shalt not covet". because it only makes you depressed and distracts you from what you need to do.

I'll skip my own rags-to-riches story, except to note that I have one. I'm not bitter toward the rich or successful in general, but I do admit to a certain contempt for those whose wealth or success is unearned. I worked like hell to get where I am, and I do resent it when someone who was born on third base brags about hitting a triple. I feel like it devalues the accomplishments of people (including me but, more importantly, many others) who have overcome adversity to achieve success.

So, when do I feel that success is unearned? The most obvious case is when it was inherited, in the form of money or connections or any of the hundred other things that allow the children of the wealthy to start the race of life half-way down the track, and there is no evidence of even having tried to earn it. Maybe part of that goes back to when I attended elite schools on scholarship, and all of the kids who were there because of daddy missed no opportunity to exclude or belittle me for being from a different social class. Somehow I don't harbor the same resentment against people who won lotteries and such, but part of that is because at least they weren't born to it. At least they know what it's like to work hard and not get much in return. There are other people who are the recipients of other windfalls, who just happen to be in the right place at the right time and get in an opportunity for reasons totally unrelated to talent or diligence, and I guess my feelings about them are somewhere in between. There were people at EMC, for example, who reaped huge stock-option profits not because they really did anything to help the company grow but just because they happened to be there when it did. I don't necessarily begrudge them that, but I do get a little annoyed when they try to claim that it was something other than luck or that it proves something about capitalism.

Another form of unearned wealth that concerns me is that which comes from professions that I feel add little to our economy or society. My bias is to reward people who build or invent or do something themselves, not the facilitators and middlemen - salesmen, marketers, brokers, lawyers, etc. - who just move money around and take a slice off the top for the "service", I know a certain number of people have to do that to keep the wheels of capitalism turning, but they're not the wheels. They're grease, and it seems like we have an engine that's more grease than wheels right now. I think we'd all be better if at least half of those people would stop selling and suing and generally screwing around and do some real work for a change. Salesmen and lawyers only add insult to injury by adding a dash of exaggeration - or outright dishonesty - to their non-value-adding roles.

Lastly, I think how people respond to wealth depends largely on how wealth presents itself. Nobody likes a braggart. Nobody likes someone who puts on airs or talks down to other people or pretends they're better because they're richer - especially when they're just luckier. Nobody likes to hear how an out-an-out accident or stroke of luck supposedly vindicates someone's selfish laissez-plutocrat views or justifies callousness to those who didn't have such luck. Nobody likes seeing someone forget their old friends - who might have helped get them where they are - when they move to a neighborhood, send their kids to new schools, and pick up new hobbies more suited to their new station (blech). Nobody likes watching the rich people - who not only have more money but often more free time - dominate the decision-making in the town hall or PTA or church vestry, ramming their agenda through to the detriment of poorer folks with different concerns. With wealth and success come responsibility. The wealthy and successful in this country too often use their situation only to make life even better for themselves, and lack any trace of humanity that would connect them to the much more numerous working classes.

Sure, you have the right to, but jealousy is not generally a rational emotion, and being bitter because someone has more money than you do is generally a product of jealousy.

If you work hard for your money and the people around you can't appreciate that than they are probably not the people that you should surround yourself with.

Additionally, I think that very few people really stop and appreciate what they already have. I don't make a lot of money, but I work for what I have, and I take pride in that. I live in a small apartment, but I have all of the things that I need, including some luxury items such as the computer that I access America's Debate from. America has some of the richest poor people in the world. I can imagine that some of the world's poor would look at America's poor and approach them with the same attitude that people are approaching you with. It's all relative.

I've been poor and I have been moderately successful. Under both conditions I have always gone home to an air-conditioned place, always had three meals a day, a color TV and a beer in the fridge. Maybe I have not ever been poor.

Do you the right? Absolutely. Is it pointless and defeating? Surely.

I have been extremley poor (read homeless) to somewhat stable (enough to get by and a little to save.) I'm only 24 so I know time is on my side. Back to the point. In my opinion the poor hate the rich simply because they never had the chance or resources to attain wealth, and if they do they don't have the know how (also a resource) to identify those resources. Since I have become stable, the last four years, I have plenty of time to reflect of all my missed chances, but hindsight is 20/20. All being said and done I sort of enjoyed being poor. It was a lot of less pressure. Now I have worry about making rent, car payment, 401k ......., but being poor it was simply food and beer to kill the pain then you had the rest of the day off, not like working 9-5 everyday, then housework, then sleep, now repeat until you die.

I grew up extremely poor, and I guess I was personally poor when I was in the military, though I did not recognize it (always had the barracks to sleep in and free meal and clothes LOL)- but my Dad taught me alot about frugality and how to make money, and in fact, as I was starting to make money, as a family we pooled our money and started really slamming into the real estate market, and now I am up to 20 thou a year in "unearned" income- I have read that the standard for "wealthy" is 60 thou a year in "unearned income"- so I am a 1/3 of the way there. I have nothing but respect for those that brought themselves out of poverty without having to harm or screw over anyone. The poeple that have to make someone else lose to make themselves win, I am very bitter towards them (read, your average fortune 500 CEO)- the corruption in the big money areas in the US is out of control. I too have no respect whatsoever for the "leach" professions- like lawyers for tobacco companies or your average pharmacy company.

A rich person is not he who has the most, but who needs the least.
Got that from the screensaver, "Interview with God".
So I guess I am rich, as I don't need a lot of the things that seems to define wealth to some. My wife and I both came from poor, and have made it to solidly middle class, financially speaking. I suppose I will always be lower class in some respects. We will retire soon, comfortably, and have children and grandchildren who love us. We are both healthy enough to be around to spoil not only the grandchildren, but very likely the great-grandchildren.
What else is there?
But I have had a few people say to me how lucky I am to have all that we have. I don't disagree that luck plays a part, but hard work, advanced education, and perseverance plays the bigger parts. Resentment is not a step forward for anybody.

Platypus,
I'm just curious...I'm not calling you out or anything like that, I just have a question. How do you know when someone has worked hard to get where they are? What would make one man a judge over the other. My daddy has worked his butt off to get where he is. His dad worked very hard to get where he was. I work right now to try and establish myself the same way they did. But how can anyone know one way or the other. From the outside looking in it may seem that My father's father was rich and successful, so then was my father, so then I'll never work for anything in my life. However untrue this may be.....how can any man judge me?

Simply put: I don't, and neither does anybody else, without knowing someone personally - or sometimes, if the person is famous, from a biography. Bill Gates, for example, did work really hard for many years to make his fortune. Even though he's insanely rich, even though his fortune is owed in part to some less-than-admirable business practices (e.g. selling something he didn't actually have) in addition to hard work, even though his parents were pretty well off, I'd call that earned wealth. George W. Bush, by contrast, never earned squat as far as I can tell. I don't know you or your father so I'd give you both the benefit of the doubt, but it's usually pretty clear whether someone's an earner or a slacker if you know them at all. The pattern is set pretty early for most people, and pervades aspects of their behavior well beyond the workplace.

As I said, it's not really the wealth itself that bugs me; it's the attitude that some wealthy people have. It goes something like this: if I'm rich it must be because I worked harder, which means I'm morally superior to anyone who's less wealthy, and therefore I'm qualified to tell them how to run their lives. It's all garbage. I have absolutely no complaint with people who don't try to make such bogus arguments, or with people who truly have walked the walk and earned the moral high ground, but the poseurs offend me. Wealth can practically fall from out of the sky, but respect must be earned.

That is one point that has always gotten to me about wealth. Why must you respect someone who has it? why is respect not giving to others that don’t. I don’t want to say hey everyone should be a bum, but that is just the point i am trying to make, that style of thought i don’t think has been thought out on just how much of an impact it makes. For instance what is something that may come to mind when looking at a culture that does not revolve around such, are they all just a bunch of bums. What is really being respected, is it an amount of value someone has in the monetary systems of America, or is it power, freedom, your dreams, what really gets individuals to hand respect to someone based upon such. Its like when i am just being a human, another human automatically expects that i should be a subject to them because of a Rolex and a shiny suv, or something along those lines, and when i don’t, its alien to them, its all they know. A mindset based on just that, it relates to their families, wives, girlfriends, friends, just about everything to them is monetary, i try to keep myself from looking at the world like that, and have had good success so far.

So i think that same realization may be why the poor are sometimes shall we say not to keen on their opinion of the rich, because with that class system comes a self image. Such an image that you may get at a work place, or a school or within your family. If society equates all things good with the amount of money you have, the people without will view themselves as other.

Human life is being judged on the value of worth by such, i don’t think its such a good schema.

If you spend some time around various types of people you can notice it, more so with youth today then say adults, but remember you cant trust anyone over thirty.

what was that song, "cash rules everything around me cream get the money, dollar dollar bill yall".

Maybe part of the bitterness some folks have for the rich and
successful comes from the idea that having a lot of
money means a person will be happy and have no problems.
That's a big falsehood, of course. Money does not equal happiness.
But, when you don't have money you live with the illusion that
lack of money is the cause of your misery.

I came from a lower middle class background, my father was (and, at seventy-five, still is) self-employed full-time; my partner and I have gone from peaks of around $100,000 per annum (with most expenses paid) to periods where we couldn't make a weekly apartment rent or manage bus fare - for whatever any of that's worth.

I personally have no bitterness toward the rich as a class, though I have been somewhat embittered by the success of certain individuals I've known personally whom I knew to be talentless idiots advancing solely through nepotism. Not a lot done can do about that, though - and I try not to expend too much energy on bootless emotions.

What I - and I imagine a number of other people - feel about some of the rich - the corporate rich - in this country is a breed of bitterness born of resent. I, for example, resent the level of entrée they have to the political corridors of this country, the amount of influence they have in the direction this country has been taking, the extent to which they can manipulate the laws, judgements, and leadership of this country, the extent to which they control mass communications and, therefore, the perceived "common goals" and prevailing ideology of this country. I resent the fact that our government no longer maintains its support through the provision of justice, administration, and promotion of the general welfare and the democratic process, but through providing benefits to the influentially wealthy who are hungry for the power to secure and increase their wealth by any means.

But this is categorically not because I envy the rich who make up this corporate elite. I wouldn't want that kind of power - no one should want that kind of power - it is soulless and evil. And no one in America should be wielding that kind of power.

I expect that, among many of the desperately poor, there could be a similar resent of the relative amount of influence wielded by the relatively affluent - be it a decrease in the liklihood of criminal prosecution or the fewer opportunities for even considering the development of a career path. But I wonder to what extent that sort of bitterness is also a bootless emotion...

I do not resent the wealthy for being that way, but I do resent it when their wealth is used to wield tremendous power in our government and therefore over the lives of people who have been raised to believe that we have a government representative of and responsive to the people. Their self-aggrandizement due to their lobbying of and campaign contributions to politicians often causes others to have to do without essential services.

While it may be argued that even plants each take a spot of earth and sun that another plant would take up, the unrestrained power of the wealthy is like the kudzu (an imported plant from Japan) in the South that grows over and kills the other plants in an entire field.

I agree with Wertz.

Heh, I get to start all over again in my fifties. Most of my current income is from tech writing, which is where I started some 24 years ago after doing blue collar work from the age of 10.

It's a success to be able to start over again, but it still has its roots in "this sucks."

So am I bitter when I hear about massive bonuses to CEOs for doing basically nothing? You bet I am. How about when they actively rip off corporations, workers, and investors? Import foreign high tech workers?

But I'm not bitter or angry toward those who--through honest, hard work--make a good living.

I believe we *do not* have a right to treat an old friend badly if she or he becomes successful at making money. I'd question the strength of the friendship if this happens. However, if any of my friends turns into a money-grubbing CEO crook, yep, a whole lot of negative energy will come his or her way.

Need I point out that making money is only one way to be successful among an infinite number of ways? Okay, good.

One thing that makes me nitter towards the rich is the way they whine about paying so much tax.

Let's say that I earn £30k. (Not too far off what I'll get as a minimum in my new job, although I haven't been paid at all so far - only a few weeks in, you see). In the UK, I'll get to keep just about two thirds of that - £20k.

A friend of mine earns closer to £100k. He pays a higher tax rate on the last £65k than on the first £35k; 40% compared to 22%. He also pays 10% NI on the first £30k, and so do I. In very rough terms, he gets to keep around £55k.

Yes, he pays £35k more tax than I do. But he still gets to keep nearly three times as much money as I get. For doing about the same number of hours as I do, in a similarly constructed job. But I have to hear him complain about how much tax he pays, how he's thinking of moving abroad somewhere wehere they appreciate his kind of talent, etc.

The four foreign holidays a year, flashy cars, large and ostentatious houses and so on mean his disposable income is probably about the same as mine, but whose fault is that? Mine? The governments? Er, no. Chances are someone like this would find something to complain about financially if they didn't pay any tax at all.

That kind of money (£100k is a bit over $150k I think) tends to go to people that never think that they have enough - plenty of people raise happy and well-adjusted families in comfort on my salary or less.

This has all been hypothetical, I don't know anyone that earns that much money (yet - I haven't ruled it out for myself yet ). But I think that people who set such store by wealth that it becomes all consuming, whether they themselves have it, or whether they resent not having it, are the ones that have the problem.

And I do agree that the political system is increasingly behaving as if the concerns of a few very rich people are comparable or even superior to the concerns of the rest of us.

I totally agree. I might well pay more in taxes than anyone else here, for example, and do I complain about how I'm getting gouged by the government? Do I agitate for shifting tax policy away from progressive income tax and toward other, more regressive taxes? Hell, no. It's not because I believe the government is the most efficient way to sustain infrastructure or direct aid to those who need it. I'm an engineer, in case anyone forgot; I hate waste and inefficiency as much as anyone, on a visceral level, and I'll certainly complain plenty about those. However, reliance on private charity and voluntary self-regulation by industry is not a realistic option. I don't buy into the laissez-fair fantasies. The charities - except perhaps the religious ones - will remain as cash-starved as they are today and the voluntary regulation simply won't happen. I'll pay my taxes without complaint (within reason) so long as that's the only realistic alternative to watching the hard-working poor die of disease and malnutrition while the idle rich build a new batch of 50-room "cottages" in which to relax. No, not all poor people work hard and not all rich people are idle; we should all have been able to figure that out and realize that it does not affect the truth of my statement, but some people seem to have trouble with that kind of thing.

People who still have more than most people, who still get to keep most of the money they make, shouldn't complain. Those who didn't even earn that wealth have no moral standing whatsoever to talk about who deserves what, and too many such people spend too much of their time ramming through their views on just that issue.

Under who's sky do you live? C'mon Platy, riches don't just fall into anyone's hands. If you wanted to make the claim that people inherit wealth and don't deserve it or you are bitter at them because they inherited the wealth and they are lazy and stupid, I consider that tantamount to jealousy and Platy you have never struck me like the jealous type. However it does explain a lot about you politics toward Bush.

Straight to the point, you will never know George Bush enough to know whether or not he deserves his wealth (under your definition of "Deserve"). As best as I can tell, if a father is rich and wants to give his wealth to his children, his children deserve it. Whether or not a child will hold onto that fortune...that will prove their savvy...

Edited to add:

Julian, the rich made THEIR money. No one has the right to usurp it for the so-called "common good". I know I don't appreciate people trying to burglarize my house, I certainly don't appreciate the government burglarizing my pay check. And I'm not rich.

Not into anyone's? Hmmm. Tell that to someone who inherited 100% of their money, or who won the lottery, or to those EMC folks I mentioned a few posts ago. For them, the money might as well have fallen from the sky. I never said that it happens often, or that the majority of wealthy people didn't earn every penny, but there is a non-trivial percentage of rich folks who never lifted a finger to earn anything.



Not quite. I do consider Bush to be one of those undeserving rich (a subset of all the rich) but that by itself leads to no more than slight distaste. What I actually resent about Bush is that he takes pains to present himself as a regular guy who understands normal American life, and tries to justify obnoxious policies on the basis of that misrepresentation.



...or the definition you attribute to me. I confess that I'm not sure what that definition is. As for Bush, his biography is so well studied that anyone with acess to a library can form their own opinions about what he deserves.



That's where we most definitely disagree. As far as I'm concerned, nobody deserves greater or lesser wealth than anyone else except as a consequence of their own actions. It's a little thing I like to call meritocracy. There's a valid argument to be made for the legitimacy of inheritance based on the parent's property rights (though I still happen to disagree) but there's nothing valid about basing that argument on the rights of the children. Every child is tabula rasa, deserving of no more or less than other children when they're born. The right of a child is not to be wealthy, but to be born into a world where they can earn (or not earn) what they deserve by themselves.



Not all. Most, perhaps, but not all. Your statement is false, and any argument based on it is likewise false.

It's really funny that this topic came up when it did, and took the turn that it did here. Forbes magazine just came out with a list of the richest 400 Americans this month. I went down the list of the first 100, and fully 50% of everyone in the top 100 inherited their wealth, or married into it. I didn't have time to go through the rest of the list but I found that number rather telling. Link here: The Forbes 400

Now, that's 50 people out of 100 that had nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes they have, except insofar as they have been able to not lose it. The total net worth of the top 400? Just shy of one trillion dollars.

Am I bitter that they were able to make it, or marry into it or inherit it? No. Not when they understand that they lucked into it, and are truly appreciative of those employees that actually made that money for them.

What does embitter me however, are people like #85 on the list. Leona "only the little people pay taxes" Helmsley. This "lady" married into her fortune. She was given a small chain of hotels to play with by her husband. She picked out some fabrics and furniture, but the original management teams pretty well stayed in place.

Funny thing is, to hear her tell it, it was her hard work and business accumen that singlehandedly kept these properties going. Never mind that they were doing just fine before the name change. Never mind that it was all those "little people" that kept the properties running.

All she really did, was call up the properties once a week to hassle the GM's, and rake her percentage off the top. That and treat everyone that worked for any of her hotels like garbage when she visited.

Now, why should anyone have to bow and scrape and "show respect" for someone who thinks that her employees are beneath contempt? Because she has money? I think not.