How I Feel about the Rich

I am not rich. I'm "MCTD" - Middle Class Through Debt - just like most people reading this. Since we're about to elect a president based largely on widespread ill feeling (either contempt or envy) toward rich people - that is, rich people other than the one’s we are about to vote for – I decided to think about how I feel about rich people.

After all, the message has been clear: if some people have a lot of money while others don’t have enough money, then those with a lot of money should give some of it to those who don’t have enough. And if they’re not going to do it out of compassion, then why shouldn’t the government sort of force the issue?

At this point, my thoughts naturally gravitate to my two millionaire friends. Yes, I have two millionaire friends. They weren’t millionaires when I first got to know them many years ago, but they’ve become millionaires since then. Because of them, I didn’t want to just jump to the conclusion that seemed so logical. I wanted to think about it a little.

By the way, I also have friends that are less fortunate than I am financially. It occurred to me that I should probably give some thought to whether or not I want the government eventually to “spread” some of my “wealth.” But I’m going to set that aside for a little while. I can’t figure out everything all at the same time.

I like my two millionaire friends a lot. In fact, they are among my top five most favorite people in the world. So I had to be careful not to assume that most millionaires are like them. After all, they give a huge percentage of their income to various charities and social causes. They go out of their way to hire folks from south of the border to do a lot of the work they have available. And they have more than their fair share of “fans” within a half mile radius around their house, because they do a lot of extra things in the neighborhood: giving good advice to people with problems, opening their home to their kids’ friends – a surprisingly diverse group. I could go on, but you get the picture.

So I had to consciously put all that aside to really do an objective analysis of the issue at hand, which is a political one, not a personal one. I also had to consciously put aside the opposite bias, the real popular one about how most millionaires are greedy, lazy, self-indulgent hoarders to whom everything has come easy. As assumptions go, that one seems as silly as the other.

So how do I feel about millionaires in general, ones I don’t know? How do I feel about millionaires as an abstract social category, like “the poor,” or “the handicapped,” or “people who eat humus”?

Well, I have decided I really like them. Here are my reasons:

First, I like them just because so many people seem to dislike them simply for being rich. My naturally contrary nature makes me want to disagree with the crowd.

Second, rich people are good for employment; not just because many of them are successful in business, but because, just by walking around being rich, they give people jobs – like the waiters and dishwashers at the restaurants they eat in, or like the car sales and repair people and airline employees who handle their daily transportation. Your average rich person must help a great many people in such a way.

Third, rich people pay a LOT of taxes. In other words, they supply government on all levels – city, county, state and federal – with a lot of the money it has to do all the things that governments do – some of which I actually approve of. Rich people pay much more in taxes than poor people. If rich people go away, where is the government going to get all that lost money? (I just felt a chill go up my spine.)

Fourth, most rich people, even though they’re rich, are probably still pretty normal. I suppose a few of them spend so much time in private airplanes and in their winter mansions in Spain that we never see them. But it seems to me that most of them eat, shop, pay bills, raise their kids, get sick, and eventually die just like the rest of us, and they do these normal things in the same towns, cities, counties and states that we do. Sure, relative incomes are a kind of divide, but that seems to be the only real divide.

Five, and I’m really nervous about sharing this one, they inspire me; they make me a little prouder to be a human being. Can you imagine how terrible it would be for your self-image if, every time you left your house, all you saw were people poorer than you, driving really crappy cars or no cars at all, and acting like those folks on the Jerry Springer Show? I know some people have really had it tough by no fault of their own and deserve compassion, but why do we have to pretend that every bum is an innocent victim? Some people are just losers, and we are right to feel ashamed of them. But because of rich people, we know that loserhood is not our only option. Don’t you think things just look a little cleaner and more dignified than they would if there were no rich people? Don’t you feel just a little bit better about yourself simply because some of your race – humans – are pretty impressive in one way or another?

Six, there’s nothing bad about rich people that isn’t bad about people generally. It’s just that money can sometimes be used to make bad things seem less bad than they really are. And I am not sure that is actually an advantage. It certainly isn’t in the long run.

Finally, the rich are perhaps the only people in America that don’t walk around complaining about how they need to “win the lottery.” Then if they do win the lottery, all the money is spent in less than a year on big houses, loud cars, weekly trips to Las Vegas, and buying everybody dinner at Applebee’s, including an open bar.

Obviously, that last one is a stereotype. And we all know how much we hate stereotypes in America, right? Oh, how we hate stereotyping - that is, automatic prejudice against someone just because they are part of a group. We don’t do that in America, right?