I noticed that a large population of people really hate rich people. This has always somewhat baffled me. Sure, we all dislike those who take advantage of others and people with no thought of anything but themselves and their bottom line, but that’s just such a comically moustache twirling image of rich people that it’s hard to take someone seriously when they say some shit like ‘eat the rich’ or ‘tax the rich.’
I’m not pulling up the stats, I’m a creative writer, and you should be doing your own research, but I’m pretty sure rich people are the ones paying the majority of the taxes. In fact I’m certain of it. All the social funding and maintained roads and running water and sewage systems you guys love so much comes from the assholes you desperately want to hate.
But really, how often is hate really directed at the person, and not just an externalized example of our own dissatisfaction and jealousy?
If you pay attention to online discourse, anyone who bothers sticking up for the wealthy folk is derided as some kind of bootlicker, no matter how cogently or gently they offer their thoughts. The common rhetoric is that people defend rich people because they somehow one day expect to be one, which will obviously (in the haters eyes) never happen.
First of all, I wouldn’t be so sure. People who take responsibility for themselves and endeavour to take risks and work hard often do achieve success. Yet in spite of that, what is the problem with being rich? How many people sitting on the toilet on X pissing and moaning (literally ?) about rich people would want to be rich themselves. I mean, how many of them could be rich if they spent that time doing something, I don’t know, productive? Contributing? Adding ease and service to society?
So much of it comes down to naivete. I won’t do the ‘things used to be different’ dialogue today, but I really feel like we live such digital lives that we have no conception of things as they are in ‘real life.’
People whinge and moan that someone is worth 400 billion dollars or whatever, and tend to believe that the person literally has billions in their checking account, like some kind of dragon sitting atop a hoard of coins blowing smoke out its nostrils.
Like, if you took the second to google the valuation of their companies you could quickly see where that wealth is. It’s not like they’re fully liquid, throwing cash around like Drake at the club all day.
How many people buy shit they can’t afford, trying to floss on high street pretending they’re doing well while their car lease eats through their weekly paycheque? How many people are saddled with debt over some bullshit purchases they neither needed nor really wanted save for its utility in making them look like something they’re really not?
That’s the thing I don’t get about haters. Most of them never really seem to grow out of it. Always looking at what’s in the next woman’s pocket while completely ignoring all the shit they do that’s causing havoc in their life. People can’t even stomach a difference in opinion anymore. We’ve seen that full well. People getting killed over a certain viewpoint and then when you ask the haters what they said that’s so bad they’ll mumble some buzzwords and an out of context misquote from their ragebait news source.
It’s just so crazy.
We have everything we need now to live amazing lives. We have the technology, the social progress, people have never been more free, more self-determining, and yet so many spend their lives looking for ways in which they’re unfulfilled. We’re throwing it all away. Gilded by our chains. It’s almost like we can’t handle the fact that we’re supposed to be happy. We can’t be at peace. We refuse to be.
I think the only thing we should be hating on are haters. You can have critiques and criticisms, I mean disagreeing and dialoguing about it is the very fucking fabric of a functioning society and intent is everything. Are you criticizing cause you suck at life or are you making an observation because you believe it to be true and think the world could do with knowing it?
I guess I can understand the mentality, but I don’t understand why you would stay there. That’s the thing. People ask questions and arrive at certain conclusions, but once they get there they act like they’ve reached the final frontier. Like, that’s the end of the line I’ve figured it all out no need to keep looking. Its the whole smart enough to feel superior to others but not smart enough to know you’re a dummy.
People really only argue in their self interests. You become a rich person, you defend them. Or, you become a rich person and you try to be like the general pop because you want to be a hero or a martyr. It’s those weirdos born with a silver spoon in their mouth complaining about capitalism while riding on their coattails of their parents nineteen investment properties.
But then, you end up as a broke loser with a job you hate, you defend those too. You act like it’s a virtue to be an abject failure. By the way, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with these jobs. I’ve done them all. But you all know the kind of person I’m talking about. Stacking shelves and complaining about his ex wife and how the governments fucking him before pissing off 5 minutes before shift ends to sink a schooner at the pub.
That’s the hater. Avoid those people like the plague. The ‘I’m too old’ people. The ‘if I’d only started sooner.’ The ‘I’m not built for that’, ‘that must be nice’, ‘easy for you to say’ mob that never bring a moment of joy when you step into their presence and will NEVER let you be happy. The ones who will tell you about their high school football days when you tell them you bought a house or got a promotion. Ugh.
You think you have to be around people like that, think like them, act like them, because that’s all you’ve ever known. If you think it’s freeing to be rich, imagine how freeing it is to never be around people who drain you. To take responsibility for your own shit. To say what you really want to say. Now that is rich. THAT is wealthy.
Nathan's Writing 