How does ILX *really* feel about wealthy people?

"some of my best friends are rich, really"

There are some good ones out there.

"who is the goodest rich ilxor"

They're not all bad, but I think I could do it better. Just gimme a chance.

"my moderate hatred is a thinly masked jealousy "

Hello!

> "who is the goodest rich ilxor"

I think a double blind iron chef style contest could probably determine that pretty easily.

My dad was rich. I am not. Being rich is good but shouldn't be an aim in itself.

people are people so why should it be you and I should get along so awfully? (judge not lest ye be judged etc)

more or less, yeah. being rich can get you better healthcare, etc., but ultimately will not save you from being sick and dying. yeah, there are lots of obscenely miserly rich people, and obv. i wish they would be more generous w/their monies, but people are tight-fisted about all kinds of things, beyond money, so i'm not particularly expecting that to change anytime soon.

very poor countries end up showing up towards the top of "i am happy"-by nation poll, so it would seem that there is not a direct correlation btwn the two factors. (see also: american celebs)

so...i don't begrudge the fabulously wealthy their money. enjoy yourselves (it's later than you think!)

How come there's no "They're nice when I can latch onto them and have them 'sponsor' me." option?

indifferent, really. I don't envy the rich and I don't think I'd be considerably happier if I were wealthy.

dell the correlation stops somewhere. thank god or bill gates wld walk around w a permanent boner.

people are people so why should it be you and I should get along so awfully?

I thought David was singing "artfully" for a long time.

xpost
lol boner/sex= happiness a whole 'nuther subject!

not to mention priapism

i love rich people cuz they very rarely try to kill me. unless you owe them money they will hardly ever kill you. unless it's, you know, from the toxic fumes of their smokestacks. or you are married to them and they commit a crime of passion. or they are some tin-pot dictator of some banana republic. BUT IN GENERAL, rich people don't want my blood. and i love them because you never know if they will give you money. THEY MIGHT. you just never know. so they are slightly excruciating in that way, but it's not an altogether unpleasant kind of excruciating feeling. BECAUSE THEY MIGHT. i was never fond of making them bagel and lox and cream cheese sandwiches though. this is true. mostly they are benevolent cuz they just had a fat fucking steak and a nice glass of scotch. and they think you are amusing. and as long as they think you are amusing, you get to live another day.

"my moderate hatred is a thinly masked jealousy "

Hello!

Yeah, no shit. Why would someone not want to be rich? I don't even have a moderate hatred, so long as said rich person isn't an asshole which I don't believe comes with the territory.

The moderate hatred does show up because I dislike being jealous of assholes with money - I'm not jealous of your average everyday moderate-income assholes.

The vote will be split between the "Eat The Rich" and the "thereby killing & sending them to an eternal damnation which won't be nearly long enough" options, giving everyone the impression that the rich aren't nearly as hated as they are! See how pervasive the plutocratic conspiracy really is!

one option is for vegetarians.

scott otm

I voted for the killing option obv, but sadly I don;t believe in eternal damnation.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but ILX seems to be mainly populated by educated middle class people, a fair few of which probably have wealthy parents and are thus likely to end up wealthy themselves...

Captain Save-a-Rich-Tosser

The former, yeah I guess, the latter, heh no.

I admit I do have something amounting to a chip on my shoulder about the latter.

a fair few of which probably have wealthy parents and are thus likely to end up wealthy themselves...

well, just for the record. That's not me.

Well, there seems to be a number of people here who went to public schools. Which means their parents can't exactly be poor...

In the same way that the wealthy make case-by-case decisions about which under-vermin are amusing enough to treat as pets, a lot of people hate "the wealthy" en toot but are okay with individual poshos.

my prinicples are up for sale

ILX is proof that college doesnt pay

I'm in cahoots with the upper classes.

So you don't see anything remotely strange about a cohort of mostly middle class people from relatively privileged backgrounds, many having benefitted from private schooling and university education to boot, getting all "hate the rich"?

No, because your cohort of mostly is straw bollocks

You think ILX is not mostly middle class?

oh come on this place is and always has been sickeningly middle class

snap

Perhaps there should be a secondary poll where people declare their income and class, then we could correlate the two polls, then we would have a serious answer to this serious question.

Also, results aren't in yet. Also, your line here is as old and dull as the line you're attacking.

Also, "wealthy people" is always somebody else, isn't it?

HEY, why not blow some minds and point out how wealthy we all are compared to large swathes of the world?

There's plenty of time for that, it's still early.

Also, the only people moaning about the rich on this thread are the gobshite rent-a-proles like me.

"Also, results aren't in yet" = you're right, but I don't want to admit it

"your line is old and dull" = can't be arsed to argue my case

Also, the only people moaning about the rich on this thread are the gobshite rent-a-proles like me.

http://4chanarchive.org/images/co/2590289/1198561721053.gif

Wau those translation skills are really something. How does that pay? I'm considering a career move....

Well, there seems to be a number of people here who went to public schools. Which means their parents can't exactly be poor...

Your parents no doubt struggled and were not wealthy, but unless you were on a scholarship or something, your definition of "poor" must be a little elastic if it includes "able to send child to public school"...

lol assisted places C/D?

Fair enough, I withdraw my comment!

"public school" must mean something different in Englande

It does.

Strangely enough, it means "private school".

We had a thread about that the other day! I'm not sure of the exact definition but I think it's something like a public school (UK) is a private school that demands some kind of standard of intelligence rather just having to be rich to get in? Something about letting in the paupers if they're smart enough? And then mocking them for being common.

Please let's not have that conversation again

these public schools must be very generous, i've never met anyone who went to one and paid for it

I met hundreds of them

Yeah, point them at that calm reasonable discussion thread.

Oh wait.

is it as good as the bottle opener thread? :D

you've gotta define 'rich' if you want a serious answer to this. mine would tend towards

Why would someone not want to be rich? I don't even have a moderate hatred, so long as said rich person isn't an asshole which I don't believe comes with the territory.

judging people because they have money is as dud as judging them because they don't, and, yes, ILX is sickeningly middle class.

income isn't really a great measure of it either, because from what i can tell ILX is populated mainly by 40 and under, and not many people make the megabucks before then.

judging people because they have money is as dud as judging them because they don't

vs

sickeningly middle class

Haha I was just going to say: what's sickening about that? I can complain all day about people's tastes and uses to which they might put their money, but the sheer fact of annual income is hardly shameful or nauseating or whatever.

My only beef with rich people is that they don't give me their money.

Would be interested to hear definition/examples of 'sickening' in this context yeah (I realise that darraghmac was just echoing another post but still)

I'm not bothered by them, they only consume more sadness.

Haha I was just going to say: what's sickening about that? I can complain all day about people's tastes and uses to which they might put their money, but the sheer fact of annual income is hardly shameful or nauseating or whatever.

You have no problem that some people earn tons of money while others, working long hours for a pitiful wage, have just enough to get by? I'm not sure, but sometimes I think there should be a limit to how much you can earn.

my moderate hatred is a thinly unmasked jealousy

thats me

(And I'm pretty sure that you'll disagree with me.

In a way I think that many people are *overstretching* their budget. That's what I meant on the rich thread. Many people are just not thinking about the future and are spending way too much money.)

And by the word "that", I was referring to being middle-class. But that's just me and my crazy "reading".

He's saying you don't judge people for having lots of money, or for not having money. You judge them for having a moderate amount of money, maybe a kind of middling office job and a home mortgage and a minivan.

No but he could reasonably clarify that "sickeningly" refers to homogeneity of ILX or something

all the super-rich people I know seem either a) really unhappy; b) nuts; or c) completely oblivious to the world around them

but by any reasonable global standard I am fabulously wealthy (as are the vast majority of posters here, I would think) so who cares what I think

i love all this angst from my throwaway remark

I guess I don't hate wealthy people so much as I hate waste and greed and a kind of consiences-less consumerism

What Class do you consider yourself to be?

Well but "super-rich" + "completely oblivious to world around you" sounds like a pretty sweet combination.

"I live in a bubble, and it has room service"

a fair few of which probably have wealthy parents and are thus likely to end up wealthy themselves

For sufficiently limited values of "wealthy," yes.

My only beef with rich people is that they don't give me their money.

And that they bid up the price of damn near everything where I live.

"I live in a bubble, and it has room service"

Money cannot buy happiness. However, it can buy some very nice distractions from misery.

Cheese cannot buy happiness either, but I could go for some cheese right now

I actually get really bothered by the "money can't buy happiness" line. Of course you can't buy happiness. Having some cash vastly improves your odds of finding it yourself, though.

It's very true about the happiness thing, which is why so many rich people give all their money away so they can get on with enjoying life.

Having some cash vastly improves your odds of finding it yourself, though.

this is not true at all

Or as the saying goes, it may not buy happiness but it buys a way better class of misery.

Happiness is notoriously elusive. There is a certain kind of great wealth that makes people alienated and paranoid (or alienated and haughty) which definitely isn't conducive to finding happiness, but poverty certainly isn't very conducive to finding happiness either.

list of famously unhappy/fabulously wealthy people is loooooooooooooooong

tho M White basically OTM

Or maybe the list of unhappy rich people is a result of their lives being open to public speculation as opposed to the list of unhappy poor people that nobody's ever heard of?

i was just about to say...

NV's got a point. Envy makes unhappy wealthy people interesting to the masses, but a nice, happy, well-adjusted billionaire is a little *yawn* most of the time, I think.

xpost 0 List of miserable poor people is loooooooonger!

Actually if we want to get scientific about a pointless argument concerning a commonplace expression: there have been lots of studies suggesting that people who live in extreme poverty (relative to the society they're in) very often suffer from things that are diagnosable as depression and stress disorders, which are undiagnosed in part because they're not going in for care, but also because they have concrete reasons for depression and stress disorders that can kinda cloud the issue.

And if we want to get etymological about it, I think the original purpose of "money can't buy happiness" is as a reminder for when people are making certain kinds of decisions between the two. Otherwise it has no use: it's like if you say "man am I thirsty" and someone says "water can't buy happiness." Well but I want water, so.

Money = does not really appear to have huge direct effect on happiness in terms of personal relationships and fulfillment and meaning in life, but it can certainly deal with a lot of the minor struggles and stresses that sap energy, and leave you with a lot more time and resources to get to work on the personal-fulfillment stuff

nabisco OTM re: $

Are you 'Wealthy People'?

"I live in a bubble, and it has room service"

this is kind of how I feel some days and it's kind of totally depressing

where is some good literature on the wealth/misery curve? eg people who should by all means be comfortably middle-class in rich countries are vastly more likely to report themselves as unhappy in life than poor folks in poor countries

nice, happy, well-adjusted billionaire is a little *yawn* most of the time

well yeah it's not like people are going to get a lot of schadenmileage out of reading up on Paul Allen

xpost

But again, poor folks in poor countries have nothing to gain from reporting themselves as unhappy - it's not like they're gonna be in the market for anti-depressants - and I don't suppose there sense of un/happiness is researched too often.

"their sense", even.

I think as people get toward middle age then wealth starts to play a larger role in a person's sense of happiness.

oh well then I guess I will welcome the onset of middle age then

xpost

Google something along the lines of depression + poverty and you'll come up with plenty on the sort of research I was talking about upthread. Just two bits from one sum-up article about a couple studies:

- Low-income people with depression are less likely to respond to treatment and more likely to be suicidal than those who have higher incomes, according to a study in the January issue of Archives of General Psychiatry

- Research has shown that people with lower socioeconomic status (SES) are more likely to develop a depressive illness and that their depression is more severe than that of people higher on the SES scale

It goes on, and it's easy to leap to the conclusion that these things are true for the obvious common-sense reasons: prolonged and persistent poverty is not fun, limits your quality of life, diminishes your health and sense of social standing and worth, presents you with constant challenges just to maintain an unappealing situation, etc.

eg people who should by all means be comfortably middle-class in rich countries are vastly more likely to report themselves as unhappy in life than poor folks in poor countries

I think a lot of it has to do with knowing, or thinking, that you could be doing better money-wise. Greed, status, social climbing, keeping up with the Joneses, etc.

I saw this the other day, here:

Would you rather earn $50,000 a year while other people make $25,000, or would you rather earn $100,000 a year while other people get $250,000? Assume for the moment that prices of goods and services will stay the same.

Surprisingly -- stunningly, in fact -- research shows that the majority of people select the first option; they would rather make twice as much as others even if that meant earning half as much as they could otherwise have. How irrational is that?

This is just crazy to me.

Well perhaps people's understanding of demand and pricing is such that they know the "assume for the moment that prices will stay the same" is fucking bullshit and impossible to assume, given the question

yeah that caveat is utterly meaningless

big fish small pond syndrome

That's like saying "would you rather have it be really hot or really cold? Assume for the moment that the temperature would be the same"

I'm not bothered by them, they only consume more sadness.

-- jel --, Friday, 18 January 2008 19:00 (3 hours ago)

trust the j-dog to drop the profound bomb like a thief in the night

I think researchers who pose those kinds of questions in this century are being purposefully obtuse. I mean we've covered about a million times now that markets are not rational, that even "bounded rationality" is a poor approximation of agent behavior, and people still want to go around and run a survey like that, wtf, revoke that tenure, man.

Even taking the question at face value, I'm not sure why it would be "stunning" to learn that people desire money for reasons of social standing (and social leverage) as much as for purchasing power!

because that's how TV Experts write op-eds

no anthropologist or even sociologist, I don't think, would bother to merit that as stunning or surprising in the least. psychologists and economists on the other hand seem to be completely amazed whenever they discover behavior that goes against their hypothesized models

A really wealthy person, the other year

all the super-rich people I know seem either a) really unhappy; b) nuts; or c) completely oblivious to the world around them

Hahahaha these are like my three basic states!

So does this mean I get to be rich?

(I want to avoid the LOTTERY CURSE, mind.)

nabisco, I know you're used to being called 'otm' & all but FUCK are you the most fucking right on about fucking "money doesn't buy happiness," and everything you said after it. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A+ No whammies!

All I can tell from photos of mega top tiny teeny highest richest percent of the rich is that to be rich, you have to have orange skin.

what i feel about wealthy people is, thanks for college great-granddad.

No but he could reasonably clarify that "sickeningly" refers to homogeneity of ILX or something

sorry, was just echoing the other post mostly. ILX is sickeningly liberal, really.

I get so used to that that it feels weird to read anything NOT liberal on the internet.

Like conservatism exists on some seldom-visited corner of the internet to be c&p'ed onto ILX for laffs at is hyperbolic backwardness.

conservatives are out getting votes. more's the fucking pity.

Anyone who uses internet leaves house? NEVER. (See: 'dot com guy' who has since changed his name back to normal.)

FROM: Marija
DATE: Saturday February 25, 2006 -- 2:48:49 pm

hi i know the dotcomguy from my english book...and we all like him..it was sure funny...okay bye

Can I just interrupt this discussion to say that I had an "affair" with a millionaire about four years ago. One of his jealous stalkers ran his car into mine - deliberately. The millionaire disappeared without so much as an apology or acknowledgement while my life is in tatters.

Next time, get yourself a nose-jobbed trophy wife, bud!

What is it about the so-called "cream of the crop" that they cannot apologize?

Scprned <3r

money does not equal happiness is such a platitude but then money does facilitate happiness. also how do you say it in english? money and are related happiness up to a point but stops at a certain point, the law of diminishing returns?

where is some good literature on the wealth/misery curve? eg people who should by all means be comfortably middle-class in rich countries are vastly more likely to report themselves as unhappy in life than poor folks in poor countries

i'm assuming poor ppl in general have a problem asking for help.

money and happiness are related up to a point.... *sigh*

What is it about the so-called "cream of the crop" that they cannot apologize?

I'm sorry.

One of his jealous stalkers ran his car into mine - deliberately. The millionaire disappeared without so much as an apology or acknowledgment while my life is in tatters.

Did you expect him to buy you a new car? Or to take accountability for the accident? Your life was in "tatters" because your car was hit? He had additional jealous stalkers? Male jealous stalkers? What kind of love polygon was it? Either way, it sounds like player may have just moved on and failed to notify you.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

truth will out

millionaires are "rich" again?

judging the rich is cleverer than judging the poor.

and more popular, kids!

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-balloons-20110817,0,1840808,full.story

great story

whoa

we talked about this briefly before
The paranoid high-security olive farmers of Coachella

money is power in a corrupt society

Whenever someone tells me "money isn't that important to me", I always ask them if they'll give me some of their money. They never do, so evidently it's more important than they like to think.

I see the future like star trek - money is gone - but that will nto happen for a long time

They never do, so evidently it's more important than they like to think.

Not necessarily. It is that you are even less important to them than their money.

i like the idea that there are 10 secret multi-millionaires lurking on ilx and we are all unknowingly auditioning for their generous patronage (pick me, pick me!)

I will let you write the Led Zeppelin poll results if you pick me!

anybody good enough with google earth to find these creeps?

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=33.652199,-116.223101&ll=33.651726,-116.222917&spn=0.004762,0.006196&sll=33.792258,-116.467252&sspn=0.157698,0.553718&num=1&t=h&vpsrc=0&gl=us&z=18

a journalist looked up that farming operation's patent applications, including:

The patent application refers to “spore-forming microorganisms, present in soil, plants and other forms of organic matter, (that) survive excessive heat of a fire within soil or carbonized wood.” The microorganisms are purported to enhance plant growth and plants’ nutritional value, and can be useful in “producing DNA-enhanced plants which may be consumed by human individuals for enhancing human DNA.”

btw if you google "enhancing human DNA," this is the first result:

http://www.reelviews.net/movies/s/species.html

Roberto Carlos himself denied that it was the giant pots of cash that drew him to Anzhi, and told me that he was excited to be "making history" by being at the club.

When asked about the £1m Bugatti Veyron that Kerimov, whom he describes as "a good friend", bought him as a birthday present earlier this year, he shrugged. "A Bugatti is basically the same as a bicycle; it's just a mode of transport," he said. "In Brazil, I had a helicopter."

“I wanted a place where my kid could get a haircut and sit in a chair that looked like a firetruck and watch the Wiggles,” she says. “That wasn’t happening in the West Village at the time.”

http://nypost.com/2015/05/24/inside-the-bizarre-life-of-an-upper-east-side-housewife/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPFacebook&utm_medium=SocialFlow

gotta love the scooby-doo ending at the end

v real possibility that every single mother who partakes in this bizarre lifestyle is actually a lifestyle columnist writing about how bizarre it all is

Eat the rich, so overlooked

The rich know not what they do

The saying that "Behind every great fortune is a great crime" is perhaps slightly less true now than when it was coined, but I doubt it. However, I grant that not everyone who can be accurately described as "wealthy" would also fit into the category of having a "great fortune".

I personally figure that most westerners with an income above $75,000 per annum or a net worth above about $500,000 deserve to be categorized as "wealthy", just because this puts them so high in the global pecking order of wealth. Try telling someone living on less than $5/day that such folks aren't wealthy and listen to their howls of derision.

i don't have too much money myself

watching rich wealthy tan white guys on tv tho has certainly affected my personality