There are times when you see something and know immediately that it’s not going to trend well. When you look at politics, often you can tell the moment someone has lost the election, even if they don’t know it, by a goofy action. For Michael Dukakis in 1988, it was the way he answered the question about what he’d do if his daughter was raped. In 1992, it was when George Bush walked into a grocery store and was shocked by scanning technology of groceries, something everyone else had seen for years.
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People like to talk about class wars in this country all the time. It’s very common to use the term in politics when parties are going against each other.
The truth is that there’s a definite class war; there would have to be. Over 90% of politicians aren’t really from what we’d call the “worker” class so it shouldn’t be a surprise that they can’t identify well with the rest of us. Monetarily, an overwhelming majority of billionaires and millionaires pay little to no tax. Some of these people we never see; most we don’t even know.
Why not? Let’s take a look at it here as we examine 5 reasons why the rich aren’t like the rest of us.
1. They don’t shop where we shop.
Very few rich people shop at places like H&M and Penney’s. They’ll never shop at a Walmart. Most of the rest of us don’t shop at the Rolex store, and we’re pretty happy just knowing we can spell “Jaguar.” Shopping is one of those things we all do, but based on the kind of money one makes we rarely interact with each other. This leads to us not having a real idea how the other side lives.
2. They sometimes don’t shop for themselves.
When’s the last time you sent someone out that wasn’t a family member to buy your shirts, suits, gowns, groceries, etc? The rich does this often, although those who weren’t always rich still like to look for themselves from time to time.
Many of them are either too busy, afraid of the notoriety or feeling too elite to shop for themselves. Let’s face it, if you’re a multi-millionaire who can buy whatever you want, why would you want to go into a store with a small changing room to try on clothes with lots of people standing around outside waiting for you to exit?
3. They don’t have to economize like we do.
What will your budget allow you to do this week? Let’s see; $20 for gas, $45 for groceries, have to pay the utility bill and phone bill, and hopefully you’ll have money left over to have pizza Friday night before you have to worry about your bills for next week.
The rich have to decide if they want to sit in the first row of first class or the last, drive the Bentley or take a limo into town, have red or white wine with dinner, etc. During the period of ’09 & ’10 when the economy was off a bit you heard about some rich people thinking about whether or not they should sell their private airplanes and start flying first class instead. The horror! lol
4. The rich hire people to help them.
Who wouldn’t want to live like this? For that matter, maybe you should think about hiring an accountant.
Of course they hire people to help them: people to clean their house; people to cut their lawn; people to cook for them and drive them around and such. They also hire accountants and money managers, pay for coaching and training, and anything else that helps them to remain successful enough to keep earning the big bucks.
It helps that they have the extra money to help them do these things, but here’s the bigger question to think about personally. When’s the last time you decided it was worth saving up the money to train yourself to learn how to make more money? When’s the last time you thought about hiring an accountant to do your taxes or help you budget? When’s the last time you paid someone to invest your money and come to the house to talk to you about it? Sometimes we have to figure out when to pay someone to help us out so we can get on with other things to help us live better lives.
5. The rich don’t want to be poor, the poor and middle class don’t want to be poor, but the rich do something about it.
There are lots of success stories here about someone who grew up poor and became rich but there aren’t a lot of them. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen; we just don’t know about it happening.
There are even fewer stories about rich people who suddenly found themselves poor; maybe they’ve lost a lot of money like Ted Turner did, but he was still a multi-millionaire when all was said and done. Then there’s someone like Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, who lost her millions when her product was determined to be a fraud.
Those are extreme examples, but they set up a reality for them that the rest of us don’t have. The rich learn from other rich people how to stay rich, while many of the rest of us read about the rich but don’t read things on how to become rich.
Some people may not want to hear this but it’s truth. If you like your lot in life, then it’s all good. If not, do something about it. There’s nothing wrong with being rich if you earn it fairly and with a bit of hard work and dedication. There’s a lot of information out there to help you get there if we’ll only read it, trust it, and use it.
Are you inspired to be something great?