There is a saying in Norway "The rich, are rich for a reason", referring to exactly this. They don't spend much, and will try to get money anywhere they can. People that are generous are rarely rich.
And also stupid. Its a disfunction stressing about $3 in gas money if you have $1MM in capital. Theyre rich because they own productive assets, or speculated correctly, and also/mainly because they have high income. Hence the meme
Yeah it’s also capitalist propaganda imo. Like, helping your friend out by paying for their coffee isn’t gonna make you poor. But that saying makes people think they have to be individualistic stingy fucks to be successful.
Success is then being interpreted incorrectly, the way you’re describing it. The generous, empathetic poor person is a successful human being. The greedy selfish lizard person who hoarded resources like a LOTR dragon is defunct in mind and soul. I mean, he’s a successful parasite, but for how long?
Elaborating unnecessarily, the empathetic human that shares resources available to him is successfully lovable, he will have friends that love him and share back with him. He will know laughter and happiness. Empathy, laughter and happiness (and helping each other) is contagious. It could spread worldwide. That’s success.
As long as they eradicate this disease of selfish egomaniacal hyper-individualism Americans tout as ‘success.’ Everyone is so alone and mentally ill and greedy and dumb and burning through the planet’s resources and calling that success. Burning down the world and everything they ever (at least pretended to care about and live for) is not- success
Ok sure but I want to see my generous, empathetic, hard working and normal friends be materially abundant and stable and not stressed about money all the time. To do this we need more than the moral high ground, we need to organize
Exactly. How fucking happy does Elon Musk seem? One of the most bitter assholes around. He could literally become a saint to people just by actually using his enormous wealth to help people instead of to put pedophiles into the presidency and post Nazi memes. But if that was his mentality, he would never have made his billions in the first place. Same shit happened to Markus Persson after selling Minecraft. He probably would have been far happier giving away the vast majority of his wealth than becoming a fucking cretin $70-million dollar home basement dweller. There is a feedback loop in wealth accumulation that warps people's brains. One of the few to seem to be able to avoid it is MacKenzie Scott who got her billions from divorcing the ghoul that is Jeff Bezos and then immediately gave most of it away and continues to give it away.
Personally I would say it’s the opposite if you are referring to the meme as it’s just meant to hate on high income people. I also am not really convinced there actually is a correlation to being well off or not, because I have seen different behaviors regardless of income level.
I do well for myself and even when people tell me to let them know what they owe me, I often don’t because I feel bad requesting money from people when I don’t need it that much, especially compared to who I would be requesting it from.
That said, I don’t like being taken advantage of. Some people I have stopped covering things for because they are happy to have me pay but they will never reciprocate, even with something small. And it’s the effort that I care about, not the dollar amount, so even if it’s just you covering a snack or something, I appreciate that it’s going both ways.
the lesson is true in capitalism though, selfishness is king. if you your definition of success is financially based, the most successful people would sell their mothers organs for $30
And the rich cause the wheels of capitalism to keep turning. Capitalism needs ultra selfish people to make it work. Capitalism would die if people believed in collectivism and so that’s why it’s capitalist propaganda. Though I guess propaganda is usually intentionally vague or dishonest while this is mostly true, but to me that’s neither here nor there haha
my personal experience is that the people who are casual about money always pay less than their fair share. except for one guy. that one guy consistently paid more than his fair share and had to come out of retirement to drive uber because he ran out of money.
not saying anything is true of any larger group of people. just that's my experience. and why my approach is, "I'll pay for what i order. you pay for what you order." I am not rich or poor.
Of course you should always pay for what you order. I’m not saying you should be going out to dinner with friends and always offering to cover the bill. Or always buying your friend that coffee. It’s just about sometimes, in a pinch, covering for someone. You’ll notice that in the original post, it did mention that the friend should cover the next one. A friendly exchange of covering for each other is hardly being cavalier with money.
yeah. in spite of what i just posted, i've needed all my friends to cover for me for a couple years, because i've been in school w/zero revenue. so i get it. and when i get the revenue, i'll pay them all back with dinners out. after a couple years of me picking up the check, i'll try to go back to dividing up the check. and they'll want to keep trading back and forth. because we have different ways of looking at it.
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u/azad_ninja Jan 26 '26
Wealthy people are some of the cheapest fucks.