For a normal person, enough is enough. If I had, say, $100,000 in my bank account, and someone tried to tempt me into sin by offering another $1000, such a person would make no impression on me. I could afford to laugh at them. The normal person imagines that someone who already has everything neither needs nor wants more. In the popular imagination, money will tempt only people whose bank accounts are empty, who are facing bills they can't pay, who long for luxuries they've never been able to afford. In the real world, money tempts those who already have it. The guy who already owns a couple of yachts and a private jet will do unspeakable favors for someone who will give him yet another jet. The person who has billions burns with the desire to have trillions.
A famous quotation says, "Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.” The wealthiest, the oligarchs, already have all their needs met. And if, through some quirk of circumstances, they find themselves wanting or needing something they don't already have, they can easily obtain it. They have more material possessions than they can possibly use. And yet, they want more. Further, it upsets them when people who aren't wealthy are allowed to have things. They don't feel rich enough unless everyone else is verge-of-death poor. Thus, we see men who have the means to end world hunger using their influence to take food away from impoverished families. We see men who are guaranteed to live in comfort for the rest of their lives, whose wealth could easily provide housing and medical care to entire nations, working to cut off other people's access to housing and medical care.
Again and again, research finds that poor people tend to be more generous than rich people. High-income individuals are more likely to shoplift, to cheat at games, to take candy from children, and to cheat on their taxes. While not every affluent industrialist is a miserly Scrooge, those at the top are, overall, less giving than the rest of us, more likely to deplore the very existence of other human beings, more likely to openly tout selfishness as a virtue.
- World Economic Forum: Wealth can make us Selfish and Stingy
- Why Wealth Inequality Matters
- VNHS Mirror: Billionaires are Evil, and You'll Never Be One
- Oxfam: Top 5 Ways Billionaires Are Bad For the Economy
- The Guardian: Why Do Wealthy People Shoplift?
- The Atlantic: Why the Rich Don't Give to Charity
- The Guardian: Trump administration has pushed off 13% of Americans enrolled in food stamps
- House Judiciary Committee: The Cash For Clemency Racket
"Eat the rich, and you feed your family for a day. Tax the rich, and you feed them for life."
-- R.K. West