I was reading about the \u201ctax cuts\u201d recently passed by Congress. Whoever wrote the article concluded that the new legislation wasn\u2019t likely to alter the trend that seems to be that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.<\/p>\n
This brought to mind a study that was performed recently (I think it was published in New York magazine) that indicated that having a lot of money is not necessarily a benefit at least when it comes to embodying characteristics that lead to inner peace like empathy, honesty and compassion. One of the more interesting conclusions was that money can actually make you mean.<\/p>\n
Another study at the University of California-Berkeley looked at the differences in the way rich and poor people think. The study found that the rich have less compassion for others \u2014 but \u2014 it isn\u2019t because they have faulty \u201chard-wiring.\u201d It\u2019s because they lack an education from the school of Hard Knocks. They may just not be as adept at recognizing the cues and signals of suffering because they haven\u2019t had to deal with as many obstacles in their lives. The study came to some other interesting conclusions, like: drivers of high-end luxury cars were more likely to cut off other drivers and the rich were more likely to prioritize their own self-interests above the interests of other people.<\/p>\n
One could read the study and conclude that all rich people are jerks… of course that\u2019s not true \u2014 rich people are just people and they come in various flavors and sizes and have different levels of empathy, honesty and compassion.<\/p>\n
As you may have guessed, all this got me to thinking…. what does it mean to be \u201crich?\u201d I guess that I don\u2019t know any really rich<\/em> people \u2014 at least not in the sense that most people think of as rich<\/em>. If you ask me if I\u2019m rich, the answer has to be, \u201cyes!\u201d Everyone can be rich in many ways \u2014 obviously you can be rich monetarily, but you can be rich emotionally, spiritually, socially, etc.<\/p>\n I certainly don\u2019t have enough money to do all the things that would be nice to do, but if the market collapses and\/or the economy goes south, we can probably still make ends meet and maintain a reasonable standard of living, I\u2019m reasonably healthy, I have the very best wife in the world, the best kids and grandkids. We\u2019re not social butterflies, but we have a good number of friends and enjoy socializing with them… I can sleep at night content. I\u2019d say that comfortably puts me in the rich category \u2014 as someone once said, there is a gigantic difference between earning a great deal of money and being rich…. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was reading about the \u201ctax cuts\u201d recently passed by Congress. Whoever wrote the article concluded that the new legislation wasn\u2019t likely to alter the trend that seems to be that the rich are getting richer and the poor are … Continue reading
\n\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n