Are rich people and poor people fundamentally different?

[Insomniac]

Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald supposedly had a famous conversation on the difference between rich and poor.

Fitzgerald: The rich are different than you and me.
Hemingway: Yes, they have more money.In other words, human beings are pretty much the same, regardless of material possessions. But this was Fitzgerald's real quote.

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.For centuries, rich people were considered to be blessed by gods, or even after Jesus, the aristocratic class was superior even to wealthier merchants because they had a fundamentally different understanding about themselves.

For all the talk about the poor and how they should be taken care of, most who talk about how much they care are very well off, and I doubt a typical college professor could hold a conversation with 50-year-old, drunken high school dropout. Their understanding of their world and their concerns are so completely different, drop them on an island alone for 10 years and it might not even help.

But are people really that different because of their class, and if so, why?

[Archetype]

Depends on what you mean by fundamental.

[Da Raider]

For all the talk about the poor and how they should be taken care of, most who talk about how much they care are very well off, and I doubt a typical college professor could hold a conversation with 50-year-old, drunken high school dropout.

I thought this was about rich vs poor? Your typical college professor isn't anywhere near rich in wealth. Obviously, a college professor and a drunken highschool dropout are most likely in different tax brackets but...

[Insomniac]

Yeah, bad example. I agree.

[Mustard]

An apt comparison would be like the difference in fundamentals between the Walton family and a 50 year old high school drop out.

Yes, those people are fundamentally different. They think differently, they act differently, and they view life differently.

[Menace2Sobriety]

I don't understand? Are we to assume these people remain in the same financial state for their entire lives?

[IdiotBrain]

Then again Paris Hilton and the son of some rich Saudi Arabian oil sheik have two completely different views of the world as well. Hell, young American aristocrats and young English aristocrats have two completely different world views as well.

I think that poor people are more concerned with making more money as a means to achieve comfort, contentedness and essentially, happiness. Whereas people who were born rich don't see money as a means to achieve comfort, contentedness and happiness, but as comfort, contentedness and happiness in and of itself.

My girl just brought up something about Paris Hilton, because we were talking about this thread, and I realized that even now as that leech "works"... she really doesn't work. She adds nothing to society, she has never truly worked a day in her life. To her a stressful day may consist of not being able to find that $5000+ handbag she was looking for, or possibly having to be on camera for 6-8 hours for a TV show.

To someone like me, who wasn't born into money and has been working since the age of 14, when I think of a stressful day I think back to when I was working for my dad replacing old septic systems. [talk about a shitty job] I consider what I do now to be cheese, and most of my friends who work in a nice office couldn't IMAGINE being on their feet for 8-10 hours a night.

Everything is relative. This conversation could go on for eons with nothing even resembling a conclusion.

[Archangel]

They aren't. Otherwise, there'd be a fundamental difference between rich crooks and poor crooks.

[Bill Paxton]

They aren't. Otherwise, there'd be a fundamental difference between rich crooks and poor crooks.

There is a difference between rich crooks and poor crooks. Rich crooks are generally good at heart and fully of snappy one liners (see: Oceans 11)

Poor crooks are just asshole crackheads

[The Dude]

They aren't. Otherwise, there'd be a fundamental difference between rich crooks and poor crooks.

are we trying to ignore the elephant in the room?

[Morfin]

No, we are trying to ignore you av.

[Morfin]

Fitzgerald's point has merit, but is limited by his contact with the "rich." He was talking about a class of people who did not have to work or worry about money because their families had money ("old money"), as opposed to those who worked and earned a lot of money ("new money"). His contact, in my view (using This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned as semi-autobiographical sources), was with the old money type and hence his statement that they are different because they looked down on those who had to toil for a living, because there was less social class mixing in those days -- especially by the class that Fitzgerald hung out with.

I grew up poor and now have a relatively-high standard of living due to my and my wife's success. We live in a high-income area and have contact with both new money and old money people. I share Fitzgerald's view as it pertains to many "old money" people.

However, and this is a big however, I find, overall, that there is no difference between rich and poor per se, but between people with values and people without values. That is, I have met a good many snobs, both of old money and new money. And I have met a good many good, genuinely-nice people, both of old money and new.

To me, who has seen both sides, the difference is not one of rich versus poor, but good values versus skewed values.

[Archangel]

You say "snobs" as if that were a bad thing.

[Morfin]

I'm already in your sig once, I don't need to be there twice.

[Archangel]

A peasant who wins the lottery is still a peasant. What's that saying about how you cannot take the ghetto/trailer park/etc out of people? Shit, I mean, look at Britney bleeding Spears...

[Morfin]

Totally agree. That is the difficulty with generalizations. That is also why I think it goes down to what values you have, rather than how much money. As the saying goes, "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."

[Stax]

A peasant who wins the lottery is still a peasant. What's that saying about how you cannot take the ghetto/trailer park/etc out of people? Shit, I mean, look at Britney bleeding Spears...

That goes back to what Tua said about "are we meant to assume you stay in the same economic bracket all your life." Obviously if you are thrust into wealthy society (or vice versa) after you have defined who you are you are less likely to change. Americans love movies like that, Happy Gilmore, Mr. Deeds (Adam Sandler loves it, apparently), Pretty Woman, the last season of Roseanne. However two identical people BORN and RAISED in extremely different economic conditions will be pretty fundamentally different.

[Archangel]

The Beverly Hillbillies...

[Archangel]

Trust funds and expectations of inheritance are likely to skew your outlooks on life.

[Stax]

Trust funds and expectations of inheritance are likely to skew your outlooks on life.

That's the point. Like almost any other defining feature, different economic statuses in your formative years can yield different types of people.

[freegood]

My girl just brought up something about Paris Hilton, because we were talking about this thread, and I realized that even now as that leech "works"... she really doesn't work. She adds nothing to society, she has never truly worked a day in her life. To her a stressful day may consist of not being able to find that $5000+ handbag she was looking for, or possibly having to be on camera for 6-8 hours for a TV show.

To someone like me, who wasn't born into money and has been working since the age of 14, when I think of a stressful day I think back to when I was working for my dad replacing old septic systems. [talk about a shitty job] I consider what I do now to be cheese, and most of my friends who work in a nice office couldn't IMAGINE being on their feet for 8-10 hours a night.

Everything is relative. This conversation could go on for eons with nothing even resembling a conclusion.

I had a friend who read her autobiography. She told me that Paris does not touch her inheritance money for her living style, but rather from endorsements and what not.

In theory, she is not a leech. She is promoting a brand and lifestyle that we are consuming. Like Calvin Klein or P Diddy.....

She may be a cultural parasite and an individual waste of skin, but in the confines of this discussion, she is a half step higher than trust fund babies who have never worked for their living.

She's more like Dubya, who had everything thrusted on her and never had to take any big risks that inflicted personal consequences without the hope of her benefactors bailing her out..

[vasili denisov]

Fitzgerald's point has merit, but is limited by his contact with the "rich." He was talking about a class of people who did not have to work or worry about money because their families had money ("old money"), as opposed to those who worked and earned a lot of money ("new money"). His contact, in my view (using This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned as semi-autobiographical sources), was with the old money type and hence his statement that they are different because they looked down on those who had to toil for a living, because there was less social class mixing in those days -- especially by the class that Fitzgerald hung out with.

I'd say Fitzgerald's point is about a sense of belonging, that accompanies long held wealth, but a sense of security and comfort, an expectation that this is where I was born and fated to be. That's what Gatsby aspires to, not simply great wealth. He's kept out, not simply because he's a parvenu, but also, likely, because he's jewish (I remember vaguely that his original name is Gatz). Fitzgerald was acquainted with all kinds of money, he worked in Hollywood where all the wealth was recent, and he also saw that at the time there were still very strong ethnic and social shibboleths.

[The Batman]

A peasant who wins the lottery is still a peasant. What's that saying about how you cannot take the ghetto/trailer park/etc out of people? Shit, I mean, look at Britney bleeding Spears...

You can take the girl out of the trailer park, but not the trailer park out of the girl.

[Da Raider]

I have the tastes of royalty. You know, fine wines, cigars, expensive cars, private jets, harems, beheading wives who displease me, etc. I just lack the wealth, power and subjects who would submit to my every whim.

[Morfin]

Just show 'em the beheading sword. They'll submit then. Oh, yeah.

[Okie Medicvet]

I think it's not just wealth, it's culture, it's upbringing, it's experience. All these things are part of what make us us, and you can't remove any one particular from the mix and come up with the same thing.

Therefore it's C: all of/none of the above.