© 2013 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. It’s better to be rich. - Gertrude Stein
Picture all of the rich folks in Congress looking into news cameras and talking loudly about the evils of rich people in society. Does anyone else think it strange for them to have so much reach and power because of their own wealth yet they trash being rich. Are they that stupid? I think they know that being rich is better.
In everyday life it is an interesting moment when people smack the rich for being rich and do so with a lottery ticket in their pocket. They malign the rich but have dreams of riches when they look at their lottery ticket. Is it more honorable to be made rich by chance? Is it different than if we are made wealthy by the sweat of our brow? Need I say that for every rich person made by the lottery there are thousands upon thousands of rich people made rich by their own efforts?
How do people become rich? Most, but not all are made rich by a liberal application of preparation, inspiration and perspiration. Most people in our society who become rich spend decades becoming an overnight success. Most are lucky to get good instruction as children. Know this: most are wealthy because they do the right things, not the wrong.
Seems some people think that rich is a four letter word. Well, it is, but most people aspire to be rich. Most rich people become so by trading things of value for money. Most cannot cheat their way into riches. A few do, but the majority of the cheaters are exposed and at times incarcerated. Trading fairly is a better way of becoming wealthy than trying to find suckers. Of course, the wealthy get envied for their wealth.
Envy is not becoming of people. It is quite ugly to have people kicking the shins of rich people who have followed the rules of society and prospered. There is the notion that all business is theft, that the only way for someone to be rich is for someone else to become poor.
In the popular press there is the notion that all people start with equal money and then one, the rich one, stole the money of the other, the poor one. Not so, what mostly happens is that some people learn how to please people and others either do not learn this skill or decide not to do so.
We have all been in restaurants when some of the wait staff stand and wait for people to fill up their tip jar and others work the crowd by being better as a wait person than they need to be. We have all over-tipped when someone really impresses us. Is that fair for the one worker who works the best to get the most tip money? The socialists among us say each worker should get exactly the same money. But where the tips are shared equally I find the service is also homogenized.
In discussing the rich we need to find a functional description of being rich. For some there is never enough money. They may look rich but to me they are not. The people who do not worry about money are quite rich. When I was five years old I was given a five dollar bill for my birthday and could not spend all of it in the local mercantile. I bought all I wanted and had money left over. It was the richest I have ever been.
Or, perhaps I am the richest I have ever been now with my sense of contentment. I have all I need and that is all I want. I wonder if I should try to tell young people how to become rich but I do not look rich. I do not drive an expensive car or wear an expensive watch. But I have all I want.
More so, how can government tax my contentment? They cannot and therefore I can keep my wealth when others lose theirs. I have been poor and I have been rich by my measure. Rich is ever so much better.
Dr. Michael Swickard is co-host of radio talk show News New Mexico 6 to 9 a.m. Monday - Friday on a number of New Mexico radio stations and through streaming. Email: michael@swickard.com
