Why are the rich always protrayed as hard working?

Do you think the top 1% are all hard working people that did what it took to become wealthy?

Certain propaganda machines are preaching the gospel that hard work will lead to wealth and that all wealthy people are hard working and if your not wealthy then its your fault?

Do you think that hard work will make you wealthy?

Do you think the majority of the wealthy used hard work to achieve there wealth?

I'm sure some have worked hard to get where they're at. Years ago I read a book "rich dad,poor dad" I think and the rich dad pretty much said not working hard is the way to go.

Think about it... I'd like to be rich and if I could get there not working hard why not?

reply to post by LDragonFire


Generally, money and influence dominate the information you are currently receiving through various information channels.
The mega rich understand that the best ROI in the world comes from buying politicians. Number two is from active PR (PAC's in the US) and lobbying.

In a world where real returns on capital hover around zero, look for this to intensify.

What they don't know and never will is that on a human level, productive activity is it's own reward.

The thing is, they work hard doing research on things like investments and trends and use that knowledge to take chances on investments that will weather sink or swim.

The sitting around doing very little most of the time IS the reward for that burst of hard work.

Sure though, a great deal of it is luck.

My father and my family was poor when he left the forces, he went to uni [while working], got qualified, climbed the ranks and is now the boss of a medium sized company. I watched his life change in front of my eyes and he DEFINITELY worked hard for his pay checks, now he gets to earn that cash all the time and work very little daily for it, only using his knowledge and experience to risk further investments.

The douches that just inherit a company and are rich, stay rich because they already have the cash to pay someone else to do the hard work so they can stay rich, these guys i dislike.

LDragonFire
Do you think the top 1% are all hard working people that did what it took to become wealthy?

Certain propaganda machines are preaching the gospel that hard work will lead to wealth and that all wealthy people are hard working and if your not wealthy then its your fault?

Do you think that hard work will make you wealthy?

Do you think the majority of the wealthy used hard work to achieve there wealth?

Absolutely not!

If anything, I believe that more often than not, quite the opposite is true. I believe that most of the wealth today is achieved by far less scrupulous means than hard work and usually comes at a huge cost to others and/or the environment. In other words, it's the result of the modern day business strategy of "privatization of profits" & "socialization of losses."

With the undeniable truth being that more often than not, hard work does not insure a wealthy outcome and knowing that great wealth can just as readily be achieved via trickery and deceit, I think a bigger question would be; "Is wealth the true measure of success?"

Again, my answer would be "absolutely not!"

F&S for the OP

You mean like those hard-working Kardashians?

reply to post by LDragonFire


The rich are rarely PORTRAYED as being hard working. They often publicise themselves as such however, which is entirely different. Most times you see a rich guy in a movie, he is some paper shunting limp wrist, who would not know a hard days work if it got up and tore off his nose with one mighty tug.

You NEVER see a rich guy in a movie, breaking his own back for the wage he earns, just ordering some other people around to do it for him. At best, rich fellows in movies, TV shows, and so on, are organisers, not doers, and at worst they leech off of the expertise that they have available to them through their employees, while taking all the credit for their efforts, and the lions share of the pay packet.

There are exceptions to that of course, the irrepressible Tony Stark of Iron Man fame, as played by Mr
Robert Downey JR, but the fact is that the character he plays is driven by super hero backstory, and his work ethic has more to do with self defence and insulating himself and his people against danger, than it does to do with a good honest days pay for a good honest days work. He stays up days and nights tinkering with his armour, because he has some unresolved issues stemming from his traumatic encounter with a brigade of sand dwelling psychopaths, causing him to have a frenetic work rate and ethic!

That is hardly a good example, because let us face the facts here, the film in which this plays out, is based on a damned comic book! Smashing as it is then, Iron Man cannot be used to illustrate a rich man working hard.

In fact, I would dearly love to see if there really is a film which cannot be said to be a fluff piece for the one percent, which actually depicts a hard working rich man, and truly, I am not sure that such a thing exists in all the world.

Personally, i believe that in most cases, the opposite is true. There are SOME cases today, where a person works hard, and either is at the right place at the right time, or start their own business, and make their OWN wealth. Those kinds, in my opinion, are extremely respectable. However, 9 ti,es out of 10, we go to the age old saying of "its not what you know, its who you know".

In these instances, business are handed over to friends and (usually) family members. The same thing goes for those high paying, upper management positions. Those people disgust me to no end...

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work, the lower middle class and upper lower class would be living in castles

LDragonFire

Do you think that hard work will make you wealthy?

Do you think the majority of the wealthy used hard work to achieve there wealth?

No.

Baring plain dumb luck (lottery, inheritance, divine inspiration for an invention, being highly talented and passionate about something that just so happens to pay extremely well (music, acting, sports, etc), etc), manipulation, deceit, treachery, and above all, psychopathy coupled with ambition, will make you wealthy.

"Hard work" as colloquially thought of has nothing to do with it.

LDragonFire
Certain propaganda machines are preaching the gospel that hard work will lead to wealth and that all wealthy people are hard working and if your not wealthy then its your fault?

Do you think that hard work will make you wealthy?

Do you think the majority of the wealthy used hard work to achieve there wealth?

The capitalist propaganda machine needs to keep the gentry doing it's maintenance. Working retail is the most basic form of this, but the top 10 percent wealth generators must keep their engines of production going whatever the commodity might be.

The idea is not to work hard but work smarter. Then let your money work for you. This is why it's not cheating till you get caught. Overdrawn banks, Mutual funds, hedge funds, ponsi schemes all became sketchy and made many rich but more poor.

There's a huge difference between the self made rich and the inheritors of wealth-especially multigenerational- in work ethic.

Lumping them altogether is too much of a generalization. Gates vs Rockerfeller. "New money" vs Old money.

There's probably the same, nearly the same, percentage of slobs rich and poor. Hard working low wage earners and slobs content sucking up beer and watching football- leaving their kids to go whatever direction they fancy-after their pay checks arrive, private or gov't.

Most business owners, that I've seen, work their butts off...or they don't survive.

One of the perks of "making it" is time off. vacations, travel.

Hit a lotto and tell me how hard your likely to work...unless you have a passion or a dream to indulge.

Money gives freedom, choice, options.

Personally, I could use a bit more myself.....

Just from personal experience I can tell you the more money I make, the less actual work I do.

I enjoy telling people I worked hard for that huge pay check, but it isn't really true. Working hard to me would be mopping up the floor or serving people in retail. Meeting with someone and convincing them to sign a piece of paper...well I guess it's a bit of mental work and preparation but the actual time it takes is very little compared to physical labor.

I don't know...most rich people don't do much of anything, and how are we defining rich? People making 200k+ a year likely work hard and did a lot to get there, climbed the corporate ladder etc.

People making 1 Million + a year...chances are not so much. Chances are they networked, got lucky, had an opportunity and seized it (and are probably white and born into upper middle class), or were born into money.

There is always the rare success story about someone making the American Dream...the media likes to focus on these people. In reality, the ultra rich don't do anything I would consider "work", more like play.

tinner07
I'm sure some have worked hard to get where they're at. Years ago I read a book "rich dad,poor dad" I think and the rich dad pretty much said not working hard is the way to go.

Think about it... I'd like to be rich and if I could get there not working hard why not?

The Rich Dad, Poor Dad books stressed working smarter, not necessarily harder...leveraging money and assets, etc.
In my opinion, most people become wealthy and successful by learning how to manage both time and tasks.
If you own rental properties, what's more valuable...you unclogging a toilet and saving $80 on a plumber or finding another property to flip that can make you $10,000 or more. That's working smarter, not harder.

Now once you become wealthy is where I believe the stereotype of a lazy wealthy person comes from. Their money is making money and they have multiple income streams and most of their time is devoted to managing that.

It's well known to psychology that people are unrealistically optimistic about themselves which makes sense because the alternative might very well be crippling depression. This makes it much easier to buy into the delusion of the mythical "American dream." This often held belief that everyone could be rich, if they just tried harder. Following that logic, the average wealthy person must have innovated in some way or worked harder to out compete their peers and attain wealth.

I'm reminded of a famous quote:

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

― John Steinbeck

The gist is that people often refuse to acknowledge the faults of the wealthy because they embrace the hope that they will one day be one of those lucky few enjoying the rarefied air at the top of the heap.

reply to post by LDragonFire


No matter how much money you make, you only have 24 hours in a day.

The wealthy would be maximizing the financial returns that those hours allow, which requires systems, methodologies and tenacity to stick to the process when they would be requiring rest.

In all cases that I have observed, luck provides an even chance of return or loss and the consistently wealthy, while they enjoy luck, would be foolish to rely on it solely.

Where the wealthy withdraw from work, they employ managers whom they pay well and who are most likely to maximise their returns. These are not cruzy and carefree people, they are hard workers by definition.

reply to post by LDragonFire


So that us good little sheeple who do work hard have something to look up to and aspire to!

More seriously though, it always strikes me that the more money people earn, the less they seem to work.

reply to post by 11:11


This.

I also have found the more money you make, the less actual "work" you do. The problem is though, it's still work -- it's just a different kind of work. In my case, the more money I was paid, the more I had to use my brain instead of my arms/back.

I made decent money as a manual laborer on construction sites, but the guy sitting in the office answering emails and answering telephone inquiries made 3 times as much as myself. I went home exhausted, he probably sat in a hot tub and relaxed.

The higher up in an organization you go, the more the work is delegated downstream. You have trusted, quality people beneath you that carry out the marching orders you give them. It takes a lot of hard work to get into a situation like that, however.

I know IT guys that probably only do about 2 hours of actual work in a given 8 hour day. They achieve this by being very good at what they do, and utilizing interns/newer staff members to distribute the workload.

The people at the top don't just do less physical work, they work "smarter".

Does a man that digs ditches for a living work harder than an engineer sitting at a computer all day? Does a musician work harder than a waitress? Work is more than physical labor.
A mechanic can be a waiter but a waiter can't be a mechanic because of learned skills. Both work hard.

reply to post by LDragonFire


Many stories of the 'fabulously wealthy' depict them as lazy hedonists (The Great Gatsby, 50 Shades of Grey & etc).

The truth is that people don't just hand you money for nothing but too many people live their life expecting that. These people are the chronically poor, they live on the unemployment benefit and dream of winning the lottery (or other gambling).

The truth is that you can't win consistently enough like this to be wealthy.

The way to wealth is to have multiple incomes that all slightly exceed your living requirements (even if only by a little). One job/source of income is a risky way to live and will never lift you way above everyone else (even if the pay is fantastic).

SOME are hardworking, almost all had parents or grandparents who worked hard and took advantage of (at least in the US) capitalism, and a few of those who inherited wealth actually work hard to ensure the wealth of their lineage for generations to come, but MOST, in the way I envision the way the world is, resemble Billy Madison.