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Subject: Re: USA USA WE ARE NUMBER ....six.
From: James Rogers <jamesr@best.com>
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Date: 26 Jul 2002 14:09:19 -0700

On Fri, 2002-07-26 at 12:49, Ian Andrew Bell wrote:
> This isn't particularly well-founded logic.  What you're saying is 
> that "most rich people are smart" and that the latter is causal to 
> the former.  By implication, then, you would say that "most poor 
> people are stupid".  This is true, statistically, because most 
> people are poor and most people are also stupid.  


I never said that rich people are smart, just less stupid than most
other people.  And most people who are poor do engage in more reckless
and stupid behavior in my experience; the people that are a bit smarter
don't stay poor for long, so it is a self-selecting population.  Hell, I
grew up in as abject a poverty as you can find in the US and I remember
quite well why the people that stayed poor were poor -- it certainly
wasn't because of The Man.  And my parents were poor because they made
lots of stupid choices -- I had front row seats to the whole process. 
Unlike many others, I actually learned from the experience.

And I've known a lot of wealthy people (both in a strict monetary sense
and general sense), and I can't think of a one that was a fool. People
who earned their wealth (i.e. 95+% of the wealthy in the US) didn't
manage to do so, and maintain their wealth, because they were fools.  It
isn't that these people are that much smarter, they just don't make lots
of bad decisions and stupid mistakes. Being very smart AND not making
lots of stupid mistakes is pretty much a surefire recipe for being
wealthy.


> Being smart, for example, has made Stephen Hawking famous and 
> respected, but he's not particularly rich.  Jennifer Lopez is by 
> all accounts a complete moron.  In fact, spend a weekend in Beverly 
> Hills and you will encounter vast numbers of people who are 
> profoundly stupid driving Rolls Royces and shopping at PRADA.


You are using a very narrow definition of "smart".  Smart doesn't make
you rich, it gives you the *choice* to be rich. Many people (e.g.
Stephen Hawking) are quite happy merely being comfortable and devote
their energy elsewhere than being "rich".  But I don't know too many
really smart people that actually choose to live in poverty.


> [...ridiculous caricature of wealthy people elided...]
> At the granular level, the notion that "most rich people are rich 
> because they're smart" is so anecdotal and naive that it's not 
> worth arguing about, so I won't.  Still, a compelling point worth 
> some clarification.


It sounds like you've bought into the absurd Hollywood depictions of
what wealthy people are like.  Hint: they are exactly like you and me,
but with a higher net worth.  In the U.S., the fact is that two-thirds
of the millionaires are blue collar folks who worked very smart and very
hard, and the vast majority of all the wealthy in the U.S. are
completely self-made (i.e. first-generation wealthy).  "Old wealth" is
incredibly rare in the U.S., as it typically comes and goes within three
generations, and the handful that you do hear about are the unusually
long-lived exceptions.

It's quite simple to become wealthy in the U.S. if you put some effort
into it.  However, most people prefer to merely be comfortable and
expend a lot less energy.  Virtually all the people I know who are
wealthy are chronic workaholics with above average intelligence and
exaggerated amounts of drive.  Most people would not consider those
people's lives "fun", though those people tend to enjoy what they do.


-James Rogers
 jamesr@best.com


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