The Adulation of the Rich

The corrosive effect of wealth has been part of the common core of European belief for, literally, thousands of years, e.g. “It is easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven” and we’ve inherited that view, at least aspirationally, from our European forebears. In an op-ed at the Washington Post scholars Charles Matthewes and Evan Sandsmark lament that we’ve lost that view:

The point is not necessarily that wealth is intrinsically and everywhere evil, but that it is dangerous — that it should be eyed with caution and suspicion, and definitely not pursued as an end in itself; that great riches pose great risks to their owners; and that societies are right to stigmatize the storing up of untold wealth. That’s why Aristotle, for instance, argued that wealth should be sought only for the sake of living virtuously — to manage a household, say, or to participate in the life of the polis. Here wealth is useful but not inherently good; indeed, Aristotle specifically warned that the accumulation of wealth for its own sake corrupts virtue instead of enabling it. For Hindus, working hard to earn money is a duty (dharma), but only when done through honest means and used for good ends. The function of money is not to satiate greed but to support oneself and one’s family. The Koran, too, warns against hoarding money and enjoins Muslims to disperse it to the needy.

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How did we lose sight of the ancient wisdom about wealth, especially given its ample evidencing in recent studies?

Some will say that we have not entirely forgotten it and that we do complain about wealth today, at least occasionally. Think, they’ll say, about Occupy Wall Street; the blowback after Mitt Romney’s comment about the “47 percent”; how George W. Bush painted John Kerry as out of touch. But think again: By and large, those complaints were not about wealth per se but about corrupt wealth — about wealth “gone wrong” and about unfairness. The idea that there is no way for the vast accumulation of money to “go right” is hardly anywhere to be seen.

I think they’re underestimating how long the adulation of wealth has been part of the standard American package of beliefs. It goes back well into the 19th century and probably earlier.

The United States has a Calvinist soul and part of that soul includes the idea that the possession of wealth demonstrates the favor of God. You cannot read a Horatio Alger novel without coming away with the idea that the wealthy are virtuous. They’ve been called “luck and pluck” novels and the “luck” part largely consists of marrying the boss’s daughter and the boss is generally portrayed as a) fantastically wealthy and b) virtuous.

The Great Gatsby was written in 1922. One of its central themes is the admiration, even fascination with the rich.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the story of how a man with just the shirt on his back pulled himself up by his bootstraps and became wealthy. That is the essential American myth and Benjamin Franklin is greatly admired.

The United States is and always has been a plutocracy. Go back and check out the net wealth of the Founding Fathers if you don’t believe that was the case. Admiration of the wealthy is part and parcel of that.