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Is it considered greedy if a multi-millionaire doesn't leave tips or spend much money on others?

My parents owned/own a decent sized company, so I grew up as a "privileged" young woman in the US, as some would put it. On top of that, both of my parents are heirs to each of their family's fortunes. Growing up, my parents raised me with a strict set of values that may seem controversial. I will list a few examples here:


  • My parents always told me to never leave a tip for waiters/waitresses at restaurants because they are just fishing for tips. On top of that, they sometimes joked/encouraged that it is okay to subtract money from a restaurant bill if you receive bad service/food (though they only did that once or twice, as I recall). I do remember them leaving tips a few times, but those tips were left because the waiters/waitresses were genuine.
  • If you are by chance out dining with someone from a lower class, do not pick up the whole tab; you shouldn't spend money on the less fortunate. However, if you go out to dinner with only "equal" upperclass friends, you can pick up the whole tab if you beat your friends to it (everyone wants to pay the bill, so there is some competition to be the first person to slip your credit card to the waiter/waitress).
  • If you are shopping in any clothing store and a salesperson suggests you try on a specific thing of their choice, leave because they are trying to trick you into buying something. Additionally, if a clothing salesperson tells you something looks great on you, don't buy it because they are manipulating you to buy it.
  • They also taught me that people will go out of their way to get more money. For an example, if a car isn't functioning properly and my dad or his friends can't fix it, I need to just buy a new car because mechanics will do more damage to a car so they can get more money.
  • They also taught me to look down on anyone below the "middle class". Even "upper-middle class" people should be approached with some disdain.


There are a lot of other things they taught me for 18 years, but I do not want to bore everyone or take up too much space here. I have gotten in so many fights with people "lesser" than me because of the values my parents raised me with.

I honestly just think my parents were teaching me money conservation and how to be safe in this world, where people will use you for money, or even try to con you out of your money. Lower people seem to think it is merely "greed" and paranoia. A few of my parents' "equal" friends agree that my parents are a little too paranoid and greedy, but other equal friends think this cautious spending is a smart idea.

I want your opinion: would you consider this all greed, or is it thriftiness? Do you consider it reasonable for "five percenters" to conserve money in such a way? Is it rude to dislike/disrespect people from a lower social class, or is it justifiable since they don't work as hard and don't have the right family?
*Thank you David S. Rose for the edit.
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tynamite's avatar It looks like someone doesn't appreciate how wealth is generated.

Part 1

Under a capitalist system, wealth is generated through people's labour. Let's take Apple for example, the richest consumer electronics company. The Chinese working for the Foxconn factory who actually make the iPhones, work for a pittance under terrible conditions for terrible wages - so much so that they commit suicide. The owner of the factory, the bourgeois, takes his commission from each of the thousands of workers, the proletariat, and thus becomes rich even though he didn't do any of the work. He became rich not through doing labour, but by merely owning the means of production. That's how capitalism works. There's a pyramid hierarchy structure, of which the person above takes a cut of all the people below, even though the people below did more work.

capitalist pyramid

How does this apply to you?

Well for all the clothes, toys, diamonds and electronics that we enjoy, someone had to undergo slave labour in India, China and Africa in order for us to have those things for a low price.
In order for us to have cheap oil at the petrol station, people had to die in the Afghanistan and Iraq war so we could steal it from them.
For every extravagant purchase your parents paid for, people had to work for low wages in order for your parents profit to occur.

The truth is, that the millionaires are the people who get the richest, for doing the least amount of work. It's the working class who creates the wealth, and they are paid the lowest amount for it. Without bus drivers, checkout and shop assistants, taxi drivers, waiters, cleaners and phone operators, along with other menial jobs, society would break down and cease to function. It is the working class who do the menial jobs, which are often minimum wage, who allows society to function.

Could you imagine going to a restaurant to find that there's no staff? That's insane isn't it? Now could you imagine going to a restaurant to find that the owner of it isn't a millionaire? Yes we can imagine that, and it's plausible too.

If you was to kill all the millionaires, and all the minimum wage staff, you would find that society would be more affected if the minimum wage staff went, as it is those people who make society go round. We don't need another millionaire. Society will survive fine without it. What we need is more minimum wage staff, as those are the roles that allow society to function.

One thing that I suggest that you do, is to ask your parents where their money exactly comes from, and then ask those people where their money comes from, and where their money comes from and so on. What you'll find, is that there are thousands of people who go to work for not a lot of money, who in turn enable your family to become rich with a lot of money.

Karl Marx thought capitalism to be exploitation, as the basis of capitalism is to make profits high as possible whilst making wages as low as possible, whilst promoting wealth inequality by making money and wealth in the hands of a privileged few.

Well 85 people own as much money as 3.5 billion people. That's half of the world. Nobody said capitalism was fair, did they? It's just musical chairs. Is it half of the world's fault they're not as rich as Bill Gates?

You're privileged that you've never had to play musical chairs in the job market, because you were born beating The System.

Part Two

Is it rude to dislike/disrespect people from a lower social class, or is it justifiable since they don't work as hard and don't have the right family?
The idea that poor people didn't work as hard as rich people, is ridiculous, as the job market is a game of musical chairs, where it doesn't matter how educated or rich someone is, someone somewhere is destined to work for minimum wage.

The education system is not a meritocracy, and the only "work" a rich person has done is to spend money they already had or be given lots of money by rich people.

kids playing musical chairs

"The System" is something made up by the government, that decides who is going to work for minimum wage on a menial, service or intellectual job, and who is going to work above minimum wage and be well off. Someone somewhere is destined to work for minimum wage, usually the poor, so the government invented qualifications in order to make The System more fair.

From the age of 4, kids are sent to school in order to gain qualifications and are expected to be educated until the age of 21 which is when they are supposed to of have attained a degree.

Yet for many Americans and British people who leave university with a degree, they find it very hard to get a job that pays more than minimum wage. My friend in Italy teaches at a university, and she told me that the degree is just a worthless piece of paper, but to get one anyway as it's better than nothing.

What would you say to graduates I know who have put themselves into £30,000 in debt, who cannot get a job for years or a job that pays above minimum wage? What's the point of getting yourself £30,000 in debt, if you cannot find a good job at the end of it? These graduates who have spent 16-20 years in education, find themselves trapped in the system, rather than beating the system.

You should count yourself lucky that you're upper class, as you can spend a whole year off work. Money and wealth is gained from the backs off other people's labour.

Conclusion

Thinking that the working class deserve less respect than the upper class is wrong, because it's the working class who create the wealth for the least amount of money whilst doing most of the work. Without the working class, the upper class would not be rich.

Thinking that it's justified to disrespect the working class because they never tried as hard is wrong, because education isn't a meritocracy, and because many working class people with or without jobs cannot change their circumstances, as The System is a game of musical chairs, and someone somewhere is bound to be trapped in the system no matter how hard they work.

It is actually the government's fault why people are poor, as they created the economic system and the education system. Capitalism is based on inequality and government support it. Businesses are run by capitalists, capitalism causes inequality, so it's up to the government to diffuse the inequality.

If you look at relative poverty, differences of poverty between countries, you'll find that the government is responsible for creating the most of the poverty. Look at India how there are shanty shacks people live in where people live on $1-5 a day, and fancy houses on the other side of the road. The money is stratified. It's up to the government to reduce the poverty in India. But the government chooses not to reduce the poverty but instead create it by having tax free Special Economic Zones. This then robs Indian citizens of resources as developing countries are affected much by tax avoidance.

I was speaking to someone on Quora and she told me that her autistic son in his 20s is in prison for drug dealing because he didn't have a job. In America you can only claim unemployment benefits if you have worked for 10 years. In Britain that requirement doesn't exist. So whose fault is it that the son is in prison? His, or the government? How else was he supposed to feed himself? When I told her how much people got in disability benefit, she was surprised, and she wished that she could claim disability benefit like I do in her country. Politicians are more responsible for poverty than citizens are.

And by the way, not tipping in America is wrong because the employers use a loophole in the law to pay below the minimum wage and have the tips make up the difference. When you refuse to tip, you are stealing labour.



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