I was talking politics the other day and the subject came up that wealthy people have a patriotic duty to pay more taxes than other people.  I’m fighting to keep my comments away from the subject itself and stick to my original intent in this blog, which is to discuss the reasons behind this kind of thinking.

I believe there are many people in American society who resent success.  There is a pretty pervasive belief system that says, “If you’re successful, you must have taken it from someone else so it’s not rightfully yours.  My largest concern for the people that believe this is they take away their own possibly for what I call ONO (Options not Obligations) by closing their minds to the possibility of attaining personal wealth. The belief that the rich are bad or have to sell their souls to become rich is a belief that shows a lack of research.

I have run in the circles of the rich and the ultra rich, and I will tell you that in that demographic there is an even distribution of quality and non-quality humans just like the circles, I hang in, the common income earners.  There are turds in both.  There are great people in both.  I would say overall, in my life experience, I have found a higher percentage of quality in the higher income than the lower, but not by far.  What amazes me is that, as a society, we are so quick to move to a sour grapes mentality to chastise this group and, in fact the “talking heads” on behalf of The Left use this group as a “whipping boy” to rally the troops.  Whoops, I said I wouldn’t do that.  Couldn’t help it. Hehehe.

Back to my original point that if you criminalize wealth creation in your own mind, it will make it incredibly difficult to get there yourself.  I see people lean on that crutch in my own extended family circle and say, like four year-olds, “I don’t want to play.”  The result is, they don’t.

Don’t buy into this thinking.  You can build wealth without selling your soul.  You deserve the blessings that surplus money can bring.  More importantly, your family and the people you love will be blessed by the extra time you have as a result.  Build and strive for wealth, you will grow as a human and you will get a chance to enjoy some of the things in life that money can buy.