Here's an excerpt from a draft of the introduction of Why It's OK to Want to Be Rich.
Americans have split personality disorder when it comes to money. Everyone wants to get rich, yet everyone is somewhat ashamed of that desire. We admire the rich, but also believe the rich are amoral, vicious people. We enjoy luxury, but also believe that enjoying luxury goods is crass and base. We love material wealth but also denigrate materialism. Many of us signal our wealth whenever we can, but we find it annoying when others do so. We love rags to riches stories, but also love stories about noble peasants living the simple life or about rich people getting cut down. We read get-rich-quick books, but no one thinks money is chicken soup for the soul. We nod in agreement when Gordon Gecko says, “Greed is…good; greed is right,” but then clap with approval when that greedy bastard goes to jail.
You probably want more money. If you had the winning Power Ball ticket in your hands, you wouldn’t tear it up, nor would you hand it over to the nearest homeless beggar. If your boss offered you a 20% raise, you wouldn’t say, “No, thanks, I’ve got what I need.” If your small business—let’s say, selling St. Paul the Apostle T-shirts[i]—suddenly doubled its profits, you’d probably think God blessed you rather than cursed you. Even if you don’t always express it, you want more money. You sure wouldn’t mind being rich.
Hey, same here. I’m just like you. Years ago, I chose to accept a business school professorship because business schools pay their faculty twice as much as liberal arts departments.[ii] I admit twice the cash hasn’t made me twice as happy. But I’ve been “poor” (by American standards) and I’ve been rich, and rich is better.
Still, most of us feel in our guts that there’s something unsavory about wanting to acquire wealth. The American Dream involves striking it rich—or at least rich enough not to worry about money. Yet, throughout US history, we’ve been suspicious of wealthy people. Wanting money, wanting to be rich, and indeed, having wealth, seems degenerate. We are not supposed to talk about making or having money in polite conversation.
Wanting more money is sort of like watching pornography. Most people do it,[iii] yet most people also feel ashamed of it.
Most Americans are Christian.[iv] Jesus says, “It will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven…it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”[v] Read out of context—which is how most people read this—it sounds like being rich is damnable.
At the same time, many Americans now subscribe to the idea of the “prosperity Gospel”. They hold that if they have sufficient faith in God, God will deliver them not just basic financial security, but riches. Baptist minister Russell Conwell claimed,
Money is power, and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it. You ought because you can do more good with it than you could without it. Money printed your Bible, money builds your churches, money sends your missionaries, and money pays your preachers, and you would not have many of them, either, if you did not pay them. I am always willing that my church should raise my salary, because the church that pays the largest salary always raises it the easiest. You never knew an exception to it in your life. The man who gets the largest salary can do the most good with the power that is furnished to him. Of course he can if his spirit be right to use it for what it is given to him.[vi]
Even today, you can turn on your TV Sunday morning and find preachers pushing the same line. Love God and God will provide…not just a house, but big house; not just a car, but a luxury car. It’s hard to see why God would provide all those riches if riches ruin our souls. Again, Americans have a split personality disorder when it comes to riches and wealth.
In general, many of the great moralists of history sure seemed to distrust money and wealth. Jesus told us the meek shall inherit the earth and warns us that money corrupts our souls. The King James Bible refers to money as “filthy lucre” four times.[vii] While the Buddha was fairly practical about the need for money, he nevertheless lived as an ascetic. Contemporary Buddhist monks try to transcend the need for money.[viii] The message seems to be that we would ideally overcome the need and desire for wealth. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau claimed that the invention of private property was a huge mistake.[ix] He thought the love of money makes us vain and stupid, leading to “destructive and narcissistic forms of self-love.”[x] Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer warned us that, “Riches…are like sea-water; the more you drink the thirstier you become…”[xi] Karl Marx predicted that one day the poor would rise up and murder all the rich people, and afterward create egalitarian heaven on earth. Paul McCartney crooned, “Money can’t buy me love,”—but apparently $48.6 million can buy him a divorce.[xii] Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders railed against the 1%--never mind that Sanders is himself now among that 1%.[xiii] Kansas’s old hit song “Dust in the Wind” reminds us “all your money won’t another minute buy.” Everyone says, “You can’t take it with you when you die.”
This book is called Why It’s OK to Get Rich. I think the finger-wagging moralists have it wrong—or at least have exaggerated their case. Money is the greatest of all human inventions. Loving money, wanting more stuff, and wanting to be rich isn’t just normal, but perfectly reasonable. These desires needn’t and don’t usually debase you or make you a bad person. If you despise money and making money, the problem is usually that you don’t understand what money is, what it does for us, and what it takes to make it.
The stoic philosopher Seneca had it right: A well-adjusted person neither scorns luxury nor is consumed by it. Seneca says instead, “It is the sign of an unstable mind not to be able to endure riches.”[xiv] If your money causes you problems, the problem is you, not the money.
I plan to examine—and refute—three widely shared prejudices against money and riches:
1. It’s bad to want money. Wanting money is crass materialism. It shows a lack of concern for the good things in life. The good things in life are free, and money’s a distraction.
2. It’s bad to make money. Profit-making is exploitative profiteering. For-profit money-making means harming and taking advantage of others. The good vocations selflessly serve others. Not-for-profit is better than for-profit. Business is dirty, and the only thing that vindicates making money through for-profit ventures is if you give away most of what you make.
3. It’s bad to keep money. If you do strike it rich, you have a duty to give most of it away. You should live simply so that others may simply live. It’s wrong to live high while people die. You must give back to society, not merely take.
These are indeed prejudices, not just mistakes. These anti-money, anti-market views are based on unfair stereotypes, built-in biases, or pre-scientific theories of how economies, trade, and money actually work.
I will argue, on the contrary:
1. It’s OK to want money. Money is freedom. Money insulates us from the bad things in life and makes it easier to lead a life that is authentically ours. It’s reasonable to want money because it’s reasonable to want what money does for you.
2. It’s OK to make money. In general, the more money you make, the more you do for others and the more you serve society. Making money can be and usually is a way of serving society. Making money can be and usually is a good and noble thing. The average business or wage earner has already “given back” just by performing their core service. Anything extra is, well, extra.
3. It’s OK to keep your money. Sure, we all have a duty to help others in need. The more we have, the stronger that duty and the the more we should help. But investing money in profitable enterprises can it itself be a way of helping, which often does more good long term than most charitable giving. We have the prerogative to enjoy our money too; we aren’t born into perpetual debt to society.
I’m not saying the other side is entirely wrong, though. There are indeed people who find no joy in money, or for who are shackled rather than liberated by their money. There are plenty of rich people who got rich though ignoble means; their wealth is to be condemned. Many of us, both rich and middle class, give far less to charity than we should. But none of that vindicates our general distrust of money or the wealthy.
Pretty much everyone loves money. But hardly anyone loves money for its own sake. They love what money can do: open doors, send us places, show us new opportunities, remove sources of worry, and buy us security against most of the bad things life sends our way. They love that money can liberate us to have the best chance of leading a life that’s authentically our own, of being the authors of our own lives. They love that money puts them in a position to care for others rather than needing care from others.
They are not rapacious and greedy. Still, they want more rather than less, and frequently want more than they have. They want to live in comfort and indulge in some luxuries.
And that is OK.
[i] Yes, that’s a thing. I found dozens of examples, from $15-30, on Google Shopping.
[ii] https://poetsandquants.com/2018/08/11/what-business-school-professors-are-paid-may-surprise-you/2/
[iii] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/british-sex-survey-2014-over-three-quarters-of-men-watch-porn-but-women-prefer-erotica-9762906.html
[iv] http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/
[v] Matthew 19:23-24.
[vi] http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5769/
[vii] In the King James edition, 1 Timothy 3:3; 1 Timothy 3:8, Titus 1:7, and 1 Peter 5:2.
[viii] https://www.ecnmy.org/engage/this-is-how-buddhist-monks-live-without-money/
[ix] Rousseau 1985.
[x] Rathbone 2015.
[xi] Schopenhauer 2004.
[xii] https://www.law.com/almID/900005560787/?slreturn=20180929084833
[xiii] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/06/bernie-sanders-made-over-1-million-last-year-and-has-joined-the-1-percent.html
[xiv] Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, letter 5. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_5