can the rich and poor be friends?

lechat

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Dec 5, 2012
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Soooo. i was watching "The flash" the other day, as you do, and the billionaire of the hour, cause DC comics are so original, decides to buy out a whole (fancy looking) restaurant so he and his buddies can nom in peace and the whole crew is all like "woah not cool dude" and it got me thinking yeah not cool dude.

The guy probably spent what was equivalent to a years wages or more on that team of what i would assume are slightly above middle income earners but it didn't even occur to him because it was just the cash he had in the glove box of one of his 10 Lamborghinis.

So could you be friends with someone and continue to work your 9-5 shit job knowing full well that your buddy bob could spare enough cash so you could retire in luxury and not even take a dent to his savings?
 

WhiteFangofWhoa

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Jan 11, 2008
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I am. He's not exactly a millionaire but well-off enough that he has a great car and large house to himself and doesn't have to work. He used to work at a casino though, so he knows how tough a 40-hour week can be.

I've never asked him for any kind of handout. No one is entitled to do that whether they're your friend or not, and taxes force that in part anyway, but he has told me that if I were ever in truly dire straits such as a lost job or banking fraud that he would be willing to help me. Of course he doesn't have anywhere near enough to buy out a restaurant and not feel it, but he's not the type to do such a thing either even if he could, or he wouldn't be my friend.

I'd say it's more a feeling of social segregation- most of your friends are people you met either in school or at work. The children of millionaires don't go to the same schools as everyone else, so it's unlikely a middle class person might become friends with them or share interests. The last time I heard of something truly insensitive from a rich person towards a poor/middle class outside of the Republican party was probably that line by Paris Hilton.
 

TakerFoxx

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Jan 27, 2011
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There are challenges, yes, but so long as the rich is aware of the advantages his wealth brings and doesn't flaunt it and the poor doesn't feel entitled to anything simply because they are friends then sure.
 

sky14kemea

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Jun 26, 2008
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How rich are we talking here?

I was friends with a guy who lived in a house with 3 floors, had his own piano etc. Was super posh but I dunno if he was exactly "rich". Just far better off than my family was.

He was super nice too though. I miss him. :C

I think it's possible, it really depends on the persons individually.
 

lechat

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Dec 5, 2012
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Don't think people are fully grasping what i mean by rich here.
I earn a pretty decent chunk of cash compared to the average Australian and I've known millionaires and multi millionaires and people who earn more in an hour than i earned in a week. I even knew a guy whose boat is worth 4x what my house is, but there are people out there that could pay my life's salary with the money they have in their change purse.

I just can not imagine telling my friend I'm off to do another 60 hour week while he takes his yacht sailing in the Caribbean for a 6 month vacation.
 

sageoftruth

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Jan 29, 2010
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I'm still not sure I understand. Are you saying that it would not work because you'd feel tempted to ask him for handouts, or is it because you could not relate due to your different lifestyles? Is it simple jealousy?

Right now, all I understand is that if someone has way more money than you, it is somehow a deal-breaker.
 

lechat

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sageoftruth said:
I'm still not sure I understand. Are you saying that it would not work because you'd feel tempted to ask him for handouts, or is it because you could not relate due to your different lifestyles? Is it simple jealousy?

Right now, all I understand is that if someone has way more money than you, it is somehow a deal-breaker.
I think mainly in the relating sense that us average joes have to spend the majority of our lives working and i don't see how you could relate in the slightest. In the case of all the "rich" people i know most of them came from working class backgrounds and worked their way up to be millionaires so they still appreciate earning and managing money.

When it comes to something like arrow or flash the billionaires are just casually chilling with the lower class, you have people like barry who has to squeeze saving people's lives into his busy schedule of investigating crime scenes and helping his 'dad' clean the house when a couple of million could allow him to focus on more important things.
 

Zontar

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Feb 18, 2013
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Well, in my circles of friends from my collage we have people who are on the higher end (million dollar home plus six figure income) and the lower end (just around the poverty line), so I'd say yes, but then again this is Canada so people might just think it's general Canadian kindness instead of anything to use to compare with the rest of the world.
 

MorphBallBomb

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I don't really see to what degree I, as an individual, am entitled to another individual's resources.
I am inclined to befriend the rich, so as to learn the methods by which they became rich and replicate them.
 

RedDeadFred

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May 13, 2009
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If we're talking about varying degrees of the middle class, then yes. If we're talking about someone near the top of the gap compared to someone near the bottom, I'm sure it's possible, just extremely unlikely. It's such a different culture. Then there's the issue of them even coming into a situation where they might become friends. With Ray Palmer, he's going to have opportunities to make friends with all sorts of people seeing as he's going to be flying around helping them. That just doesn't happen in the real world.
 
Mar 30, 2010
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I hang out with people both much higher and much lower than me on the pay-scale. Doesn't matter how much someone earns, all that matters is that they aren't an asshole about it.
 

CharrHearted

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Aug 20, 2010
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No. Hell no. Money changes people, especially if they're born with it already. I had this when I use to have a best friend, he was rich, was becoming successful, I was poor, and the opposite. Up comes the day were i get to the depression stage, and ive been depressed to the point of almost killing myself, self-loathing and being very pessimistic, Rather than help me, said best friend suddenly thinks im a useless burden and only befriends me now (by his own words) out of pity. He doesnt sympathise or try to assist me emotionally because he lives in a coddled culture where he gets everything he wants and becomes a massive abusive douchebag because of it, To the rich we're just stepping stones for them to step over, tools for them to make money, And if your depressed because you live in a shitty terrible life, you're ungreatful... Yeah!
 

Revnak_v1legacy

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Mar 28, 2010
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Not unless the rich guy starts helping the poor guy out, since I doubt it would be easy to get along with somebody when you know that your total monthly expenses are equal to the other guy's monthly shoe budget.
 

Erana

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Feb 28, 2008
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How can you be friends if you're spending your energy stating at their stuff instead of, you know, bonding, hanging out, doing friend stuff and the likes? Obligations and passive-aggressive grudge expression are not a part of friendship.

Now, as someone whom was promised so much from family members, (you know, people whom it isn't totally unreasonable to at least expect promises to be kept) I know for a fact that getting hung up on people not giving you things just makes you miserable. Its a rabbit hole to all the injustices of life, so you just can't waste the energy.
 

Foolery

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Jun 5, 2013
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Depends how in touch they are with the fact that not everyone is like them. If they start suffering from Marie Antoinette Syndrome, and spouting anything similar to "Let them eat cake" that's when I lose patience. I've distanced myself from people in the past, who basically had their parents bankroll most of their adult life from college education to apartment rent, and act incredibly arrogant about it.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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Yes, they can, but there is a limit. Someone who is say a billionaire being genuine friends with say a lifelong homeless person isn't generally going to be possible because it inevitably leads to the question of who would let an actual friend live on the street like that when it would be a trivial act to change things. That said when it comes down to questions of "poor comparative to the rich guy" that's something entirely different, someone who is say middle class and pretty well off overall, having a decent house they are in no danger of losing, a fair amount of spending money, a decent car, etc... having a friend who is a multi millionaire or even a billionaire is a different matter entirely. When it becomes more a question of relative creature comforts as opposed to a basic state of living it's not that much strain on a relationship.

Of course it should be noted that there is more to this than simple economics as there are different types of rich people with different perspectives. For example when you start dealing with "Old Money" families that have been rich for generations there tends to be a very different mentality from say "new money" who are people that got rich within a generation or two. Old Money tends to be concerned with dynasties and holding onto what they have a lot more than those with more recent fortunes, as they literally watch other people with fortunes come and go. They tend to want to keep their relationships, marriages, etc... within very select groups of other old money families so as to reduce the odds of losing their money and oftentimes property, as it can literally take one bad marriage to decimate a fortune that might be a hundred or more years old.

The "Old Money" types are the ones people most think of when they look at snooty rich people, but to an extent there is some justification to the attitude which you can see when you look at what happens to fortunes every year, especially with some of these billionaire party boys who made their fortune during say the .com boom and then squandered it all.

If you were to ask me I'd say that no, a poor, or comparatively poor person can't really be friends with someone from "Old Money" and raised within that world. When it comes to newer money though, it's less of an issue and there tends to be less paranoia. On a lot of cases when it comes to celebrities and the like you see a lot of friends and family in their entourage for example.

As far as the whole Marine Antoinette thing goes, that's a very unique kind of situation that goes beyond even "old money" logic since she was the queen of France. Royalty/Nobility/Peerage can all come with an entirely separate set of logic and rules, in that case your not just looking at finances, but also politics, international relations, and both preserving and spreading blood lines. While history has recorded her as something of a twit, I don't think Marie Antoinette was all that bad, mostly having been smeared by out of control socialists who were pretty much cleaning house of their rivals and the opposing government/royalty. The initial leaders here being so out of control that eventually they themselves were put down like mad dogs although by that point the damage had been done. Her whole "let the eat cake" thing and lavish spending was mostly portrayed the way it is because of the explosive class divide, she mostly just acted like a Queen, which she legitimately was, and what's more she had a lot of her own money from Austria, so she wasn't entirely spending from the Crown's coffers, her marriage to the king arguably having brought far more money into the purse than she was spending which was part of the point. That said acting like your a queen when your not is kind of obnoxious, and in all seriousness while "Old Money" can be arrogant they usually don't take it that far, in many cases what seems to be looking down on people is more a matter of isolation and tending to their own affairs. If you ever follow the so called "Society Pages" you'll sort of get the idea. Part of the fascination with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie is that they are effectively "old money", and are out in society and a lot more approachable (or at least visible)than a lot of similar people, when most people who are connected to things like the Hilton Hotel fortune tend to keep a relatively low profile.
 

FPLOON

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Jul 10, 2013
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Yes as long as they're not living under the same roof... That's just a sitcom just waiting to happen...

Other than that, one of my friend's rich, but he loathes "free money" with a passion... The less we bring up his wealth, the better in this situation...