The Rich Really Are Rotten

I really don’t know what is real and what is not, in this list of accusations of Donald Trump. I know for sure he has silly-looking hair and I would not want to learn anything from him about hair.

There is a big business teaching people how to make money.  My husband and I have studied this with some of the big gurus, in public auditoriums and oversized mansions in Las Vegas.  I think some, although not famous, are ethical.

I do know that we have been followers of those who “sell information” and make money.  I have a lot of information that the world ought to know and I remember my amusement when I first learned it was possible to charter a university in California for only $5000, which does not seem like a totally unobtainable sum.

Obviously, the University of Estelle (that’s me) never happened.  Just read my stuff, and maybe you can avoid living at least some of it.

Let’s start here.  We all start with a belief system.  Something we have soaked up from our parents.  We all have beliefs about wealth and need to at least question them if we want to get there.

The publisher charges to get to this original article, but here is what is probably a reasonable summary:

My father of blessed memory was a Harvard-trained composer of classical music who studied with big names (at least in that field) and spent over 50 years playing organ and directing the choir for his synagogue. He eventually became a public school teacher, with a regular salary, something much lauded by his mother, my grandmother. In other words – music was his life and livelihood.

He never had a whiff of an entrepreneurial feeling about anything, certainly not his “songs written to your lyrics” business run through a tiny ad in the National Enquirer — something he was all too happy to give up when he went into school teaching.

He told me the rich tended to steal.  He was a timid man, maybe even a bit shy, and I certainly never saw him do anything dishonest in his life.

Only once, I went with his brother, my Uncle Nathan, to collect rent from some tenants.  Nathan was a bit pushy, but my father of blessed memory called him a “slumlord,” and told me how he had done some things to get money for the family when he was a boy but kept it all for himself — complex stories that were not exactly what you go to jail for.

I have heard too much lately of an increasing disparity between incomes of the ultra-rich and the massively poor.  People who look pretty middle class to me tell me about massive financial losses that have caused anxiety disorders and even caused folks to seek traditional drugs or even medical marijuana for their anxiety disorders.

“Psychopaths” or “sociopaths” or “Antisocial Personality Disorders” are folks who lie. They end up in jail a lot.  When I was in training, one of my more experienced and knowledgeable preceptors told me that I would not see more than 50% of them “turn around.”  Punishment for their misdeeds could help.  Sometimes, some kind of psychotherapy would help.  Nobody could predict which 50%.

These people who seem to have no reverence for either the truth or remorse in disregarding it sound eerily familiar.  I think I have worked for at least one surgeon and at least one psychiatrist who fit all the criteria for the personality disorder, but seemed smart enough to “get away” with everything, and really seemed to do quite well.

But thinking about rich folks like Bill and Melinda Gates and how their wonderful foundation works to improve world health, I have a feeling not all rich folks are wired like that.

The problem, as always with medical and most particularly psychological research, is what causes what. Maybe people who have the right combination, some kind of animal intelligence that is enough to get away with bad stuff, as well as the right characters not to feel remorse, can make it bigger than at least some of the rest of us.

Economic inequality seems to have something to do with illness.  Something even with a “prediabetic” state.

How naive to try to limit portions and sugary drinks when the real problem is greed, the fragilest part of our democracy, I think.

A few patients, who are trying really hard to educate and better themselves, seem to give me hope for an ailing world.  The importance of family seems almost to shine brighter in some of the family groupings, even fractured ones, that I see.

This is where the hope is hidden.

If love really does conquer all, and I am beginning to believe it does,  then we are all going to be just fine.