Why The Rich Feel Besieged: A CheckList For The 99% [View all]

[Fred Sanders]

"1 Over the past few decades, the rich have been accustomed to being lionized: splashed on the covers of magazines as the movers and shakers of the economy and feted in ballrooms for their philanthropy. That's largely a thing of the past. You don't have to feel sorry for them to understand that once you get used to something like that, it's unnerving when it goes away.
2 Even worse, the rich have come in for a lot of abuse since the financial crash. Fairly or not, they feel increasingly socially ostracized, and few things promote a feeling of indignation and persecution more than that.
3 Most of them have a feeling that they personally have done nothing wrong. Even within the financial industry, 98 percent of the players can argue that the bad actors were limited to the mortgage side and the derivatives brokers. The rest of them have clean hands. They were just playing by the rules, and they happen to have gotten rich fair and square.1
4 They have a belief that the protestors against the 1 percent are mostly just unreconstructed lefties who want to demonize the business class and shake them down for a handout. It's the sixties all over again.
5 They've been made to feel guilty for their success. Hell, even the pope is lecturing them. Again, fairly or not, nobody likes feeling guilty. It almost universally provokes defensiveness and defiance against the guilt-mongers.
6 Some of them have a genuine belief that the government is trying to intimidate them from speaking out. This is what's behind their
mania for keeping political contributions secret."



http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/01/why-rich-feel-besieged-checklist

To which I would add:

7. They have a sense of divine entitlement, as if THEY have been deemed worthy by a Higher Power to their success, and nothing of their success is owed to the OTHERS.