The Gap Between the Rich and Poor: Not Just in America

Gina Rinehart, one of the world’s richest women at an estimated worth of around $20 billion, isn’t rich enough by her own standards apparently.

Last week she informed the world that anyone can be a millionaire if they just stop drinking, smoking, and socializing and work more.  This is exactly how it works, obviously.  Just ask any suicidal worker in China putting in those fourteen hour days and quickly becoming millionaires.  Wait, I forgot.  China has a high rate of smoking.  That is what must be holding those folks back from becoming millionaires as Rinehart claims.

Today, Rinehart tells Australian workers that they are asking for too much and must not want to work because, “Africans want to work, and its workers are willing to work for less than $2 per day.”

This is what is called wealthy tunnel vision.  The ability to not see the forest for the million dollar tree house with no windows she must figuratively live in.  Africans want to work and are willing to work for less than $2 a day, therefore Australians must not want to work.  Pointing out the fact these continents have different standards of living and things like minimum wage and environmental regulations that are at different stages developmentally is irrelevant.  It is all about who wants to work and if the non-rich are not willing to work for less pay than the amount of money currently not making them rich then they are just lazy.

The most important factor here is, of course, who is making these statements.  Gina Rinehart.  A self-made billionaire who started from scratch and knows the reward of a hard days’ work.  A woman who started with nothing doing a menial job at the bottom of the economic ladder like working in a fast-food restaurant or digging ditches or something similar and has made her way up into the economic stratosphere through the world of mining.  A woman who…what’s that quick Google search to Wikipedia?  Her father was Lang Hancock?  He was a wealthy mining guy and Gina inherited her money and empire?  You mean to tell me Gina Rinehart has no idea that not smoking and drinking and socializing and working instead of doing these things does not automatically make you a millionaire?  Shocking.

The gap between rich and poor is just startling.  Not that this is necessarily anything new for mankind.  I’m sure in feudal times and even in ancient Egypt, for example, the wealthy heirs had no idea what it was like to truly work from the bottom on up.  But the fact that someone can have this insulated frame of mind in today’s world where information is so readily available is mind boggling.  Rinehart isn’t even aware of the reality that she is a multibillionaire because of the fact people in Australia working for her were willing to work and wanted to work and did not become millionaires by doing this.

Now she criticizes them and wants them to work for less money in the interest of making more money for themselves…or is it more money for her.  I’m confused by her own logic.