Over the past generations, there has always been three classes of wealth: the upper class, middle class, and the lower class. And not to mention, high Income earners likely are substantially educated, have high-status occupations, and maintain powerful social networks. The upper class, however, only makes up to 3% of the population of the United States, with 2% earning millions per year and 1% percent earning hundreds of millions to billions per year. There are pros and cons of being extremely wealthy, which may be people taking advantage of you because of the money and the welfare that you have. The question to be answered is whether rich people, in particular celebrities, deserve money and everything they have and why they deserve it.
To start things off, there are some people who are billionaires who were at one point in poverty or were homeless. For instance, Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, grew up in a housing complex that was for the poor. Despite the adversity he had to go through, he ended up winning a football scholarship to the University of Northern Michigan and went to Xerox after his graduation. Shortly after, he took over a coffee shop called ‘Starbucks’, which at the time had only 60 shops. Schultz became the company’s CEO in the year of 1987 and grew the coffee chain to more than 16,000 outlets worldwide. This goes to show that anyone that comes from a poor background can become wealthy if they are willing to work hard for what they have earned.
Secondly, there are some who were born into success and wealth because of the hard work that their parents had to put into it. In concordance with Ashley Moor’s ‘20 Celebrities Who Were Born Wealthy’ (3/9/2020), Adam Levine, the lead singer for Maroon 5 and ‘The Voice’ judge, grew up in Los Angeles while he attended Brentwood, a prestigious private school. Adam got to live a cushy lifestyle thanks to his father, Fred Levine, who found great success as the founder of retail Chain M. Frederic. This made Adam Levine’s path to wealth and fame easier as he met all his fellow Maroon 5 band members and Brentwood. There are those people who are born into success and those who had to work for it, it’s just that those who were born wealthy are usually carried to success.
In addition, there are downsides of becoming wealthy, although we envision ourselves being a rich chairman of a business. The question is, is becoming rich what we really want? To illustrate, according to Selena Maranjian’s ’15 Downsides to Being Rich’, if someone is famous or high in wealth, they lose their privacy and become more accessible. As a result, they’ll no longer simply be able to go out to a restaurant or a store-or anywhere-without at least a chance of being recognized, disturbed, photographed and perhaps gossiped about. Many celebrities have to deal with people going through the garbage they put out each week, with some having to find more private ways to get rid of trash.
There are, however, advantages of being in the middle class and the poor class. For instance, according to Quora’s ‘What Is the Advantage of Belonging to a Middle-Class Family?’ (3/9/2020), one of the advantages of belonging to a middle class and the poor class is that you learn to value and love your things that you have. To add on, another advantage of belonging in these separate columns is that people learn to value their money because it is hard earned. Therefore, belonging to the middle class or poor class family you learn that life is not always a ‘bed of rose’.
Now I'd like to consider someone who doesn't really fit into these categories or sources: a man named Frederick Clegg, who is the main character in a novel written by John Fowles. This source illustrates how wealth can make people do things that few would expect them to do. In John Fowles book, ‘The Collector’, Frederick became wealthy out of dumb luck by gambling. This led to him planning and kidnapping a girl named Miranda. What this takes away is that wealth can change people’s minds and drive them to make unspeakable and ominous decisions.
There are some cases where there are people who do and don’t deserve wealth, depending on how they use and conduct their wealth determines if they deserve to be rich or not. In accordance with Catey Hill’s, “The Dark Reasons so Many Rich People Are Miserable Human Beings” (3/9/2020), being rich does not contribute to happiness or great welfare, there are many millionaires (or billionaires) who became more miserable when they achieved their wealth and success. Once people have more than enough money to meet basic needs and be able to purchase small conveniences or repay debt, extra money may simply fuel “desires such as pursuing more material gains and social comparisons, which could, ironically, lower well-being”, - researchers of Purdue University believe. To put into perspective, wealth can lead an individual to become depressed or deep into their sentiments because once they get what they have always wanted and they realize that it’s not what they wanted after all.
In conclusion, people’s ambitions can be the nail to the coffin because once a person gets what they want, they always strive for more than what they really need. To my dismay and belief, why are people happier with less wealth happier than those who have more? Though this question was addressed thoroughly already, here’s another way to look at this opposition, an individual becomes selfish when it comes to them thriving to achieve success and this usually results in them to lose their social connectedness- and that eats into their overall sense of well-being. Whereas, poor people have valued the little things they have like the social support and relations that they have sustained, in hopes that one day the struggle will be over. Ultimately, I am convinced that rich people and celebrities do not deserve money and everything they have.
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Do Rich People and Celebrities Deserve the Money They Earn? Essay.
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