Some people believe the rich lifestyle is good, while some believe the poor lifestyle is good. In my opinion, being rich is much better than being poor, but only in modesty.
The question of the goodness of wealth was integrated in Euripides' stories and plays. His opinion was that the rich have fallen, are crumbling, and will always be subject to Fortuna's Wheel. Fortuna's Wheel will always balance out the fate of men.
To be rich is not to be happy. With wealth come greed, worry, and paranoia. When extremely rich people (i.e. William H. Gates) come to great fame, they always seem to be overcome by the burden of their wealth.
Here's a little story. Let's say a normal man - we'll call him Phil - rips off a wonderful idea from his good friend - we'll call him Jeeves - and becomes rich. Steve makes a better OS (excuse me) - Jeeves has a better product, called Gala, and Phil tries to copy it as much as he can. He makes utilities and games that can only be used with his product, Casements, creating a monopoly.
Casements is great: Phil ships his own Internet browser, the Miniplush Investigator, with it and makes tons of money by integrating the browser into Casements. A rival company - we'll call it Websurvey - makes a great new product, the Websurvey Mariner, which works with both Casements and Gala, creating great success for Netscape (oops) - Websurvey. Phil gets worried that people won't buy the Investigator, so he integrates it into his product so that the product won't work without Investigator.
Now comes the good part, Phil gets a subpoena from the Governmental Judiciary and now has to prove that Investigator is a harmless product that can be detached from Casements without causing any trouble. He can't. Now he has to ship Mariner with Casements or else he will get heavy fines and won't be able to build his HUGE Washington estate.
People now hate Phil and they call him the antichrist and "Satan." He can't handle the pressure and dies of a stress-related aneurysm in his brain. Bye-bye, Phil!
Now let's say Phil never makes that product. He has nowhere to fall, but he is riddled with stupidity and can never get a hot chick ever again. He feels regret for not taking advantage of Jeeves' idea, not knowing what would have happened. He goes bankrupt and lives on the street for 5 years until he dies from pneumonia. It's not a pretty sight.
Of course, Euripides would say that I just went WAY off course and he would be right. According to Euripides, Fortuna's Wheel would have nowhere to turn but upward and Phil would end up in a cozy neighborhood in upstate New York.
WRONG!!!
Listen, I have lived in a low-income household for the past 10 years and have not found it to be one bit as nice as Euripides believed! It's been hard knowing that I can't have what I want just because we don't have enough money to get it. It's a load of B.S. and I, for one, think that all that money wouldn't be so bad if used in modesty.
If my mother won the lottery tomorrow, we wouldn't tell a soul. We would just pay off all of our debts and sell our house. We would then buy a nice house in a better neighborhood. It would all work out, but it hasn't yet and I doubt that it ever will. Winning the lottery isn't very common in our family.
What a horror to have a stable bank account. I just dread the idea of a moderately warm, cozy home! This better to be poor crap makes me mad! How could anybody just say "Poor Good. Rich Bad." without thinking about it first. Flaunted riches are always foolishly lost. Modest wealth is better than being "rich" or "poor." I just wish that others could see that rich and poor aren't the issue, but how the wealth is used is what makes a difference. Being rich is much better than being poor, but only in modesty.
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