Maggie's Farm

From Tigerhawk's Mitt Romney's frugality as an example for the rich :

...the frugal wealthy understand that it is not wealth per se but rather its flamboyant display that erects barriers between the rich and the rest. Gated communities, private jets and the mass promotion of ridiculously expensive luxury goods -- all widespread only in the last generation -- have done more to provoke class division and remove the rich from contact with ordinary people than the actual increases in their wealth.

In the last generation, but also at many times in history. Let's face it. We have vulgar rich, vulgar poor, and vulgar in-between. There is no cure for vulgarity.

And from PJ O'Rouke, mainly about the economically-retarded Zero Sum Fallacy in If the 1% had less, would the 99% be better off?:

...it's upsetting that some people have so much while other people have so little. It isn't fair. But I accept this unfairness. Indeed, I treasure it. That's because I have a 13-year-old daughter. And that's all I hear, "That's not fair," she says. "That's not fair! That's not fair!" And one day I snapped, and I said, "Honey, you're cute, that's not fair. Your family is pretty well off, that's not fair. You were born in America, that's not fair. Darling, you had better get down on your knees and pray that things don't start getting fair for you."

Having the luck to be born in America is the most unfair thing of all. Where else on the planet do you have a wide open field to plan a life according to your own lights, interests, abilities, and desires, and run for it? Freedom of pursuit, but no guarantee of results on this planet. And still, some people bitch like babies.