Gina Rinehart: How to become rich

[Hottentot]

Article

The richest woman in the world has a message for all you normals out there: Becoming rich is as easy as putting down that beer and getting off your ass.

[snip]

"If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain,” Rinehart wrote. “Do something to make more money yourself -- spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working.”

Funny. In principle I agree with her and yet she comes across as so utterly naive. I may not have lived for very long yet, but in that time I have been in many different kinds of jobs, ranging from cleaning toilets and training dogs to qualified academic work in a museum. I have known people who have been unemployed for a long time and people who have lived on the social welfare. And during that time I don't recall a single occasion when I've met that jealous lazy stereotype bum whom dear Gina here seems to find so common. But I guess they exist and that's why not everyone can be rich? Or maybe that huge inheritance helped a little along the way?

And yet I agree with her that if you want something done, complaining and blaming everyone else of how unfair your life is isn't going to help. Sure, I know those people as well. They are not complaining for not being rich, but complaining nevertheless. Been doing that for years now last I checked.

Still, I can't fathom how distanced from the reality of the "normal folks" you have to be to say something like that. That's like me saying that the world hunger is solved by growing more food, lack of electricity is solved by building more sockets and the economic crisis is solved by printing more money. I wish I lived in such a simple world. Would be easier.