Trading Places

The People’s Daily, a newspaper published by the government of China, has printed a column warning the people against hating the rich:

If viewed through the prism of social development, one can easily understand why wealth used to be so despised in traditional Chinese society. China is typically an agricultural country, and in its time-honored history, the theory of  'attaching great importance to agriculture but restraining commerce' has been hammered into the people's mind, well and truly. With time, 'poverty mentality' would come into being, which encourages the thinking that if you have more, then I must have less. Even worse, now that many of the Chinese have grown up exposed to similar thinking and similar teachings, they tend to form an abnormal psyche of 'hating the rich.'

The Communist Party of China considers hatred of the rich an abnormal psychology. The government of the United States leads a persistent chant against “greed” and punishes success in myriad ways.

Apparently the US is governed by Chinese peasants:

Some even believe that the rich got that way by stepping on the poor.

But there is hope for the peasants. In China, the shackles of zero-sum thinking can be broken, and this will enable a flowering and flourishing for all:

So in a society with the rapid economic growth and increasingly enlarged circle of affluent individuals, it is quite desirable to cultivate a wealth culture, which can, for one thing, gradually change people's thought process and make them believe everybody can escape poverty and get rich through efforts.

Secondly, a sound atmosphere in which wealth creation is encouraged will also help people retrain their mind, pushing out the old 'poverty mentality,' and replacing it with a 'wealth mentality.' If more people are devising ways to create wealth, in a long run, it will contribute to building a harmonious and mass affluent society, as more people will have the ability to help the less fortunate.

The American dream has emigrated across the Pacific. What will become of the United States without it?

H/T: Maggie’s Farm