30 Times Rich People Made It Clear To Everyone Else Just How Out Of Touch They Are Without Even Trying
“I mean it's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? Ten dollars?”
Although Lucille Bluth was dead serious when she uttered those words on Arrested Development, we as the viewers found the line hilarious because we could never imagine a person saying such a thing. However, that might just be because most of us are not hanging around extremely wealthy people very often...
Reddit user JustDadThanks sparked a conversation by asking others to share the most out of touch things they’ve heard wealthy friends and family members say, and it turns out that Lucille Bluth might fit right in with them. From having no concept of money to being unable to comprehend that everyone else does not take luxurious vacations year round, we’ve gathered some of the most ridiculous quotes from rich people that prove that money doesn't buy you self-awareness. Keep reading to also find an interview with Linda McQuaig, co-author of The Trouble with Billionaires, to hear her insight on the topic.
Be sure to upvote the replies that you can’t believe were said in real life, and let us know in the comments if you have ever had a conversation with an affluent person that would warrant a spot on this list. Then if you’re interested in yet another Bored Panda article that will make you want to eat the rich, check out this story next.
This post may include affiliate links.
The wealthiest person I know: “Oh you get seasonal depression? Why don’t you just go to the Caribbean for a week and the Mediterranean the next? It always helps me.”
Going on a school trip to Poland to see Auschwitz. Obviously it’s a normal flight. One girl expresses how disgusted and/or scared she is because she has never been on an economy flight before. We’re going to see a f*****g concentration camp.
A friends mom at a party,
"You know after 6 weeks in our Tuscan villa you honestly get bored of having people wait on you all day. I was so ready to just pick up my own dish and wash it"
Like uh huh. Life must be so hard.
That's got to be a new level of rich. I can't even comprehend wanting to wash the dishes.
It seems like every day there’s a new story about the ridiculous ways rich people are spending their money. Jeff Bezos paid $5.5 billion to go to space for about four minutes. Taylor Swift owns two private jets, one of which has flown at least 170 times during 2022 already. Lady Gaga spent $50,000 on an Electro-Magnetic Field Reader, which is intended to detect ghosts. Celebrities and others in the 1% may be “people just like us”, but they definitely live in a different world from the billions of people around the world who have much less money than them.
Whether it’s inevitable to become out of touch when you reach a certain level of wealth or not, it’s definitely very easy to. If you live in a massive home in a gated community protected by a security guard, you can easily never encounter people who aren’t in your same economic class, aside from those who work for you. Someone else could be doing your grocery shopping, and you might be traveling in private jets or at least in the first-class section of commercial planes. When you’re in a bubble, it might not be so obvious that you’re inside of it.
[freshman semester of college]
Friend walks into a store where I’m working to buy something.
“What are you doing here?”
“I work here”
“But…. We are in college. You don’t have to work until we graduate.”
My husbands step mom told us she’s thinking about retiring. She’s been a stay at home wife/mom for the last 30 years. She lives a very luxurious lifestyle with multiple vacation homes. What is she retiring from?
Don't know, maybe she is actively involved in charity work or the like? Are you sure you know about everything she fills her days with?
“Prices are going to increase anyways so there’s no need to complain just pay for them” regarding increasing gas/food prices. For someone who only has $30 left in between paychecks that $1-5 increase on items for everyday use makes a difference
Now, I’m not defending rich people for saying out of touch things or lacking self-awareness. It is certainly their responsibility to recognize their privilege and try to use their resources for good. But what a privilege it would be to think nobody needs a job until they are out of college or to assume that anyone can hop on a plane to Hawaii whenever they need to unwind. Money may not be able to buy you happiness, but apparently, it can buy you ignorance. And ignorance is bliss right?
The thing about wealth, though, is that it’s not all about just working hard and excelling in school. It comes down to many factors, such as luck, family background, resources, connections and how much generational wealth you inherit. If it was so easy to accumulate money, don’t you think more people would be doing it? The reality is that it can be extremely hard to even get the opportunity to acquire riches. Most people know this because most people aren’t rich. In fact, 65% of Americans believe that the main reason a person becomes wealthy is because they have had more advantages in life, and 71% of Americans believe that poor people are in their current situation because they have faced more adversity. So people who get to vacation in other countries, fly in private jets and have personal chefs preparing their meals are extremely unrelatable to most of the world. The least they can do is acknowledge that.
My ex fiancé when I brought up how his parents had a college fund for him and mine didn’t.
“My parents were just responsible”
So we’re mine. They were poor.
Other comments similar to this and my student loans were that my loans were “my choice” and I’ve also heard from both him and other friends who had college paid for by their parents that it’s “because their parents care about them” - idk how having poor parents means they don’t care but ok.
“People like bin men and garbage collectors are needed in society. But why should they have more money for doing such a task.”
My jaw hit the floor.
My mother has become very wealthy and out of touch. She's made lucky investments but doesn't share her wealth at all. So when I couldn't qualify for a student loan (my identity was stolen when I was a kid. It's fixed now) or get financial aid (because I still fell under her financial umbrella as far as aid is concerned. They just assume if your parents have money, they'll help.) she was furious that I had to give up on my big college dreams. "I paid for college with a part-time waitress job after class. Just do that!" Her university was $2,500 a year back in the 70s! The older generations getting annoyed at the younger generations for wanting college debt forgiveness have no f*cking idea what college debt looks like now. All this "Just pay it off like I did", bullsh*t is absolute ignorance.
The student allowance/loan system in my country is really dumb. When I went to uni I luckily qualified for government assistance every week (it's great that we have that but the system is still so problematic), but my friends who ALSO didn't receive any financial help from their parents didn't qualify because their parents earned above a certain pay bracket. What difference does it make if you're legally an adult how much your parents make? Unless they're mega rich and able to help you out which they most certainly weren't. They just happened to have two incomes and I had only one parent. And I had to send them the same signed letter every year when I reapplied saying that my mum was still dead. Ridiculous, and irrelevant
To gain some insight on the topic of the extremely wealthy, we reached out to Linda McQuaig, co-author of The Trouble with Billionaires. First, we asked Linda if she could explain for us why wealth inequality is a problem. "It’s an extremely serious problem, which is quickly and constantly getting worse," she told Bored Panda. "Basically, a small group of billionaires has come to dominate the world to a degree unimaginable even a decade ago. In addition to capturing the lion’s share of resources for themselves – as wealthy elites always have – today’s elite has attained the life-and-death power to determine whether we’ll all be able to survive the ecological crises that threaten our very existence."
My coworker, and friend, who is head of the office’s payroll/Controller of the company made an error and no one’s paycheck was deposited on time.
Coworker: I got quite a few angry/concerned emails first thing this morning, I was shocked. Do people really notice this kind of thing especially so fast?!
Me: uh….yes…? You do realize that most of the world, including 90% of the people who work here live paycheck to paycheck right?
Coworker: ooooh no way I had no idea I feel bad now.
He was genuinely shocked...
During my college days i ran into my then-roommate on my way home from work. she was obviously really annoyed about something so i asked her what was up. her words: “you’re so lucky you have a job and can just make money. i have to wait for my parents to give me money and it’s so annoying.” i was like, “yeah, that sounds really hard…?!!!!”
In college, I wasn't allowed to work due to the rules of my scholarship. The redditor obviously knew her roommate well enough to know it was "out of touch" not just "true desire to work." My parents gave me $150 my first semester, which is around $77 now. I was on my own after that semester though. Ridiculous system all around.
Oh man, my roommates and I were going out for dinner (burgers, nothing fancy) and I was driving us. I mentioned I couldn’t do something one of them wanted to do later that week because I couldn’t afford it - I was like 22, working two part time jobs, pretty broke. She told me she hated it when people said they couldn’t afford to do things because they just spent the money on something else and could spend it on that if they really wanted to. I was like, well I spent it on my car insurance for this month? And she doubled down and insisted that I HAD the money but I was prioritizing something else (yes, my car insurance). Very awkward conversation!
"Quite simply -- today’s super-rich play an enormous role in generating carbon emissions, through their indulgent personal lives and also through the corporations they own," Linda explained. "On top of this, they are the key players blocking government action that would allow us to battle climate change."
We also asked Linda why it's so common for wealthy people to become out of touch and not realize their privilege, but she raised another point, "I suspect most wealthy people do realize their privilege and don’t really care if we are offended by it."
Finally, we asked Linda if she has any advice for people who still aspire to be wealthy, despite actively disliking rich people. "My advice would be: Get a life – that is, a life that doesn’t do harm to others and to the planet."
I heard this during the coronavirus lockdown which basically meant solitary confinement for everyone who lives in an urban, carfree apartment area. "I don't get why a general lockdown is such a bad thing. I take my family, drive to Croatia and have a vacation on my boat."
Not a woman, but i've gotta share this one because my parents have been utterly zombified by fox news.
My parents are very well off and they live in Texas. When the huge freeze hit their home and they lost power, they quickly booked a week long vacation to Honduras to wait it out. Ever since, they've made a bunch of dumb comments along the lines of, "why doesn't everyone just keep a vacation fund so they can leave Texas when hurricanes and blizzards hit? We all know they're coming, most people just refuse to save money and want everyone else to come save them."
I don't talk to those ghouls any more than i have to these days.
Friend was texting me when we were both in college and on winter break. His family was in Aspen for 3 weeks skiing. I said that sounded really fun and he asked me to come out. I said I couldn't afford that and he said "just have your parents pay for it". I thought he was joking but he was not.
He learned a lot about how the other half lives that day. At least I hope he learned something.
As a person from the tropics...I've come to realize recreational skiing is generally a sign of wealth.
Wealthy people tend to be out of touch about a lot of things: how much groceries cost, how often the average person can take a vacation, how challenging it is for many parents to afford childcare, and how much of their paycheck the average person has left to put into savings at the end of the month. One thing in particular that many affluent people don’t understand is how high their salaries actually are. Arwa Mahdawi explored this issue in an article for The Guardian, where she noted that, when asked how much money they thought the average American made per year, one quarter of the students in a class at the University of Pennsylvania assumed that it must be six-figures. One student even guessed as high as $800,000 a year. The actual answer? $53,838.
When I was homeless as an 18 year old without any assets, a car or support systems my older sister, who had married into money looked at me blankly when I asked if I could stay with her for a while or help her around the house for some spare cash & simply said
“ what’s your problem? why don’t you get more money?”
Then she walked off .. nothing more was said. What can you even say to that?
Wow...I don't have siblings but I'd say that was a pretty d**k thing to do as an older sister.
This was right before the pandemic began and we were seeing a spike in BTC's worth. Not only could I not afford a whole coin, I'm an immigrant who just entered the workforce so I didn't have my own credit card and my dad was strictly against crypto, so that was my situation. Anyways, I was telling about how I forecast an immense increase given how everyone was starting to allow cryptocurrency as a payment, and this friend of mine, H, just casually went, "oh yeah! I don't know how to use it either so my dad got me like 2 coins, I think, to play around with", in a very as-a-matter-of-fact tone. Then she goes, "why not just ask your dad to get you a few (coins)? It's really fun!" Each coin was worth 22.5k that day, I remember it vividly.
“I have a better idea, H: why don’t we ask YOUR dad to get me a few coins?”
"Couldn't you just renovate your suite and do the repairs yourself, out of the kindness in your heart?" When I told her my ceiling caved in on my rental unit. You know, because I have money to renovate my landlords house, a house I don't own.
Mahdawi goes on to note that it’s not surprising these students were so out of touch when it comes to the average salaries Americans earn, though. The average student at the University of Pennsylvania comes from a family earning about $195,000 per year, and a staggering 19% of their students come from families in the 1%. On the other hand, only 3.3% of Penn students come from families in the bottom 20% of wealth in the US. Rich people run in the same circles as one another their entire lives, from the time they begin attending private schools as children to when they inherit their parents’ businesses later on in life. It may be annoying that they often have no concept of how the other half lives, but it is not shocking.
I was around 14 and was at church on a Wednesday night. Being Baptists, several of us were standing there talking about food and I mentioned that pinto beans and cornbread is one of my favorite meals. One of the wealthier women in my church looked at me and said, “That’s poor people food. I don’t eat things like that.”
A year after college, I was at work and trying to get to know a new coworker. She was talking about all of the trips she’s taken and the places she’s been. When she asked where I had traveled, I said that I’ve never been out of the USA, and that I don’t even have a passport. She looked at me incredulously and said something about how I should travel because it broadens the mind (how ironic considering how close-minded she was about poverty in the US). She then said I should really get my passport because then opportunities to travel would just pop up. Sure, I make $24k a year, so not having a passport is the only thing preventing me from traveling. I just blankly stared at her until someone changed the subject.
These people who claim that travel 'broadens the mind' are always the most bigoted and close-minded people.
I used to work for a wealthy housewife, house sitting and tutoring her son. She was a very sweet, kind person who always very friendly with people around her, including staff and waiters and the like. Definitely not a snob.
But one time she told me she thought hotel maids (she would stay at fancy hotels for weeks on end at times) must have such nice lives because their jobs are so easy and relaxing and they probably make good money doing it. That she might consider doing that if she ever wanted to get a job, just for fun.
You see, despite having house cleaners come in several times a week she sometimes did some chores around her house and found it pleasant so of course, being a hotel maid is similar.
In our college friend group one woman in particular has become wealthy over the years, wealthy enough to fly NetJets and maintain a townhouse in NYC as a pied a terre. The rest of us are just hoping we can one day retire. To her credit, she makes efforts to stay in touch. When she's in town, she always organizes a dinner and the rest of us are always happy to see her.
At the last dinner, we talking about how difficult it was to buy a car post-pandemic. She said, "In our world, nobody can buy a boat."
The rest of us made a lot of eye contact over that one.
Even politicians often have little concept of how much their constituents need to earn to have a decent quality of life. In 2021, the mayoral candidates in New York City were asked by The New York Times how much they thought the median price of purchasing a home in Brooklyn would be. Investment banker Raymond J McGuire guessed, “It’s got to be somewhere in the $80,000 to $90,000 range, if not higher.” Shaun Donovan, Barack Obama’s former housing secretary and former mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg’s housing commissioner said it would probably be “around $100,000”. The actual answer was $900,000. It’s no wonder rich people don’t care about average Joes. They are completely blind to how hard it is for people earning less than them.
I have an uncle who was mad when we didn’t fly to Fiji for his son’s second wedding. With flights, hotel, gifts, etc the price came out to nearly $23,000 for my family of four. I was in my early twenties and had just started out in a new job. When we said we couldn’t afford to go, he snapped and told us if we really wanted to, we could save for year to afford it. He couldn’t wrap his head around why we couldn’t save an extra $2,000 a month to attend.
I think that the couples should pay tickets and accomodations for the people they invite when they have a destination wedding. Does not make sense to expect from others to pay all that money to come to your wedding no matter the relationship. If you want them there it is you that should make it possible.
I was talking to a friend once about the fact I was saving hard because I wanted to make sure I would always be financially independent, after I had been through a relationship breakdown. She was a casual contract academic and her husband an investment banker, but she told me she didn't have any savings of her own as her income was spending money for luxuries, essentially. I didn't think much of it, but the next day she texted me to say she'd discussed it with her husband and he'd transferred her £100k into a bank account in her own name.
It was so tone deaf... I was happy for her in a way, but also I have just worked my a*s off for two years to save one fifth of that and you just go home and your husband sends you a huuuuuge amount of cash just because? I just didn't need to be told that, you know. It sat really weirdly with me.
Again, I do not see any bad intention, just, as OP said, tone deafness. The friend told her this because she wanted to show that she found OP's approach reasonable and wanted to adapt it for herself. That is a compliment, in my book. That she has other possibilities for this than OP is not her fault. I doubt very much that OP "was happy for her in a way", it sounds very much like good old jealousy. Be proud that you worked for your money - it does not lose its value because somebody else got it easier!
"Homeless people should just gets jobs if they need money. They don't wanna work, so it's their own fault anyway."
as a formerly homeless person who's job is now to help homeless people, I would like to point out that most homeless people have jobs unless they're disabled. Job opportunities for people with no experience or no highschool diploma are tragic and never pay living wages. one friend of mine from my shelter was making 440 every two weeks, working full time.
Earlier this year, Kim Kardashian was quoted sharing her “best advice for women in business”. She said, “Get your [butt] up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days.” And while she was immediately ridiculed online for her ignorant and out of touch statement, the fact is that she’s just wrong. Okay, maybe a lot of people don’t want to work, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t billions of people around the world working incredibly hard who will never acquire one tenth of the amount of wealth she has. In fact, in the United States, employment rates are at about 3.7% right now, which is 1.5 percentage points lower than it was in August 2021. People might be frequently resigning due to poor working conditions, but they search for other jobs. And it’s not because they don’t want to work or work hard; it's because they want to be treated well and compensated poorly. The idea that Kim Kardashian is “self-made” is laughable, as is the implication that she works harder than most people.
The amount of people who have criticized my husband and I for only having one child- finances is a big part of our decision (amongst many other reasons) and they always say something like “oh everyone makes it work with multiple kids”. Like yes. But I don’t want to MAKE it work. I want it to work on its own because we can easily afford the child we have…. Also had a friend say that I should just “apply for credit cards” to fix my credit. And I’m like uh… that’s not how this works when you have credit tanked by medical debt my guy.
My parents only had one child and I can understand why financially. Also, I don't have kids and I'm not sure I can afford to either.
I am from a poor family, and a wealthy woman I know announced to our dinner table that she wishes that she could be poor to see what she was truly made of. The year before my family had trouble keeping our lights on.
Yeah, common misconception among rich people, I think. As if being deprived will let you "see what you're truly made of". I have a spoiler for you; it does NOT bring out the best in you. It's debilitating.
Me: I would loooooove to travel to San Francisco one day.
Boss: Why aren't you just going? The plane ticket is just like €1,000 per flight.
Me: Yeah... exactly.
We hope this list of extremely out of touch quotes isn't making your blood boil, but if it is, I understand. It can be hard not to resent wealthy people, especially when they have no idea how good they have it. But remember that money won't buy you happiness (or intelligence). Keep upvoting the quotes you find most ridiculous, and then let us know in the comments below if you've ever heard a rich person say something that made you want to slap them. Then if you want to check out another Bored Panda article featuring rich people who lack self-awareness, I recommend reading this story next.
My aunt, who grew up as one of seven kids in an a lower middle class home, married well at 20 because she was knocked up. My uncle took over his dad’s company in metal polishing when they were young, so she has been wealthy most of her adult life.
During the first term of Obama’s presidency, she shared some awful email chain letter about him that had inaccurate information and racist dog whistles. I replied with the facts on each of the items and pointed out the racism. She replied back that I was “being disrespectful,” and Obama’s Affordable Care Act was going to “bankrupt” my uncle by requiring he provide health insurance to his workers. I was a high school teacher at the time, and all of her brothers worked as unionized tradesmen. She has not had a job a day in her life.
Not to me, but I remember going out one night with a small group of friends and we stopped at a small convenience-type store. As my friend was checking out, she kept saying how tired the cashier looked and telling him that he should take a vacation. And he was just like.. She grew up VERY privileged and recently bought a house at the age of 21, goes on dumb vacations all the time, eats out multiple times a week, etc. I was cringing the whole time. What makes her think this obviously overworked convenience store cashier has the time or money to afford to go on a vacation??? There’s lots of ignorant things she’s increasingly said over the past few years and we’re thankfully no longer friends.
As long as it comes from a point of naivety and not from a high horse - maybe you could have educated her a little bit on these things? Rich parents have rich friends and take their vacation where other rich people are - perhaps she really had no clue about "normal" people's lives.
She acted like the pandemic was so horrible for her when she lives on a massive property, is a SAHM and her husband's business wasn't affected at all, and continued to frequently travel the whole time. Her husband complained about how the stimulus payments were unnecessary.
Years ago I was talking to my boyfriend and I made a joke about wishing I'd win the lottery so I could stop being so broke. He said he knew just how I felt because he only had $10,000 in the bank. I honestly wanted to slap him in that moment. I was working 6 days a week and was making just enough money to survive until my next paycheck. He also used to complain that I volunteered to work every holiday (we were paid double time for working holidays). He said it was just money and that I shouldn't put money above being with family. Had to explain to him that I got bills, plus I was a single mom, and that you can't pay bills with family love. I'm so grateful I found out he was cheating on me cause at the time I couldn't see him for the jerk he was
You can't make the well-off understand the plight of the other 95% of us until they live it.
This is true. I really only have one experience like this (my family was not exactly rich, but well off enough to pay for me to go to college). I was working at a restaurant while I went to school and actually said something along the lines of "I don't need to be working, it just feels like something I should do". At. My. Job. In. A. Kitchen. I have never before or since been so aggressively mocked and ridiculed and they were right to do it.
Load More Replies...This list has very different examples. Some people are rich, out of touch and think that they are better than others. They have a mindset of "poor people deserve how little they have, they are too lazy to work". These people are most probably beyond help, I'm afraid. However, some of these stories were more about rich kids who really do not know that other people struggle to make enough money for a living. While it could be discussed how anyone can be so naiv, stupid and sheltered not to just SEE and UNDERSTAND this, here they are! Anyway, not all hope is lost. Teach them, explain it - you could change their whole life. It does not help to feel offended by their actions, in most cases they do not want to hurt or belittle you, they just do not know better. All their spending money cannot buy them the knowledge and experience you already have. It is a reason to feel sorry for these poor, rich kids. Don't let jealousy get in the way of kindness - everybody is fighting their own battle...
I really hope you were being sarcastic. If not, good for you. Go to a high-end uni with the rich kids and see how far a poor kid gets. I did. 1. They don't care. 2. They won't learn unless they live like the other 95% for at least 3 years and 3. They will sneer at the other 95% for *its* ignorance. I wasn't jealous. I was derided. They did, however, convince me that democratic socialism is the best solution currently available, since guillotines are out of fashion.
Load More Replies...Years ago I was talking to my boyfriend and I made a joke about wishing I'd win the lottery so I could stop being so broke. He said he knew just how I felt because he only had $10,000 in the bank. I honestly wanted to slap him in that moment. I was working 6 days a week and was making just enough money to survive until my next paycheck. He also used to complain that I volunteered to work every holiday (we were paid double time for working holidays). He said it was just money and that I shouldn't put money above being with family. Had to explain to him that I got bills, plus I was a single mom, and that you can't pay bills with family love. I'm so grateful I found out he was cheating on me cause at the time I couldn't see him for the jerk he was
You can't make the well-off understand the plight of the other 95% of us until they live it.
This is true. I really only have one experience like this (my family was not exactly rich, but well off enough to pay for me to go to college). I was working at a restaurant while I went to school and actually said something along the lines of "I don't need to be working, it just feels like something I should do". At. My. Job. In. A. Kitchen. I have never before or since been so aggressively mocked and ridiculed and they were right to do it.
Load More Replies...This list has very different examples. Some people are rich, out of touch and think that they are better than others. They have a mindset of "poor people deserve how little they have, they are too lazy to work". These people are most probably beyond help, I'm afraid. However, some of these stories were more about rich kids who really do not know that other people struggle to make enough money for a living. While it could be discussed how anyone can be so naiv, stupid and sheltered not to just SEE and UNDERSTAND this, here they are! Anyway, not all hope is lost. Teach them, explain it - you could change their whole life. It does not help to feel offended by their actions, in most cases they do not want to hurt or belittle you, they just do not know better. All their spending money cannot buy them the knowledge and experience you already have. It is a reason to feel sorry for these poor, rich kids. Don't let jealousy get in the way of kindness - everybody is fighting their own battle...
I really hope you were being sarcastic. If not, good for you. Go to a high-end uni with the rich kids and see how far a poor kid gets. I did. 1. They don't care. 2. They won't learn unless they live like the other 95% for at least 3 years and 3. They will sneer at the other 95% for *its* ignorance. I wasn't jealous. I was derided. They did, however, convince me that democratic socialism is the best solution currently available, since guillotines are out of fashion.
Load More Replies...