Many true and fictional tales about those rich folks and their wealthy lifestyles are told. However, the focus of heated discussions is not just the rich people and their resources. It is also the question of just how far-reaching this topic is – is it indeed money that “makes the world go round”?

Regardless of which side they take, most people have strong opinions about it: those who take riches to be the source of all evil and tend to limit their wealth to what is needed for their basic survival, and people who, on the contrary, think wealth can guarantee a happy and secure life for themselves and their loved ones alike. Both agree - resources do affect our lives.

Having many tales told and many stereotypes surrounding rich folks, there have been two basic lines of thought spreading around the internet. People are asking: how are the wealthy really different from everyone else? And much of it comes down to or is a direct reference to a famous discussion between the two iconic American writers. The way the story is usually told is that it was Fitzgerald who proclaimed: “The rich are different from you and me.” To that, Hemingway replied: “Yes, they have more money.”

A likely interpretation of this conversation would claim that Fitzgerald was referring to rich people as altogether different from other people, while Hemingway would put down such an interpretation, explaining that the only difference between rich and poor is money - these types of people are no different in other ways.

Curiously enough, as noted in the article for the New York Times, this famous story is partly a creation of Hemingway - his adaptation of a real-life conversation between four guys. It was Hemingway, Fitzgerald, their editor Max Perkins, and critic Mary Colum having lunch. Hemingway started the conversation by saying: “I am getting to know the rich.” And it was Colum who replied “The only difference between the rich and other people is that the rich have more money.” 

However, Hemingway used this real-life conversation in his novel, additionally, making the central character of The Snows of Kilimanjaro exclaim: “poor Scott Fitzgerald and his romantic awe of [the rich].” Seeing how different the real-life conversation was, no wonder Fitzgerald was offended. His name was used by Hemingway to make him look overly sympathetic toward rich people only for the sake of their money. Fitzgerald commented on Hemingway’s story saying: “Riches have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm or distinction.”

However, it might be noted that ten years before the conversation at lunch, Fitzgerald wrote a short story, The Rich Boy, that he started with this topic. He wrote: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, cynical where we are trustworthy, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.”

Rainer Zitelmann, in his article for Forbes, is analyzing whether rich people are ‘different not only in terms of what they possess, but also in their personalities.' He discusses a study by six German economists and psychologists, who interviewed 130 wealthy individuals. They distinguished that rich people are emotionally more stable and more open to new experiences. However, they are less agreeable, less likely to shy away from conflicts, and more narcissistic. Also, the rich are more conscientious and they perceive themselves as having more control over their lives.

In his dissertation on “The Wealth Elite”, Rainer Zitelmann interviewed 45 individuals, from which the majority consisted of self-made millionaires. Based on the interviews, similarly to the previous study, Zitelmann found, that the rich are psychologically very stable, as opposed to being very neurotic, open to new experiences, and more extroverted, more conscientious, but less agreeable. He adds that based on his findings, the superrich people tend to be nonconformists - they are likely to express their opinion when it opposes the common views of their time and place. Finally, rich people tend to take credit for both their fortunes and misfortunes, in that way having an approach that allows them to perceive themselves as agents that are in control of their life.