As much as I liked comics about Scrooge McDuck and Richie Rich when I was a kid, the sad reality is it seems like most super rich people are pretty evil.  Or if not straight up evil, at least not good, kind-hearted saints.  Not that Richie Rich was either.  That kid had a mean streak a mile long, which is presumably why his friends and family had him killed and he came back as Casper, the supposedly friendly ghost who was really there to take a horrible bloody revenge on those that did him wrong.  Or so I theorize anyway.

That got a bit off-track there for a second.  I'm not sure exactly what the upper level of wealth one can achieve and still be a good person is, but at some point it seems like the only way to get where you are is to step on people, exploit them, be ruthless and cutthroat, and generally kind of a dick.  Are there exceptions to this?  Maybe, but I kind of doubt it.

I do think you have to possess some of these jerk qualities to become super rich in the first place, but I also suspect extreme wealth has a way of changing people.  I wouldn't know firsthand or anything, but it's probably hard not to think of other people as beneath you when you could easily buy and sell absolutely everybody.  I don't think anyone is immune to being changed.

I would certainly love to have a lot more money than I do, but I'd like to stay as much myself as possible.  I don't think I need to have the resources to bankrupt entire nations or anything, but I would be very happy to not have to work for anyone and to be able to go on some cool vacations and eat in some nice restaurants once in a while.  I don't even really need a super big house or a fancy car, I don't think.  But who knows?  Maybe when you pass a certain wealth threshold you do need those things.  I just think there's probably a good level to be at where you don't have to sweat the expense of, say, putting a new roof on your house, but you're also not heartlessly exploiting the working class.  It would be really nice to be somewhere around that level.  Any excess wealth beyond that just seems kind of unnecessary really.  Of course when you're actually at those wealth levels, you probably don't see it as unnecessary.  Because you need every last one of those pennies, damn it.