Postscript
wonder how much experience you really have with the wealthy, Techie. I've known a great many rich people through business and various nonprofit activities, and a handful of the fabulously wealthy. The majority are very much the narrow, one-dimensional types fixated on money to the exclusion of all else. Truly miserable excuses for human beings. But yet I've known a handful of exceptions that encourage me to think that great wealth doesn't always have to corrupt, and much depends on the social and political environment and how they condition people to approach wealth.
I forgot to address this one. In Silicon Valley, many formerly poor were made quickly rich after one IPO. Venture capitalists, accountants and other exploiters were/are plentiful in the region. By definition the region is nouveau rich. Bill Gates is nouveau rich. In Hollywood you have the same nouveau rich mentality: Spielberg, Lucas, Katzner Geffen, Eisner and thousands more are all nouveau rich.
The nouveau rich are different. They are often fixated on money exclusively and may indeed seem (or are) depraved. The truth is they are very insecure individuals. The nouveau rich often feel as though the money they possess is temporary and unearned. They feel that they must strive harder to make permanent whatever gains they have made and they often become ruthless exploiters of men.
The gentry with generations of inherited money are another breed. Less motivated. Less driven. Often lazy. Often less depraved. They fill their time with travel and other pursuits and try to cram as much fun as they can into the years they have. They may turn to power-seeking and politics, but this is the exception rather than the rule: politics are not much fun.
In Germany, after the war, some rich folks lost it all. The suicides were numerous and yet others set off to start anew and never breathed a word about how many thousands or millions of Marks they lost in the failed banks. The industrious minded, with peace of mind, could swallow any pride and start work again for someone else, even in a low position. My Grandparents saw their life savings of twenty years work as well as their family inheritance disappear overnight and they were both hard working and industrious and took their education and skills and went right back to work after the war. Money wasn't everything. They were much happier to have their health and their children.
The most balanced rich are the "upper middle class" who still work hard for their money. The may be "millionaires" but are not obsessed with turning five or ten million into a billion. Windfall income is generally not a good thing and sets up a sequence of imbalances in their lives that most can't deal with effectively.
These are not iron-clad rules but are observations. Each group has in its ranks examples of different personality types. Money alone cannot be used as the sole judge of these things. I have noticed quite uniformly, however, that the well-read wealthy have a big edge in the personality and philosophical department whatever their bank statements read.
Kipling's IF:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!
That's a heck of a philosophy to live by. But if more folks did, they would find themselves in much better circumstances and regardless of their 'wealth' would ALWAYS with the priceless jewel known as peace of mind.