Rich Girl Roundup: What Does It Mean to "Earn It"?

Katie: Welcome back, Rich Girls and Boys, to the Rich Girl Roundup weekly discussion of The Money with Katie Show. I'm your host, Katie Gatti Tassin, and every Monday morning we're gonna dig into a money dialogue. But before we do that, here's a quick message from the sponsors of this segment. 

All right, y'all, before we get into this week's topic, this week's upcoming main episode on Wednesday is about the concept of quote, “romanticizing your life.” How to live a luxurious, indulgent life, but without breaking the bank, without sacrificing our financial goals. How can we really enjoy the journey? So we're gonna be taking some cues from our friends across the pond in Europe and their approach to leisure for this one. And I think it's gonna be really fun. All right, onto the Roundup. Henah, I know you're feeling a little bit dicey about this topic, so do you wanna introduce it for us? 

Henah: I am. Sure. I think it's a bit of a slippery slope, and there's lots of room for nuance here. But this week's conversation was actually inspired from a listener email that we got. It was a thread with listener Jamie F. And essentially it boiled down to, what does deservingness look like? How does the idea of having quote unquote “earned it” play into our perceptions of other people's wealth, versus those who we deem unworthy of their success or financial stability? And this feels like a conversation that is ripe for…

Katie: Pissing people off?

Henah: Yes. A lot of potential uncertainty. It also kind of relates to the critical feedback episode we did about self-made millionaires. It talks a little bit about privilege and what it means to come from nothing. So I actually went to Google for a lot of what I wanted to talk about. 

Katie: Henah’s like, how can I protect myself from angry listener emails? 

Henah: No, but also I think that it's very personal, right? It all comes down to, what do you think is fair or deserving or whatever? And so it is very subjective, in my opinion. And so Katie, I'll start with you. I think you were talking about a book you had read recently that really illuminated some of this conversation for you. 

Katie: Yeah. Well, it's funny that you just said the word “fair.” I keyed in on that because I had the same thought when I was mulling it over, of, I think the reason this question feels so contentious and the reason that the concept of deservingness and having earned what you have is so touchy or really strikes a nerve for people one way or the other, is because it really gets at the heart of fairness and who gets what and why, which is really an economic question. And I think that capitalism in general, as a system, prescribes a certain set of norms about who gets what and why, and what work is valuable and what is not. 

Henah: So you're saying on a money show that we're gonna blame capitalism for this one? 

Katie: No, no, no, no, no. 

Henah: I'm kidding. I'm kidding. 

Katie: Let's actually dig into this and go a step further, because I think you would see this in any situation where things are not equal; you would start to get to the heart of this question of who deserves what. And in this book I was reading, which was why this was just so well timed, I added it to the newsletter. So if you're not subscribed to the newsletter, go ahead, subscribe.

Henah: Yeah. It was called Uneasy Street, right? 

Katie: Yes. It was in our Rich Girl Roundup one week; I always put the books I'm reading in there and I thought it was so fascinating. So the concept of Uneasy Street, this woman, she interviews some of the wealthiest people in Manhattan… 

Henah: Manhattan. 

Katie: Manhattan. She breaks them down. I enunciate, okay? She breaks them down into what she calls earners and inheritors. So she looks at people who have either earned millions of dollars through their labor and who did not inherit money, and people who inherited millions of dollars. 

Henah: What a fascinating premise. 

Katie: Some of the people were in both camps—some inherited millions of dollars, but also had very high-paying jobs. And it was so fascinating because she kept highlighting how the concept of deservingness would come up. They were very quick to be like, “I've worked really hard to have what I have.” And anytime she would kind of press them and be like, “Well, you know, I saw your housekeeper in the other room. I see your nanny in the other room. They're working really hard. Do you think they're working hard? Do they not deserve what you have?” And that it would kind of make the person squirm a little bit and be a little bit uncomfortable. Because they'd be confronting, “Well, no, I think they are working hard. But I don't know, I just, I've worked really hard.” That was always the way the conversation would play out every time. 

And I've noticed this in my own life, where I will get defensive sometimes. It's like, well, I worked really hard for that money. I earned the money that I spent on that. I don't have a cohesive, this is what it means or this is not what it means. But I do think that it's really interesting when you dig into the moral implications around having resources and whether or not you have quote unquote “fairly” earned them. 

Henah: So that actually tracks exactly with what I found on Google. It was really interesting. I looked at the search “Who deserves their wealth?” And there were pieces from Forbes, Insider, which, disclosure: Insider, I believe, owns Morning Brew. 

Katie: Correct. 

Henah: A whole bunch of different places. And they all had totally different op-eds on the topic of who deserves to be rich and whether they interviewed people who are rich. And so I did what a millennial would do. I went to Reddit, and I went on Reddit and I looked at how do people define earning it. It's interesting because it relates a lot to what you said. There was this implication of having to suffer. Like there was this “I have toiled, I have gone through something hard to achieve this income.” 

Katie: “I have sacrificed.” 

Henah: And that was what was the delineation. But to your point, I would argue that probably a housekeeper is working laboriously to earn their income in a way that I'm not doing at my nine to five desk computer job writing emails. 

Katie: Totally. 

Henah: So I also think that there's an element of this question of maybe, who is unworthy of the success, or how do we define being unworthy? Is it because they were lucky? Was it because of their privilege? Was it because their life was handed to them on a silver platter? Like some of the examples that were the interviews in that book that it sounds like you're saying. 

I think for me too, I'm first-generation American, and I know that I have had to work harder than some of my friends for their successes because they went to high school, they got a summer internship at an amazing company because their father set them up with one. My parents did not have connections like that. Anything that I've done in that way, yes, I had a lot of other privileges, but that was all from me. So I think that there's not just the fairness aspect, but where do we think things are unworthy?

Katie: It's a good question to flip it. I almost think then you could press it even further and go, is worthiness even real? Does anyone deserve anything? It kind of gets at that idea that we talked about a couple months ago about the role of luck in success and how yeah, you have to work really hard. I think it was that self-made millionaire episode, where it's like, hard work is just one element of success. There is luck, there is timing, there is connections. And so I think when you start to dig into that morass of what it really takes to quote unquote “make it” or to make it to the level that you have tens of millions of dollars, even being born in a certain era gave you a better shot statistically of becoming a millionaire than being born at a different period of time.

You can even see this in stock market returns. Nick Maggiulli did an amazing piece that we'll link in this show notes for this episode about this where the time that you started investing and the time that you retired, based on that 30-year window in the stock market, you could have radically different outcomes, and that's nothing but luck, right? 

Henah: Timing and luck. Yeah. 

Katie: I wonder if the wise Yoda answer is that, well, deservingness is just a social construct, that it's not real, and it's really, it's something that you almost can't measure. 

Henah: I wrote in my prep notes too, on the flip side of that, does that mean certain people deserve to be poor? Obviously I don't think that we're saying that either. Yeah, I love that kind of reframing. Thanks, Yoda slash Katie. 

Katie: I'm like, what is the stoic philosopher take? 

Henah: I also saw kind of this trend online and it's something that we've talked about in the self-made millionaire episode as well, is like, when do things shift from earning it to no longer earning it? So for example, like a Jeff Bezos, there is no way that someone like a billionaire can say, I have earned this all up by myself. Because you kind of do have to exploit other people in order to make that kind of money. What do you think on that shift from, you did earn it at one point to… 

Katie: That, I think, is where the way our capitalist system is currently structured throws a real wrench in.

Henah: Sure. 

Katie: Was that hard work worth hundreds of billions of dollars? Well, no, probably. At what point does it become divorced from your personal labor and the amount that you still benefit? I think it gets at that kind of owner versus labor thing, where capital ownership is far more lucrative than labor and you can make way more money owning something than laboring for something. But theoretically, owning something is a lot less work than laboring for it, right? That's where capitalism kind of divorces from compensation. And so we think that that's linear, but I don't think that that's true. I think that when you own assets, you can make a very disproportionate income as the owner of that capital than someone who's maybe busting their ass 12 hours a day to make that capital worth something. 

Henah: I think that there's also a relative reframe, right? Like how are we even defining success? 

Katie: Oh, see, I was just thinking about this question from a wealth deservingness, not… 

Henah: And that's why this is Money with Katie. 

Katie: I'm looking at the finances only. 

Henah: I think that the success of, do you have a job that you love? Do you have the family lifestyle that you want but you're not raking in millions? I think that the context of success is also important. I guess what I'm saying is that the whole question, every word needs to be picked apart to very specifically define for us to find an answer. Probably in this Rich Girl Roundup, we posed more questions than any sort of answer. But I think that it's worth dissecting a little bit more than just kind of taking at face value. 

Katie: Mm. That's interesting. The thing is, I do wonder, though, would someone look at someone who has a happy family and a median income and be like, they didn't earn that. Whereas I think you're far more likely to take exception to someone who's earning a lot or has a lot. I think money tends to be a more…

Henah: It exacerbates how you feel about a lot of things and it affects your life in a lot of different ways. So yes, I do think because it's very subjective. The way I feel about money is gonna be different than the way that someone who had all those ins in college that I'm comparing myself to is gonna feel about money, versus like if you go for a job and you don't get picked, it's easy to be like, well, that person got this and that's why they got this role. This is the slippery slope I was talking about. 

Katie: I think where I land with this one is that the kind of hard pill to swallow truth is that life isn't fair, and that that unfairness extends to some people getting a lot of resources and some getting not as many. But that I think it highlights why good policy is so important, because you don't want policy that exacerbates that or compounds that, but rather can help level the playing field of opportunity, if you will. So that someone's battle that might already be relatively uphill isn't made steeper. 

Henah: I mean, it's basically looking at equality versus equity or justice. It's basically saying, does everybody get the same thing across the board and that's good for everybody, or do some people need more so that they can be at the same level as everybody else? 

Katie: So you just mentioned equity versus equality. Do you think that you should be able to work harder to make more money? Or do you think that if you are working harder than someone else, you should be able to make more money than they are? I think I know how you feel about this, but I'm curious. 

Henah: I wanna hear what you think I would say. 

Katie: So I think your first gut response would be like, no, I think equity is better. I think everyone should have the same. But I think in practice, if you were really pressed, I think you would say that if you're working harder than someone else, you should be able to make more, and that you should be able to translate harder work or longer hours worked for more income. 

Henah: The irony is that I actually had it backwards, where I originally was like, well, I work really hard. I went into the gut mode of, well, I did this, but then I thought about it and I was like, well, that would be assuming that other people do not work hard. I do think that there are certain instances where if you are in the same role as someone else and the quality of your work is different and the outcomes of your work are different and you can really look at that, then yes. But I don't think it's fair for me to say I deserve more than so and so down the street who has a completely different job. Their idea of labor could be completely different and the way that they make income. 

Katie: Okay. That's interesting that I had it backwards. 

Henah: I don't think there's a right answer, because I think I've made the case in my own role and you and I have talked about this, like if I'm working 40 hours a week but I'm able to get X amount of stuff done and the quality is still the same, even though you and I negotiated on X salary, does that mean I shouldn't ask for more?

Katie: Yeah, and I think that is almost the practical manifestation of the question, is, what do I deserve? What does my labor quote unquote “earn?” And what is my value? How do you quantify that? And so I think it gets slippery at the macro level, which is what we're talking about, where you're looking at everyone in society and who gets what. But I think the question is equally interesting at that micro level, of how do you quantify that? 

Henah: Yeah, I've heard this quote like where you are born should not dictate if you are going to live. And it was more about the mortality crisis around the world. But I think that that statement still kind of stands, that a lot of these circumstances that are not in your control do affect your life for the rest of your life. And that's a much wider question, but I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think there's a clear answer, just more questions to consider. 

Katie: That's what I really liked about this question and why I wanted to do it. 'Cause I was like, we're gonna have a fun, interesting conversation that I think will yeah, just open up more dialogue. And so yeah, if you're listening to this and you were either vehemently agreeing or disagreeing, do me a favor: Pose this question to a friend or loved one, have the conversation with them, and then report back to us where you guys land and what y'all think. And if you think we missed anything or if there was anywhere we took the conversation today that you think that there was a gaping hole or a really flagging logical flaw, we'd love to hear from you.

Henah: Email us at moneywithkatie@morningbrew.com. 

Katie: I think this is one we're, depending on what we hear, we might do a follow-up just because I think that this is such a fundamental social value element of wealth-building, and “deservingness” is just such a juicy topic. So that is all for this week's Rich Girl Roundup, and we will see you on Wednesday to talk about living it up without breaking the bank.