A millionaire’s attempt to explain why he’s better than you falls flat.
Tiffany Beroid, a mother and Wal-Mart employee in Laurel, Maryland, was forced to drop out of college because of her employer’s low wages and erratic scheduling practices.
When she spoke out about the problems she faced, Wal-Mart fired her.
Since then, Beroid has shared her story with Congress and anyone who will listen. In July, she told lawmakers that Wal-Mart workers “shouldn’t face problems like this working at a company that brings in $16 billion in profits a year.”
Makes sense, right?
Not according to Steve Siebold— a multi-millionaire and author of the book How Rich People Think. In a recent viral article with the self-evident headline What the Middle Class Doesn’t Understand About Rich People, Siebold suggests that working Americans like Beroid should stop making “empty statements” about their billionaire employers and instead take a lesson from them.
Call it “richsplaining.”
So what are you failing to understand about the rich? Mostly that they’re better than you.
Siebold insists that billionaires like Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton’s affluent heirs deserve their wealth because they think, feel, and act differently from ordinary people. If working Americans could “really understand the mindset of the richest people,” he says, “they would be among the top earners as well.”
Unlike the rest of us, according to Siebold, rich people believe in themselves, focus on the future, value their freedom, and are comfortable with uncertainty — all traits that the masses just can’t fathom.
Come again?
Tiffany Beroid doesn’t need any lectures about believing in herself. She enrolled in college to become a nurse while raising a toddler and holding down a job at Wal-Mart. That takes a lot of self-confidence.
“OK,” Siebold might say, “but she probably doesn’t dream about the future.”
Actually, the future is what guides Beroid’s decisions. As she put it, “I thought that if I worked hard, I could give my family a stable home and lift us out of poverty.”
But does she really understand the value of freedom? According to Siebold, after all, only “rich people can afford to stand up and fight oppression.”
In fact, since losing her job at Wal-Mart, Beroid has been speaking out against worker oppression and taking bold actions to stop it.
At this point, Siebold might take a deep breath and say, “OK, but there’s no way Beroid could understand operating in a state of constant uncertainty. That trait truly distinguishes the rich from everyone else.”
He’d better try again. No one understands uncertainty more than a Wal-Mart employee like Beroid who found herself scheduled to work 40 hours one week and 15 hours the next. Thanks to unpredictable scheduling practices that can make it impossible to budget time or money, many wage workers’ personal lives and economic livelihoods are in constant upheaval.
For his next book, maybe Siebold should just skip the rich. He could interview Wal-Mart employees instead.
Sorry, Siebold. The “richsplaining” just doesn’t fly.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy