I have to say I’m not sure what they were hoping for, the discourse hasn’t felt overly mean by internet standards, but maybe that’s just my bubble. I’m sorry they died, but now that we know all the details it’s a bit like the guy that decided to hike up a lava field last year.
Also,
People’s fascination with the wealthy is fuelled by both curiosity and envy. And when rich people find themselves in trouble, it makes the rest of us feel better, Pamela Rutledge, director of the California-based Media Psychology Research Center, wrote in a piece about social media and the submersible for Psychology Today.
I feel like “outrage” should be in there somewhere. It makes me mad that people can be that dumb with a quarter of a million dollars while I’m just glad to have a safe roof over my head, and other people (like the mentioned boat migrants) aren’t even that lucky.
Alright, back off my soap box.
You’d be amazed at how little it takes to be in “the 1%”. Going by total wealth (instead of income), the 1% is about 3.5 million dollars starting. That means your average small business owner likely qualifies as “the 1%”. Again, not quite where you really want to be addressing your ire.
The real abuse comes from, like, “the 0.1%” (starting at about 17 million) or maybe even “the 0.01%” (starting at about 78 million). And that means you’re going to be eating people who have multiple homes whose wealth comes primarily from exploitative investments, abusive tax loopholes and other such shitfuckery, not people who worked their entire lives to finally own the corner store they now run.
source: https://economics.princeton.edu/working-papers/top-wealth-in-america-new-estimates-under-heterogenous-returns/