The moral imperative of the dollar
On Wednesday, my sister and her husband invited me over to their house after work for the ostensible purpose of providing feedback on some "business" that they are currently engaged in
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It's something that strikes me as unusually common among the neoconservative religious folks here in the US, that there is some kind of God-given right to make money, or some kind of moral imperative to attain wealth.
I'm oversimplifying, but I think that's due to Calvinism, historically: specifically, the notion that material wealth is the way of the christian god to show his approval of someone's actions. This directly leads to the conclusion that a) rich people are by definition the most moral; b) poor people are, almost by definition, immoral (I say "almost" because in practice, people might also believe poverty or bad fortune to be a Jobian test of an individual's faith); and c) rich people by definition deserve their riches.
This also explains the following:
Even more bewildering and ironic is that the vast majority of the religious neocons who vehemently defend and extoll the virtues of money are, in fact, nowhere near being a part of the 1%.
In addition, in the USA, there exists an enduring idea of social mobility: the classic story of the "American dream" where you can go from a dishwasher to a millionaire if you're only smart enough. It's not like this is impossible, of course, but in reality, US-American society is every bit as stratified as comparable societies[1]. Despite that, many people cling to this hope, and proactively defend the wealthy because they, too, hope to be wealthy some day and because they cannot handle the fact that they will most likely never be.
(FWIW, the upper class does its share to keep belief in the "American dream" alive, of course, not just intentionally but also unintentionally. For instance, ask anyone who is very successful what their success is due to, and they will most likely only point to their own accomplishments, their decisions, their hard work etc., and more or less completely disregard luck[2].)
That said, this probably sounds more critical than it is actually intended to be. I'd certainly not mind being rich myself, but I do agree with you: idolizing money for its own sake does not make sense.
1. To see how this is true, consider downward social mobility: adjustments for general improvements in the standards of living nonwithstanding, for everyone who makes it from dishwasher to millionaire there should be, on average, a millionaire who ends up a dishwasher. In reality, most millionaires - the 1%, the 0.1% etc. - will never face any real risk to lose their fortune; as such, one can reasonably conclude that it is comparably unlikely for people to radically improve their financial standing and their social class. Again, not impossible, but sufficiently unlikely as to border on the impossible in practice.
2. This is not to say that hard work etc. is unimportant, far from it. But "making it big" requires both: blood, sweat and tears AND a hefty dose of luck. There's lots of people who failed despite working hard, but we don't hear their stories.
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