To those overly invested in pitying others.

I was listening to NPR on Wednesday and they had, as guests of the radio show Forum, 3 financial experts, one author and 2 economists. One of the guests, (a woman who shall remain nameless as I do not wish to promote her stupid book,) seems to be in the business of inculcating a victim mentality in even the most well off of Americans. One of the callers into the show was complaining of her debt after law school and the lack of free day care for her and her husband's children. She complained of mortgage debt and said that they could not seem to get ahead and blah, blah blah. One of the other guests pointed out that this woman was actually at the top of the chain and was not really suffering the tortures she was claiming and that he found it suspect that someone like her was being taken seriously as symptomatic af a large problem in the US. Of course, the female author attacked him for his opinion and went on to illustrate just how terrible a life this lady lawyer really was having. Caller after caller disagreed and said that they knew just such people that bought five dollar lattes everyday, drove big SUV's and had enormous mortgages for enormous houses they had purchased, despite not being able to afford them easily. Both the female author and the other guest of a similar mindset continued to try and make it seem as if there was something rotten in paradise, but they were proving their intellectual and moral bankruptcy with every word they spoke. It is really disturbing that these 2 financial "experts" are so invested in the game of pitying others that they can not differentiate between the truly needy and the well off. Someone that is one paycheck away from disaster is worthy of these people's pity and their efforts should concentrate on ways to help such people. They should not be encouraging the well off to think that they are suffering, nor should they accept or validate those well off people's claims of financial hardship.