You Getting Poor Doesn't Mean They're Getting Rich

Here's a little flip of perspective I devised back in New York but have perfected here in Portugal. If someone is charging you for a good or service and you suspect they're being greedy on their end, stop and take stock. How's this person doing? Do they drive a shiny new Tesla? Big house? $200 shoes? If not—if they're poor, or just barely getting along, or even if they live a decent middle class life without 112" plasma televisions or FEDEX shipments of fresh-caught Alaskan Sockeye salmon and don't have a coke habit—pay the damned money and shut the hell up. You might be getting poor, but they're not getting rich.

This message has been brought to you by my ongoing project of trying to be less of an asshole.


(A local friend is removing the hideous cheap water jet tub installed under the shower by my apartment's previous owners. He quoted what seemed like a healthy sum by Portuguese standards. Eyebrow raised. Then found he needs do additional tile work, so he says it will cost more. Understandable, but my second eyebrow raised. He knows I have cleaning ladies coming after he leaves, but told me his wife, who's also my friend, will come and do cleanup when he's done. I was about to say no thanks I'm already paying cleaning ladies AS YOU KNOW, when I remembered that he and his wife and son (decent, kind, hard-working people) live basically in a chicken coop and his car is missing a door and she is surely looking forward to pitching in to what she sees as a family project. So, "Ok, great. Please have your wife clean and send me a bill." It's not charity. That's the wrong framing. It's just the correct form of transaction.)