What they never told me …
• They never told me I was a “middle-class� citizen of the richest nation in all of human history.
• They never told me that while the definition of poverty in America is an annual income of less than $20,000 for the rest of the world it’s $712.
• They never told me that out of over 6 billion people my “middle-class� income would rank in the top 1% of all global wealth (check out: globalrichlist.com).

There’s only one reasonable conclusion that can be reached: If I am to be saddled with the label “middle-class� it can only mean that my income and assets place me in the middle range of all those who are rich. I am not ultra-rich, I am middle-rich.

The point that I am not approaching with much stealth must be obvious by now …

Like most Westerners I’ve lived a good deal of my life comforted by the knowledge that I was born into mediocre circumstances and therefore owed the rest of the world little more than a heavily qualified, mediocre response to its needs—because hey, I got needs too, you know. All the while I joined the great chorus of middle-class collective consciousness in decrying the abuses of the wealthy. You’ve sung the song. You know the words. Let’s sing it together, “The world would be a much better place if only the rich would learn to give.� Of course, it all collapsed like a house of cards in a hurricane when I discovered the great secret of my heritage. I have, in fact, grown up as one of the privileged elite.

Yes, I am the rich who should learn how to give.

oops.

more to come …