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Business Daily: Filthy rich

06/08/2014

Filthy rich

BBC World Service - Business Daily, Filthy rich

Does being rich make you unpleasant and what should billionaires do about the wealth gap?

Does being rich make you unpleasant? Or is it mainly unpleasant people who become rich? And what should billionaires do about the wealth gap?

Economists these days spend a lot of time worrying about the growing gap between rich and poor. But it's not just economists who are fretting about it - some of the world's richest billionaires are too. Amoung them is the venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, who made his fortunes, among other things, by being an early investor in the online retailer Amazon. He describes himself as one of the 0.1 cent-ers, the richest of the rich, a proud and unapologetic capitalist. But Nick told us that he is worried that if he and his fellow billionaires don't do something about the wealth gap it could be a case of the French revolution, round two.

Plus does being rich make you unpleasant? Or is it mainly unpleasant people who become rich? We ask Oliver James a psychologist and author of Affluenza, about the effect wealth has on people's psychology.

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