Browsing Cracked, as I am wont to do, I found this article by David Wong: 6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying. In it, Wong does a better job than I have done historically in explaining one point in particular:

… “anyone can get rich” isn’t just untrue, it’s insultingly untrue. You can’t have a society where everyone is an investment banker. And you can’t have a society where you pay six figures to every good policeman, nurse, firefighter, schoolteacher, carpenter, electrician and all of the other ten thousand professions that civilization needs to survive (and that rich people need in order to stay rich).

It’s like setting a jar of moonshine on the floor of a boxcar full of 10 hobos and saying, “Now fight for it!” Sure, in the bloody aftermath you can say to each of the losers, “Hey, you could have had it if you’d fought harder!” and that’s true on an individual level. But not collectively — you knew goddamned well that nine hobos weren’t getting any hooch that night. So why are you acting like it’s their fault that only one of them is drunk?

A great number of different kinds of people are necessary to have a functioning society. To say that someone whose job has an immediate and demonstrable result (say, a paramedic) is of less value to society than someone who manages a hedge fund is patently absurd. The money that is being manipulated by the hedge fund manager is meaningless outside the framework of a functioning society. As such, he should appreciate the interconnectedness of the world. Preferably without being a jerk about it.