"If You're So Rich Why Ain't You Smart?"

The idiot vulgarian sneer "If you're so smart why ain't you rich?" is notorious as a nasty put-down of anyone lacking wealth who dares to publicly exercise their intelligence. It is not only mean and stupid, but a vicious defense of a social hierarchy equating intelligence with wealth, and the lack of the latter as proof of the unfitness of the former to open their mouths about anything at all in line with the traditional view of the oligarch.

It seems that few consider what easily follows from this, "If you're so rich why ain't you smart?"--to wonder why many of those who are so much richer than everyone else so often fail to impress onlookers as more intelligent than they, and indeed, being more publicly exposed than they have ever been because of their addiction to being seen and talked about, ceaselessly disgrace themselves with the extreme stupidity they display in every word and deed. The explanation is that persons of conventional views, "respecters of persons" in a way remote from the democratic pretensions of modern times, take "If you're so smart why ain't you rich?" as axiomatic--a thing self-evident, beyond questioning, such that they dismiss any datum life puts before them that would logically lead them to question itThus even being barraged with such data they never wonder "If you're so rich why ain't you smart?" and find themselves wondering about the validity of the prior question, "If you're so smart why ain't you rich?"--a line of thought from which "society" ceaseless discourages all its members as the flatteries of the rich by their courtiers in the news and entertainment media (every billionaire a genius!) remind us a thousand times a day.