All these kids are the exact same kids with the exact same problems as the ones I knew growing up, but the parents have more money and therefore more tools to help support their kids. The only real difference is the trauma of being broke as fuck isn’t there but it’s replaced with the pressure of expectations. When I was a kid if I had gotten a job as a mail delivery person, that would have been seen as a total success on my part. Life long stable job with a retirement at the end. I fucking won the game of life. For rich kids, that would be seen as an abject failure.

It’s not that they don’t have empathy. It’s that their entire community is economically high performers. Everyone they meet in their lives fucking won the game of capitalism. The only "not wealthy’ humans they run into wait on them or teach them. In their minds, how hard can it be? They know all these normal looking people and they’re all rich as fuck so how hard can it be?

Because that’s the mind fuck. Rich people aren’t better than you. Some shit went their way and that’s the difference. Elite earners don’t work harder than janitors. And so rich kids grow up in that world and it’s just normalized. It’s not a lack of empathy, it’s that they internalize it as “normal”.

Then a middle class kid runs into them and sees them as lacking in empathy.

You’re right though. It is more luxurious. They live in a world where they know the money ain’t going away, but my trauma finds a way of breaking thru sometimes. My kids both know how to make beans and rice and can shop and cook for themselves for a week for under $20.