Rich Dad, Poor Schmuck

[UPDATE: Many thanks to Peter of Precious Cargo, who alerted me to this devastating critique of Kiyosaki by a fellow finance author. Among the revelations - Kiyosaki made his money not by cannily investing in real estate but through Amway, and the "Rich Dad" whose advice informs his most famous book was probably a fictional creation. Here's the best quote:

A reader recently suggested that Rich Dad Poor Dad is nothing but a collection of cliches about money. Old cliches. Cliches that have been around since way before Kiyosaki claims “rich dad” originated them. The reader further said that Kiyosaki then appears to have simply made up a bunch of accompanying phony stories to fill the cliche collection out to the length of a book. She may be right. For example, Kiyosaki’s fear-and-greed advice (see below) is an age-old Wall Street cliche about securities prices.

Read the whole thing, though. It's good.]

Those of you who don't work in bookstores probably don't recognize the name Robert Kiyosaki. He's one of these financial authors, of the Suze Orman variety, whose work you find in the Business Bestsellers section of Barnes and Noble. In this case, Kiyosaki broke into the maisntream with a book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad in which he provides parents with investment strategies for things like college tuition.

Largely, these books are harmless. They spout mainly obvious truisms about investment - buy real estate, don't extend yourself on credit cards with abnormally high or deceptive interest rates, that sort of thing - but fancy it up with motivational speaker schtick, anecdotes and humor to make the whole thing seem more palatable and engaging. I'm guessing that anyone who was a decent writer with a somewhat entertaining prose style who can balance his or her checkbook could author such a book.

Anyway, Kiyosaki, like any wise businessman would, has turned his one notable bestseller into a Cult of Personality. He constantly has new books coming out, a column on Yahoo Finance, all that crap. Even though he's got this self-made millionaire backstory going on, I guarantee he's making more now off of the author gig than he ever was as an entrepreneur.

All of this is lead-in to his head-explodingly stupid new column on Yahoo. The idiocy begins right with the title: Lazy People Don't Get Rich. Oh, brother...

Allow me to be politically incorrect: The No. 1 reason people aren't rich is because they're lazy. This is purely my opinion and no one else's, and I have no scientific proof to back it up.

No shit...

Robbie does 2 things in this first paragraph that drive me insane with rage. (1) He draws a stupid, illogical conclusion from casual, everyday observations. (2) He misuses the term "politically incorrect." Let's deal with the second issue first.

"Politically incorrect" does not mean rude or blunt. It does not indicate that you are about to make a crude generalization based on no evidence. Political correctness meant something specific - it was a way of speaking that was culturally neutral, that avoided heteronormative assumptions based on gender, race, etc. You wouldn't say "stewardess," assuming all who had that job were neccessarily women. You say "flight attendant." They are not "Congressmen," but "Congresspersons." Eventually, it got carried away. Calling someone "handicapped" indicated that they were at a disadvantage to everyone else, somehow "other" than "normal," so they became "differently abled."

But there's nothing "politically incorrect" about saying lazy people are poor and ambitious people are rich. That's just a stupid generalization. I've noticed that a lot of people are perverting these terms as an excuse to say things that are racist or sexist. Like, "Well, I don't believe in political correctness, so I feel free to say that all women are stupid and black people can't swim." That is just unacceptable language, not because it is not politically sensitive in its use of actual vocabulary, but because it is riddled with ignorant stereotypes.

Which brings me back to Robert's original point. He has clearly noticed that a lot of the wealthy people he knows are highly motivated. In fact, there may be a universal truth buried in there somewhere. If you make an exception, as Robert does not, for the wealthy people who simply inherited their money - the Paris Hiltons of the world - you might say that people of great wealth tend to be ambitious, highly motivated and aware of the value of hard work. In other words, there are no lazy self-made millionairs. That would be fair enough.

But that's not what Robert is saying. He's reversing the logical conclusion, stating not that becoming rich requires hard work, but that not becoming rich indicates a character flaw. Being poor = being lazy. What an idiot.

Rober then spends an entire page of his column talking about how people can't handle his brutal honesty because everyone in America but him is a total pussy. You see, he was in the Marine Corps, so he can spot a lazy person just like that!

When I returned from the war and entered the civilized world of business, I was shocked by the phoniness, the covert hostility (disguised as caring), and the fake smiles that are rampant to this day. It's been over 30 years since I was discharged from the Marines, and I still haven't adjusted.

Today, I'm still hesitant to let my employees know exactly what I'm not satisfied with for fear of being sued, or to compliment a pretty woman for fear of being accused of sexual harassment.

Does anyone else sense that Robert probably has a horrible, mean-spirited bullying personality, and that's why he feels repressed having to be nice to people at work all day? Ideally, he could stomp around, screaming at people and being generally rude while hitting on all the attractive women in sight. But instead, because of our bullshit politically correct society, which frowns on such behavior, he has to actually modify how he acts in front of other people. He can't just act like a 20 year old Marine on leave all the time!

How this relates to his outrageous poor=lazy formulation, I couldn't say. I think he's just spending several paragraphs congratulating himself on being brave enough to write a financial column for Yahoo.

Then, Robert slowly works his way back to his resume again.

Most of you who follow my books and this column know how I make my money. First of all, I'm an entrepreneur. I've been starting companies since I was a kid. I never wanted to be an employee -- I always wanted to be in control. I didn't want someone like me telling me what to do. Consequently, I now have companies, agencies, or strategic partners all over the world.

These financial writers spend so much time relating their personal stories, and these anecdotes are always the same. They did their research and learned all they could. They took a calculated risk. It paid off bigtime. Now they are rich. Repeat after me...I am Robert Kiyosaki, millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht.

Also, you have to love his command for the jargon. He has "strategic partners" all over the world. Not friends or colleagues or associations or coworkers. "Strategic partners." I guess they're playing World of Warcraft online together at night or something.

Then comes the funniest single line I have read in any piece of writing in some time.

Finally, I've loved gold and silver for years.

"I'll never forget the first time I laid eyes on a piece of silver. It was at the Comte d'Ascoyne's yearly Masquerade Ball. Silver was dressed up as the Tin Man. I was done up as Dorothy. We locked eyes across the crowded room and in that moment, I knew my life would be forever changed. I walked towards my destiny, but did not see Silver's fiancee, Gold, returning from the salon with a tray of Brandy Alexanders. My heart sank like a stone."

Wars have been fought over gold and silver, too. Why do you think the Incas lost their empire to the Spaniards, or the American Indians lost their land to the European settlers? The conquerors may have said that they were acting in the name of God, but remember -- there's only a single letter's difference between "God" and "gold."

What penetrating insights. Someone get this guy a Booker Prize.

The recent outbreak of honesty also inspires me to be more forthcoming in general, and less politically correct. This is the web, after all, where honesty is respected, not suppressed, censored, or forced to be "sensitive" like our old, more traditional forms of media.

Again, political correctness has nothing to do with honesty. It is perhaps less direct, and certainly more of an academic concept than an assimilated part of American language, but this is not the same as being dishonest. A person with a disability really is differently abled, even if you think it's silly to refer to them as such.

Robert's just trying to come up with a good excuse for making brash, senseless generalizations without any rationale. If you question his thinking, you're just being "politically correct" and you have no respect for his frank brand of "honesty."

It's in this spirit that I opened by saying that lazy people don't get rich. I also said that the difference between "God" and "gold" is a simple "L" -- as in "lazy," or "looting." The conquistadors who looted the Inca Empire in the name of God weren't lazy. They were thugs with guns, but they had ambition.

Another word that begins with "L" is "loser." Over the years, I've met many losers who pray to God to give them gold. They'll never get it that way because, as the Sunday school I went to taught me, God helps those who help themselves. Again, the conquistadors may have been killers and thieves, but at least they knew how to help themselves.

Wow...I mean...Wow...Is the theme of this column really "you should be more like the conquistadors?" The ones that raped, savaged and eventually destroyed entire civilizations in a futile search for nonexistent gold? Actually, he's going a step further than that. If you don't have the attitude of a conquistador, burning everything in your path to personal enrichment, you're a LOSER.

Robert's revealing a pretty unpleasant, sub-Nietzschean side to his overall worldview here. Investment for him is all about "strength of will." The man who steps forward to take the money, no matter what he has to do to get it, will be the Rich Man and all others will be the Losers who serve him. Yikes...

As some of you may be aware, I wasn't born rich. And I've written openly about my failures as an entrepreneur and my losses as an investor. I haven't hidden my horror stories. The reason I don't keep them secret is because my failures are the best learning experiences of my life. We learn by making mistakes -- except in school, where we're punished for making mistakes. This may be why most schoolteachers aren't rich.

No, Robbo. School teachers aren't rich becuase, even though they do one of the most important jobs in our society, they don't get paid squat. Because rich bastards like you constantly find ways to get out of paying your fair share in taxes and balk when any of that tax money then goes to fund public schools instead of corporate handouts and congressional pork.

I mean, going after teachers like this...Calling them "losers" an insinuating that they don't make more money because they never learned from their mistakes...It's just ridiculous. I mean, Robert's a self-help author. What makes him think he can lord his status over anyone else? Guess what, Bob? Actual genuinely super-rich Americans would think you're a loser because you have to write books and then go on the radio and the Internet hyping them to make a living. Brandon Davis lives on Paris Hilton's couch, professionally. That's his job.

I'm not recommending that you become an ambitious looter, as Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were convicted of being. I only want to point out that if you're not a lazy loser, you may find yourself with more gold in your life without having to resort to looting.

After all that blather, his final message is simply: If you want to get really rich, don't be lazy. That's solid advice. There are about 100,000,000 better ways to get to that message across than to call all poor people losers, to brag about your military service and success at business and to defend Cortez and Coronado. It's easy to see how he gets these 300 page books out so quickly. He just blathers on endlessly about nothing and then makes obvious conclusions like "Hard work is important!" What a turd.