This long article describes how people who have made it tend to have have “delusions of merit“. In other words, they believe they have earned their place in society through effort or self-discipline, that those less fortunate have not made the effort or do not have the self-discipline, and therefore they feel no moral obligation to help those beneath them. The problem is, we are not talking about a vast middle class refusing to help a small underclass here. We are talking about a small minority failing to feel compassion for the vast majority of fellow people.