Contrary to the sensible notion that one should sympathize with those less fortunate than oneself, Smith (1759, iii, ii, 72–73) argued that there is a natural tendency to experience sympathy for the great and rich:

When we consider the condition of the great, in those delusive colours in which the imagination is apt to paint it, it seems to be almost the abstract idea of a perfect and happy state. It is the very state which, in all our waking dreams and idle reveries, we had sketched out to ourselves as the final object of all our desires. We feel, therefore, a peculiar sympathy with the satisfaction of those who are in it. We favour all their inclinations, and forward all their wishes. What pity, we think, that any thing should spoil and corrupt so agreeable a situation! It is the misfortunes of kings only which afford the proper subjects for tragedy.

Smith’s description recalls the outpouring of grief after the accidental deaths of Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy Jr. Popular Magazines like People and US, and similar highly rated TV shows, are filled with stories about where athletes and stars shop, what they eat and wear and the ups and downs of their love lives.

Smith believed both that this sympathy for the rich was a form of corruption based on a moral mistake, and also that it provided an important underpinning for social stability. Smith (1759, I, iii, iii, 84) described the moral mistake in this way: “[T]hat wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weaknesses, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.” Indeed, Smith further argued that the “disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or at least, to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition...is...the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.” However, Smith (I, iii, iii) also held that this sympathy was “necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society.” This sympathy for the rich may help to explain one of the puzzles of capitalism: the failure of the majority democratic societies to impose extremely high taxes on the richest members.