He's not trying to make people feel guilty, he's trying to make them admit some truths about the system - because until that happens, it can't be fixed. Everyon

He's not trying to make people feel guilty, he's trying to make them admit some truths about the system - because until that happens, it can't be fixed. Everyone kicking back in these comments about 'being shamed' is utterly missing the point, and the 'guilt' line is a throwaway comment meaning that the upper class in England are aware of the issue, not that their emotional state is his desired target state for wealthy people to live in. It's explicitly stated in the conclusion: For Americans to solve the problem of their deepening class divisions, we will have to start by admitting their existence and our complicity in maintaining them. The morals the author is interested in isn't "you should feel guilty", but "we need to fix this in order to even start helping the other four quintiles". Not to mention that you're misrepresenting what he's saying, framing it as 'claims of luck', when his literal words are "in part the result of good fortune" (my emphasis). He's mirroring the same kind of thing that Warren Buffett says, yet people on HN don't complain about being guilted by Buffett's utterances. The author isn't trying to make the reader feel guilty in that article; if the reader does feel guilty or shamed in reading it, then perhaps they're hiding something from themself? I mean, there's hard evidence right in this thread, where you see someone on $300k honestly arguing that someone on $30k is better off because they pay less income tax by percentage (!?!?). That takes a bizarre level of self-delusion.