Ah. If as you suggest he was offering hyperbole from the other pole as a thought exercise and not expressing his preferred translation, then that was lost on me

Ah. If as you suggest he was offering hyperbole from the other pole as a thought exercise and not expressing his preferred translation, then that was lost on me and I apologize. That said, I still think the comment fails. "haves and have nots" is only arguably hyperbolic because it's cliche, but ignoring cliche connotations it's just plain dryly accurate because the discussion is effectively about a resource: Money. paul_f's proposed hyperbole makes a jump from "has money" to "has a work ethic", which is what I find wildly invalid and offensive. Even ignoring opportunity and circumstance for a moment (which I put aside so that I can avoid getting into a Randian snowball fight), it still ignores the existence of two people with equal opportunity and circumstance, but unequal tendency/desire to optimize for income.