Why do we sometimes call extremely wealthy people 'STINKING RICH'?

Answer 1

there is a psychological connection between money and **** - avaricious people are often anal retentive - **** is the first thing a child makes, his first treasure, his first product - he can be quite proud of it

eg, francis bacon: 'money is like manure, best when spread' -

hence being very rich evokes subconsciously in people's minds a great pile of manure

also there is a level of mind in which people know that great wealth is never made honestly

'the great [ie, rich and powerful] are rarely good' plato

'the only honest way to make a million is save $400 a week for 50 years'

'after the first million, money multiplies like rabbits' - ie, you dont have to earn it, others earn it for you, you get to legally steal money from other people

money makes money - ie, the person doesnt make the money, other people make the money, he just rakes it in

'the second million is easier to make than the first thousand' ie less work in raking it - but it still buys real goods made by real work, others work

business: other people's money

'business is just selling for more than you paid for it' ie fraud, theft

'the merchant buys cheap, sells dear'

all these point to the immorality of wealth

if a person works 50 hours a week for 50 weeks a year for 50 years, he only does 125,000 hours work - at world average pay of US$15 an hour, he creates, earns, therefore less than US$2 million of goods and services - but of course people are free to rake billions - bill gates has been paid an average of $500,000 every hour he has worked - and yet he has worked no harder than anyone else per hour

but people dont see he is a legal thief - they idolise him

this extreme overpay means extreme underpay for others [as little as $1 a fortnight's work] which causes the violence, which escalates, to ww3 soon

Answer 2

Stinking Rich

Answer 3

This is the origin of the phrase:
Interestingly, the word "stink," adopted from a Germanic root, did not originally connote an unpleasant aroma. In Old English, it meant to emit a smell of any kind, pleasant as well as unpleasant. Fairly quickly, however, "stink" narrowed to mean "to give off a strong offensive smell," and by the 13th century "stink" took on the figurative meaning of simply "to be very offensive," a sense still in use in such phrases as "My job stinks."

"Stinking" seems to have skipped the stage when it might have meant "smelling good." From simply meaning "smelling bad," it became what the Oxford English Dictionary calls a "vague epithet connoting disgust and contempt" in the 13th century, when one person might speak of another's "stinking pride." But it wasn't until the 19th century that "stinking" became a negative intensifier meaning "offensively" in phrases such as "stinking drunk" and "stinking rich," the latter of which is first found in print in 1945. In the case of "stinking drunk," the drinker may indeed smell rather foul, but the development of "stinking" as an intensifier is separate from that fact. The actual smell is just a sort of bonus.

Answer 4

It could be from jealousy. Simple stupid human jealousy. It's easier to blame and whine about how others have money than it is to get a lazy person off their rear end and make their own.

Also, the real answer came from the south : Oil barons tended to stink like petrol in the old days. I.E. Money from their oil wells, and a interesting stinkiness.

Answer 5

I guess it is just a matter of how they got stinking rich... maybe morale and ethics.. stink. One of the "Beatles" played in a movie where a stinking rich man gave away all his money. He gave it away by making people craw for it. I cannot remeber the name of the movie.

Answer 6

Because money actually stinks and rich people have lots of money and that's why they're stinking rich.

Answer 7

I've always said "filthy rich." so I cannot relate... but I see too many people that have gained their riches through "less-than-ethical" ways & means. People like Ken Lay (et.al.) qualify.

Answer 8

simple, because people assume that they have such a vast amount of money, so much, that you can smell it on them. they literally smell of money, therefore, stinking rich.

Answer 9

so rich you can practically smell the money in the air around them.

Answer 10

Because they are so rich it is offensive... to their nostrils.