This is such a narrow, Disneyfied view of the wealthy. I come across it most from people who have grown a pretty modest amount of wealth from hard work and (quite understandably) get fed up of others thinking they got lucky when they know they made their own luck. But they are not the problem here.
'Lying awake worrying about how to pay the wages'. Yes I bet that is true of a number of small business owners who deserve better tax breaks and simplified employer regulations. But don't kid yourself and don't peddle this silly myth when it comes to challenging wealth distribution in relation to the superrich. Trump, Bezos, Jobs, Musk have never once lain awake worrying about anything that wasn't related to the inflation of their own egos.
You say inherited wealth comes from the hard work of the families who made it. But don't ignore the harder work of their workers, underpaid in lousy unsafe conditions. Why do you admire one and gloss over the other? Most superrich families achieved their wealth historically not just through hard work but through ruthlessness, lawlessness and brutality - stealing land, employing tiny children, creating factories so filthy and dangerous people choked to death and died young, working 12 hour shifts, and living in hovels while the aristocrats and industrialists built mansions for themselves.
It's still happening! Workers in Silicon Valley live in their cars! They can't afford flats. They have bought the myth of the dream. People in their twenties in the finance and fashion industries die of exhaustion, from drugs they take to keep them awake for the impossible hours they are expected to work. A woman really did give birth in a Sports Direct warehouse because she wasn't allowed time off. Sports Direct workers were checked before starting shifts, to ensure they were wearing unbranded clothing. That's one way of ensuring they know their place in the pecking order.
Trump didn't ever lie awake wondering how to pay people. He inherited a staggering amount of wealth and managed to be possibly the only person ever to lose money running a casino! He prides himself on not paying tradespeople because he has better lawyers if they try to sue. He is President of the USA - which should be the ultimate achievement and measure of success. But nothing - not one thing about that super-wealthy man is commendable. That we have become so dazzled by wealth intrinsically, not by what people do with their wealth, that we allow such an insane incompetent to rule the world should be a wake up call.
Bezos started out a really canny and imaginative entrepreneur. His desire for wealth made him inventive. And it succeeded. But why does it have to come with inhumanity? Why does it end with people working in the dark, giving birth in the toilet of an Amazon warehouse because they are not allowed a break. On zero hours contracts?
We have to start asking ourselves: why do we wealth and success are the same thing? Why do we aspire to wealth above other (imo) far more desirable measures of success.
You say 'Don't belittle success, be inspired by it.' I say: determine your own values of what 'success ' and what it should look like. Wealth - if you think this is a measure of what success is, okay. But also: Humane leadership - essential. Moral fibre - essential. Creation of a cohesive society - laudable. Desire to better the world for everyone, not just yourself - the ultimate measure of success, in my opinion. Amassing great wealth is not a measure of success in my book. How you amass it and what you do with it once it is amassed - how you distribute it, what you offer the world now you have that chance - that is inspirational. i'd never belittle that. But Musk becoming a trillionaire? I couldn't despise anyone or anything more. I am not jealous of his wealth. I am appalled at his tiny-minded, hoarding, self-centred paucity of imagination at what that money could do.
Sorry for the rant. @YorkshireGoldDrinker , you may not even have read it. But your values come over to me as those of someone who has worked hard and whose wealth or family wealth is the result of hard work, and who does have a sense of responsibility to employees. And people like you are really not the problem. I wish all employers had that ethic. But I do wish people who have created a modest amount of wealth for themselves didn't get defensive and put the blinkers on when it comes to discussing the sickness of superwealth hoarding at the expense of society. They are not the same thing.