[EliRivers]

As a wealthy person once explained it to me: half the fun is making a ton of money, and half is finding a way not to pay (or just a tiny amount of) taxes.

Exactly; that leaves none of the fun being in actually spending it.

Going WAY off-topic now, I split the very wealthy into two groups. Rich people, and poor people who happen to have money.

Rich people think differently. They've got a whole lot of money, and now they can stop worrying about that and get on with doing things. Bill Gates deciding to team up with Rotary International et al and see if we can't finally kill Polio stone cold dead with the extra help of all this money that seems to be cluttering up his bank account. This is the action of a rich man.

Poor people with money have the same concerns and same aims as they did when they didn't have money. They just buy a more expensive watch, a more expensive car, move their social status group to be around other similarly wealthy people and signal at each other, keep thinking about making more money.