They’re better than poor people. They just are. I’ve hung around with plenty of poor people, now I’ve hung out with rich people. They work harder, generally. More focussed. The folks I grew up with, the poor people I grew up with, fairly lethargic, did a lot of complaining, smoked a little too much, drank a little too much, blamed everyone but themselves a little too much.

—Adam Carolla, May 30th

I know I’m going to get a lot of shit for what I said the other day about rich people being better than poor people, but, you know, I’m not going to apologize for telling the truth. I didn’t back down in 2003, when I was co-hosting “Loveline” with Dr. Drew Pinsky and said that Hawaiians were dumb. I didn’t back down in 2011 when, on my podcast, I asked exactly when we started giving a shit about transgendered people. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m a comedian, not a politician. (Some of you might have just thought I was a dick, but, no. I’m actually a comedian.)

My main points: Rich people work harder. Yeah. So. I know that this is probably not a popular idea or anything that anyone wants to admit, even to themselves, but, luckily, I’m not afraid to tell it like it is: mowing lawns and picking up dog shit off of people’s lawns in the hundred-degree sun is pretty fucking easy. Don’t even get me started on tollboth collectors or those layabouts who serve fast food and take care of children and clean airport bathrooms. Listen, if those people want to make money they should try doing something harder, like being the voice of an animated éclair-policeman in a Disney movie, or being the spokesperson for T.G.I. Fridays for two years.

And. Yes. Rich people are more focussed. Poor people—now, I don’t know if you ever have to hang around them, but, I mean, they are just all over the place: “How am I going to pay the light bill? How am I going to make rent? How am I going to buy groceries?” Uh, did it ever occur to you that if you could just calm down for one second, and stop thinking about how you’re so poor, you might not be so poor? I mean, have you ever thought that? This morning, my wife was like, “Which school should we send our kids to?” And I was like, “Babe, right now I have to go sit in an air-conditioned room and interview someone who is also a jerk about being a jerk. I have to focus.” And she was like, “Oh, since we can both live off of the immense salary that you work really hard for and deserve—unlike those other people who work really hard and don’t have immense salaries because they’re not better—why don’t I just worry about it?” And I was like, “Great.” Now, honestly, how hard is that?

As far as the whole complaining thing, case in point: the other day, I was picking up my Lamborghini and I overheard this woman who worked in the showroom complaining about how she wasn’t going to be able to give her son any money for college because she was just too exhausted to keep her second job. She was like, “I have to wait on Lankershim for a bus, and then I have to wait on Beverly for a bus and then wait on Doheny,” and on and on and on! And I so wanted to be like, “Lady. These five minutes you’ve been sitting around bitching could have been spent waiting for the bus, and your son, lady, he’d be five minutes closer to college.” But what can I do? Hey, if I knew how to make people see what was right in front of them, I’d be a millionaire. And you know what, maybe everyone else would, too. Or maybe not. Because they’d have to also be better, and that position, my friends, is already filled.

Above: Adam Carolla; Los Angeles, California, February 9, 2012. Photograph by Vivien Killilea/WireImage/Getty.