My impression of those-who-don't-need-to-work are often involved in a lot of charity work - especially the women. And yet, the uber-rich (and I don't know for sure as I am not one of them) seem very empty at the soul level.
Meanwhile, I've met many people who have little themselves, yet are active in charity work and they are filled with joy. The most joyful ones are active in their church.
I think doing good for others to justify yourself is a dead end. Doing good for others to glorify God is what brings true joy.
Since she was an atheist, this point certainly won't come out, but she nailed the empty-souled rich very well.
The differences are, IMO, that the uber-wealthy women involved in charity work are into planning *functions* where the work is done by professionals and where a high ticket price raises the money, yet they never go out of their way to actually do anything for others unless it is to start a business exploiting the poor as labor so as to use that aspect to market their own designs, while the poor women actually do things like drive the elderly, paint someones house, clean for the disabled, take a dinner to a lonely housebound individual or cook and bake for a social to raise money for the church. They give of themselves and think nothing of it.
The poor women are joyous and the wealthy women are unfulfilled.
Rand writes of Heros and other Archetypes who worship the creative force in and of Man, the individual human being, not the human race. She is the apostle of selfishness as the highest good and disdains altruism. IMO, she goes beyond atheism and instead sets up the Productive Creator as the only human object worthy of homage. She called her philosophy Objectivism and perhaps it is that aspect, the objectification of archetypes, that causes her protagonists to be essentially cold, even if they are on fire with their own goals and aims.
Her anti-heros are empty, within her context, because they are not independent or filled with their own creative energy. They need other people to provide everything, emotionally and financially, while the Heros are complete unto themselves.
It is one of the aspects of her work that irritates me, as it is shallow and one-dimensional. She may do it to add intensity to her message, but, IMO, people are more complex than that, regardless of context.