RE: Are egoists getting wealthy, or does wealth make you egoistic?
I think there are a lot of different things going on here. First, not everybody who is rich got that way because their parents were rich (though of course that's true of many). Also, I suspect that characteristics like cheating and taking more free stuff are characteristics that either help make you rich or are shared with similar characteristics that are, at least in some cases. I don't really understand the not stopping at a crosswalk thing but I suspect that's related to being less concerned with having to pay the cost of a ticket. I bet rich people speed more and roll through stop signs more as well. I suspect that the correlation between being rich and being an ass is more related to how you became rich than the money itself.
I wonder how people like Steve Jobs and Wozniak, the founders of Apple who truly were self made millionaires raised by middle class families compare to those born to wealthy people or who got rich in other ways in terms of these characteristics...