The idea that God loves the rich is so retarded and antithetical to Christianity, but mindless Boomers just believe that at face value.
I really have been thinking about the protestant work ethic (what you describe) and how it is related with much of the miserly greed destroying our society today and you've hit the nail right on the head. This sort of thought (being rich meant you were on the straight and narrow - blessed) has, in previous generations, meant that you were productive towards supporting your society & family and served as an incentive to make people work hard. This may have been flawed, but I have no ideas of the intricacies of that because most of us weren't around then yet it clearly worked to a decent extent. Sometime during the average Boomer's lifetime, things changed. Things stopped being about helping your family, society, or enterprise and got boiled down to just accumulation (mostly of money). People just went through the motions, and with waning religious values accumulation of money, and by extension the career, became many people's gods and became the ultimate symbols of maturity.
Some were literally not allowed by their parents to have a job or even have a bank account before being kicked out.
"What? You want independence & life skills? Hell no, better get those grades unless you want to be some refuse worker soon to be replaced by a robot!"
This accumulation-is-god mindset has gotten so bad to the point where even flaunting your money and spending it on fun stuff celebrity style has been shamed and decried as "wasteful" because "ugh who would actually
spend their money, this person must be
poor." There's a reason I'm referring to accumulation and
not wealth; there's nothing wrong with having money if you use it right, and that requires spending it (but not on shit like funko pops ofc lol). A huge part of that is also companies being extremely shortsighted, focusing on accumulation
right now and not spending a second to think of the future and their survival there. We've seen it where young people have been so economically ruined and squeezed for those extra 3 cents in monoculture demolishing targeted adverts while they doomscroll that they are now checking out of even consumer culture in droves; even brands like fuckin lululemon are having problems with trying to get younger people to buy their stuff. Who would've thought that a decade of enshittification for an increase in how much money can be accumulated would eventually alienate your customer base? I thought that was a problem for next financial quarter! But now we
are in that next financial quarter and things fucking suck. The absolutely retarded focus on accumulation has even gone and destroyed much of the healthy parts of our culture, with everything now being focused on: 1. Accumulation through the career or 2. unless you're a boomer insecure about how you gained your wealth, "wellness" so you can stay young forever just like the boomers, future generations be damned. A very straightforward example is the girlboss bullshit from a few years ago, which had a huge backlash as it was and is completely antithetical to the human condition, which you can't stop people from noticing. As an example compare youth culture from, like, 2007 and compare it with youth culture from today and guess which one will be more negative, and far more focused on the 2 topics I just mentioned rather than normal human things (finding a mate, getting friends, etc.)
