Paine on avarice and wealth

[Syd A]

I'm having a hard time with this line from Paine's Common Sense:


...and though avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.

I never thought of timorousness and avarice to be compatible, and avarice seems a quality common to many wealthy men. What did Paine mean? Was he simply writing from the naive karma-like perspective that only those who don't lust after money eventually find it, whereas those who pursue it never do?

[Heteronym]

There's nothing to understand: it's very clear. Pain thinks that avarice makes people too timorous to risk investing their money, thus making it impossible to become wealthy. I think about this point there's no ambiguity in Paine's statement.

Now what really matters is whether it holds up to empirical scrutiny. Considering that we're living in an age where the rich are getting richer, at the expense of the poor, I think it's safe to say that Paine was full of crap.