He’s just jealous that his kid is more hardworking than he’ll ever be, and he wants to sabotage him.

I will never understand parents who intentionally clip their children’s wings for their own selfish reasons. They will sabotage career opportunities and relationships that can benefit their kids in the long run merely because it makes them temporarily upset or uncomfortable. I’m sure there are thousands of moms around the world who cry for months after dropping off their kids at an Ivy League school, but they would never consider not letting them attend it, even if it upsets them. Being a parent takes endless sacrifices, and once your kid grows up, you must make the sacrifice of letting them go and experience the world on their own. The best parents do what they can to help their kids, but they also know when to let them make their own decisions. They need to be allowed to fail and given space to make their own decisions, not their parents’. No young adult should feel they have to deny themselves opportunities to support their older family members, who have been on this planet a whole lot longer than they have and have had time to build themselves up. 

The dad in this story doesn’t need his kid to support him, or at least he shouldn’t. He has been living off his parents’ inheritance for years, and now he wants to sell his son’s perfectly good laptop because he’s obsessed with trading in technology. His son earned that laptop by working hard in school, and his dad just doesn’t get the significance of having it.