Yesterday on Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough trotted out one his preferred observations. “Americans don’t resent the rich,” he said. “We want to be rich.” He noted that voters had a high regard for the Kennedys and the Roosevelts, who managed to convey a sense of concern for the general good. I suppose Scarborough is right; …
With the premiere of Iron Lady approaching at the end of December, we are certain to be treated to a heavy dose of Margaret Thatcher‘s greatest hits. None will be more pertinent to the issues of this moment that the point she made in her final Question session as prime minister in 1990, shown in …
In The Atlantic this month, Graeme Wood has an article about a study undertaken by Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy. It’s a study about how the rich feel about being rich, “an extraordinary sample of confession, memoir, and apologia” from the super-rich, as the center’s director, the sociologist Paul G. Schervish, puts it. …
The new issue of The Atlantic features an exceptionally good article by the impressive Chrystia Freeland called “The Rise of the New Global Elite.” The excellent article describes a new aristocracy whose power reaches across boundaries, whose ability to act in its own self-interest is probably impervious to national governments, and, perhaps most alarmingly, whose …
The above chart is from a paper by Michael Norton of Harvard and Dan Ariely of Duke (the author of Predictably Irrational whom I had the privilege of interviewing in January 2009). Ariely does incredible work showing the difference between the way things are and the way we perceive them to be, and he and …