Great Expectations
Supplementary Reading Packet and Nonfiction Jigsaw Assignment
WNHS: Advanced Freshman English
JIGSAW TASK: You or your group (of 2-3 people; 8 groups total) will create and deliver a collaborative minilecture on one of the following articles. Your mini-lecture must be around 5 minutes long. The following are
specific aspects that you must include in your mini-lecture.
REQUIRED JIGSAW PRESENTATION COMPONENTS:
1) SOAPSTone Log
2) One visual/auditory aid
3) Connection: Write one paragraph connecting (synthesizing) your articles and your understanding of
Great Expectations.
4) Rhetorical Analysis: write one paragraph in which you develop a claim that identifies the author’s
purpose (use SOAPSTone) and the rhetorical strategies (structure, tone, literary devices, etc.) the author
utilizes to best convey the author’s purpose.
5) Pose a minimum of three questions to the rest of the class to ensure that they are engaged. These
questions must generate discussion and engage peers in higher-level thinking. However, these questions
do NOT need to “quiz” the students on the article – it can pertain to the “theme” of the article and/or
apply to their lives!
6) Answer any questions that the class has about your article. (Be prepared to answer at least 3 questions!)
*Feel free to create a power point presentation or use the projector during your presentation. You can also
use the computer for your visual or auditory aid!
*You will be graded using the Common Core Speaking and Listening Rubric.
*The Nonfiction Jigsaw Articles can be found online Ms. Guzdziol’s Webpage under “Nonfiction Reading
Packet and Jigsaw Assignment”.
WNHS: Advanced Freshman English
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Article #1: THE ECONOMIST
Wealth inequality Your money, your life Mar 14th 2013, 14:05 by S.M. | NEW YORK
REMEMBER Occupy Wall Street? Today, 18 months after the protest movement sprang to life in New York City
and became a national phenomenon, it seems almost a will-o’-the-wisp. But as Zuccotti Park has returned to its
pre-drum circle serenity, one of the main objectives of the Occupy movement has been chugging along: the
mission to draw attention to the inequalities at play in American democracy.
Income inequality in America is at levels not seen since the 1920s, and the story is getting a lot of air time. One
nifty video, which has gone as viral as a wonkish research report could ever go, suggests that 40% of the
nation’s wealth is controlled by the Occupy-derided "one percent”, while the bottom 40% of Americans hold
only 1% of the wealth. The video, produced by the unassuming, graphics-gifted Politizane, has attracted over
4m viewers and helps to correct Americans’ misperceptions about the extent of inequality in their polity.
Meanwhile, Joseph Stiglitz has thrown the weight of his Nobel prize in economics behind a book on the
subject—"The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future"—and penned a New
York Times op-ed calling equality of opportunity a “national myth”.
Adding injury to insult, new research reported in the Washington Post finds a link between America's wealth
inequality and the life-expectancy gap. Focusing on men and women in two counties in Florida, the data show
that being on the wrong side of the wealth gap can, quite literally, kill you.
[St. John’s] county’s plentiful and well-tended golf courses teem with youthful-looking retirees. The same is true
on the county’s 41 miles of Atlantic Ocean beaches, abundant tennis courts and extensive network of biking and
hiking trails.The healthy lifestyles pay off. Women here can expect to live to be nearly 83, four years longer than
they did just two decades earlier, according to research at the University of Washington. Male life expectancy is
more than 78 years, six years longer than two decades ago.
But in neighboring Putnam County, life is neither as idyllic nor as long. Incomes and housing values are about
half what they are in St. Johns. And life expectancy in Putnam has barely budged since 1989, rising less than a
year for women to just over 78. Meanwhile, it has crept up by a year and a half for men, who can expect to live to
be just over 71, seven years less than the men living a few miles away in St. Johns.
On one hand, none of this is surprising: more money translates into better health care, more leisure, more
exercise and less unhealthy fast food. It is not a shock that individuals in the wealthier county would live longer
lives, on average. But the research is notable for three reasons. First, the numbers aren’t trivial. We’re talking
about a 5-10% boost in life expectancy for wealthy seniors. Second, it is not just a Florida phenomenon: “Even
as the nation’s life expectancy has marched steadily upward, reaching 78.5 years in 2009, a growing body of
research shows that those gains are going mostly to those at the upper end of the income ladder”. Third, the
longer lives for the rich, like a snarled subway train, cause further inequalities up and down the line.
Specifically, longer life expectancies for the rich complicate the drive to raise the retirement age and threaten to
turn Social Security taxes into a regressive source of revenue. Here is why:
“People who are shorter-lived tend to make less, which means that if you raise the retirement age, low-income
populations would be subsidising the lives of higher-income people,” said Maya Rockeymoore, president and
chief executive of Global Policy Solutions, a public policy consultancy. “Whenever I hear a policymaker say
people are living longer as a justification for raising the retirement age, I immediately think they don’t
understand the research or, worse, they are willfully ignoring what the data say.”
Take a minute to process this. As a bipartisan proposal to bring entitlement spending under control, raising the
retirement age to 67 or 70 will enlist the working poor to pay into the system for a few more years, curtailing
their retirement years to the single digits, while the taxes they pay will flow into Social Security checks for the
wealthier and healthier. A senior with a fatter bank account wins twice—with greater longevity and more years
drawing Social Security checks—while the poor work longer, live fewer years and collect less in benefits.
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One need not be a radical egalitarian to find this picture morally troubling. To draw upon Princeton political
theorist Michael Walzer’s view of “complex equality” developed in his 1983 book "Spheres of Justice", the
proposal seems wrong because it allows an inequality in one social good (wealth) to “invade the sphere” of
another social good (the health and length of one’s life), and to feed back into and exacerbate wealth inequality.
Mr Walzer's formula holds that “no social good x should be distributed to men and women who possess some other
good y merely because they possess y and without regard to the meaning of x”. Wealth can justly enable people to
buy “yachts and hi-fi sets and rugs”, he writes, and the “unequal distribution” of these goods “doesn’t matter”,
but money should not be permitted to buy political power or the power to dominate others. Nor should great
wealth translate into the power to lord longer life expectancies over the poor and to shift more of the burden of
work and taxation onto their shoulders.
Article #2:
The New York Times
February 9, 2012
Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
WASHINGTON — Education was historically considered a great equalizer in American society, capable
of lifting less advantaged children and improving their chances for success as adults. But a body of
recently published scholarship suggests that the achievement gap between rich and poor children is
widening, a development that threatens to dilute education’s leveling effects.
It is a well-known fact that children from affluent families tend to do better in school. Yet the income
divide has received far less attention from policy makers and government officials than gaps in student
accomplishment by race.
Now, in analyses of long-term data published in recent months, researchers are finding that while the
achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few
decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.
“We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than
family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational
success than race,” said Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist. Professor Reardon is the
author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income
students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between
blacks and whites.
In another study, by researchers from the University of Michigan, the imbalance between rich and
poor children in college completion — the single most important predictor of success in the work
force — has grown by about 50 percent since the late 1980s.
The changes are tectonic, a result of social and economic processes unfolding over many decades. The
data from most of these studies end in 2007 and 2008, before the recession’s full impact was felt.
Researchers said that based on experiences during past recessions, the recent downturn was likely to
have aggravated the trend.
“With income declines more severe in the lower brackets, there’s a good chance the recession may
have widened the gap,” Professor Reardon said. In the study he led, researchers analyzed 12 sets of
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standardized test scores starting in 1960 and ending in 2007. He compared children from families in
the 90th percentile of income — the equivalent of around $160,000 in 2008, when the study was
conducted — and children from the 10th percentile, $17,500 in 2008. By the end of that period, the
achievement gap by income had grown by 40 percent, he said, while the gap between white and black
students, regardless of income, had shrunk substantially.
Both studies were first published last fall in a book of research, “Whither Opportunity?” compiled by
the Russell Sage Foundation, a research center for social sciences, and the Spencer Foundation, which
focuses on education. Their conclusions, while familiar to a small core of social sciences scholars, are
now catching the attention of a broader audience, in part because income inequality has been a central
theme this election season.
The connection between income inequality among parents and the social mobility of their children has
been a focus of President Obama as well as some of the Republican presidential candidates.
One reason for the growing gap in achievement, researchers say, could be that wealthy parents invest
more time and money than ever before in their children (in weekend sports, ballet, music lessons,
math tutors, and in overall involvement in their children’s schools), while lower-income families,
which are now more likely than ever to be headed by a single parent, are increasingly stretched for
time and resources. This has been particularly true as more parents try to position their children for
college, which has become ever more essential for success in today’s economy.
A study by Sabino Kornrich, a researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies at the Juan March
Institute in Madrid, and Frank F. Furstenberg, scheduled to appear in the journal Demography this
year, found that in 1972, Americans at the upper end of the income spectrum were spending five times
as much per child as low-income families. By 2007 that gap had grown to nine to one; spending by
upper-income families more than doubled, while spending by low-income families grew by 20 percent.
“The pattern of privileged families today is intensive cultivation,” said Dr. Furstenberg, a professor of
sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.
The gap is also growing in college. The University of Michigan study, by Susan M. Dynarski and Martha
J. Bailey, looked at two generations of students, those born from 1961 to 1964 and those born from
1979 to 1982. By 1989, about one-third of the high-income students in the first generation had
finished college; by 2007, more than half of the second generation had done so. By contrast, only 9
percent of the low-income students in the second generation had completed college by 2007, up only
slightly from a 5 percent college completion rate by the first generation in 1989.
James J. Heckman, an economist at the University of Chicago, argues that parenting matters as much
as, if not more than, income in forming a child’s cognitive ability and personality, particularly in the
years before children start school.
“Early life conditions and how children are stimulated play a very important role,” he said. “The danger
is we will revert back to the mindset of the war on poverty, when poverty was just a matter of income,
and giving families more would improve the prospects of their children. If people conclude that, it’s a
mistake.”
Meredith Phillips, an associate professor of public policy and sociology at the University of California,
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Los Angeles, used survey data to show that affluent children spend 1,300 more hours than low-income
children before age 6 in places other than their homes, their day care centers, or schools (anywhere
from museums to shopping malls). By the time high-income children start school, they have spent
about 400 hours more than poor children in literacy activities, she found.
Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute whose book, “Coming Apart: The State
of White America, 1960-2010,” was published Jan. 31, described income inequality as “more of a
symptom than a cause.”
The growing gap between the better educated and the less educated, he argued, has formed a kind of
cultural divide that has its roots in natural social forces, like the tendency of educated people to marry
other educated people, as well as in the social policies of the 1960s, like welfare and other government
programs, which he contended provided incentives for staying single.
“When the economy recovers, you’ll still see all these problems persisting for reasons that have
nothing to do with money and everything to do with culture,” he said.
There are no easy answers, in part because the problem is so complex, said Douglas J. Besharov, a
fellow at the Atlantic Council. Blaming the problem on the richest of the rich ignores an equally
important driver, he said: two-earner household wealth, which has lifted the upper middle class ever
further from less educated Americans, who tend to be single parents.
The problem is a puzzle, he said. “No one has the slightest idea what will work. The cupboard is bare.”
Article #3:
How Wealth Reduces Compassion
As riches grow, empathy for others seems to decline By Daisy Grewal | Tuesday, April 10, 2012 |
Who is more likely to lie, cheat, and steal—the poor person or the rich one? It’s temping to think that the wealthier you are,
the more likely you are to act fairly. After all, if you already have enough for yourself, it’s easier to think about what others
may need. But research suggests the opposite is true: as people climb the social ladder, their compassionate feelings
towards other people decline.
Berkeley psychologists Paul Piff and Dacher Keltner ran several studies looking at whether social class (as measured by
wealth, occupational prestige, and education) influences how much we care about the feelings of others. In one study, Piff
and his colleagues discreetly observed the behavior of drivers at a busy four-way intersection. They found that luxury car
drivers were more likely to cut off other motorists instead of waiting for their turn at the intersection. This was true for
both men and women upper-class drivers, regardless of the time of day or the amount of traffic at the intersection. In a
different study they found that luxury car drivers were also more likely to speed past a pedestrian trying to use a
crosswalk, even after making eye contact with the pedestrian.
In order to figure out whether selfishness leads to wealth (rather than vice versa), Piff and his colleagues ran a study where
they manipulated people’s class feelings. The researchers asked participants to spend a few minutes comparing themselves
WNHS: Advanced Freshman English
either to people better off or worse off than themselves financially. Afterwards, participants were shown a jar of candy and
told that they could take home as much as they wanted. They were also told that the leftover candy would be given to
children in a nearby laboratory. Those participants who had spent time thinking about how much better off they were
compared to others ended up taking significantly more candy for themselves--leaving less behind for the children.
A related set of studies published by Keltner and his colleagues last year looked at how social class influences feelings of
compassion towards people who are suffering. In one study, they found that less affluent individuals are more likely to
report feeling compassion towards others on a regular basis. For example, they are more likely to agree with statements
such as, “I often notice people who need help,” and “It’s important to take care of people who are vulnerable.” This was true
even after controlling for other factors that we know affect compassionate feelings, such as gender, ethnicity, and spiritual
beliefs.
In a second study, participants were asked to watch two videos while having their heart rate monitored. One video showed
somebody explaining how to build a patio. The other showed children who were suffering from cancer. After watching the
videos, participants indicated how much compassion they felt while watching either video. Social class was measured by
asking participants questions about their family’s level of income and education. The results of the study showed that
participants on the lower end of the spectrum, with less income and education, were more likely to report feeling
compassion while watching the video of the cancer patients. In addition, their heart rates slowed down while watching the
cancer video—a response that is associated with paying greater attention to the feelings and motivations of others.
These findings build upon previous research showing how upper class individuals are worse at recognizing the emotions of
others and less likely to pay attention to people they are interacting with (e.g. by checking their cell phones or doodling).
But why would wealth and status decrease our feelings of compassion for others? After all, it seems more likely that having
few resources would lead to selfishness. Piff and his colleagues suspect that the answer may have something to do with
how wealth and abundance give us a sense of freedom and independence from others. The less we have to rely on others,
the less we may care about their feelings. This leads us towards being more self-focused. Another reason has to do with our
attitudes towards greed. Like Gordon Gekko, upper-class people may be more likely to endorse the idea that “greed is
good.” Piff and his colleagues found that wealthier people are more likely to agree with statements that greed is justified,
beneficial, and morally defensible. These attitudes ended up predicting participants’ likelihood of engaging in unethical
behavior.
Given the growing income inequality in the United States, the relationship between wealth and compassion has important
implications. Those who hold most of the power in this country, political and otherwise, tend to come from privileged
backgrounds. If social class influences how much we care about others, then the most powerful among us may be the least
likely to make decisions that help the needy and the poor. They may also be the most likely to engage in unethical behavior.
Keltner and Piff recently speculated in the New York Times about how their research helps explain why Goldman Sachs and
other high-powered financial corporations are breeding grounds for greedy behavior. Although greed is a universal human
emotion, it may have the strongest pull over those of who already have the most.
Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed
paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prizewinning journalist at the Boston Globe. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas.
Article #4:
The New York Times: May 7, 2006
Money Changes Everything By JENNIE YABROFF
GRETA GILBERTSON was caught off guard recently when her 9-year-old daughter, who attends a private school
on the Upper West Side, requested a cellphone.
"I sort of snapped at her," recalled Ms. Gilbertson, an assistant professor at Fordham University in the Bronx. "I
said, 'Don't think that you're one of the rich kids, because you're not.' " Though her daughter rarely expresses
WNHS: Advanced Freshman English
envy of her more affluent friends, Ms. Gilbertson said, it was an "unedited moment" revealing her anxiety over
being in a world where other parents have more money than she does.
Carol Paik, a former lawyer who is married to a partner at a prominent New York law firm, found herself on the
other side of that money equation. When she returned to school in 2002 to get her M.F.A. in creative writing at
Columbia, her diamond engagement ring attracted particular attention from her new group of friends. "When I
was working," she said, "I never thought about the ring, it seemed unremarkable."
But at school, she said, "People said things like, 'That's a really big diamond,' and not necessarily in a
complimentary way." So she began taking off the ring before class.
If, as Samuel Butler said, friendships are like money, easier made than kept, economic differences can add yet
another obstacle to maintaining them. More friends and acquaintances are now finding themselves at different
points on the financial spectrum, scholars and sociologists say, thanks to broad social changes like meritocracybased higher education, diversity in the workplace and a disparity of incomes among professions.
As people with various-sized bank accounts brush up against each other, there is ample cause for social
awkwardness, which can strain relationships, sometimes to a breaking point. Many find themselves wrestling
with complicated feelings about money and self-worth and improvising coping strategies.
"The real issue is not money itself, but the power money gives you," said Dalton Conley, a professor of sociology
and the director of the Center for Advanced Social Science Research at New York University, who studies issues
of wealth and class. "Money makes explicit the inequalities in a relationship, so we work hard to minimize it as a
form of tact."
For Ms. Gilbertson, that means not having her daughters' friends over to play because, she said, her apartment
in Washington Heights is small and in what some parents might consider a marginal neighborhood. For the
same reason, she had a pizza party for her daughter's birthday at the local Y.M.C.A.
For Ms. Paik, that meant avoiding inviting her classmates to her prewar, three-bedroom co-op on the Upper
West Side, because many of them lived in student housing and she feared they would think she was showing off.
"I didn't want to introduce that barrier," she said.
Money's discomfiting effects are explored in the recent film "Friends with Money," in which three of four female
friends are well off while one is barely getting by. In an early scene the friends are gathered for dinner when
Olivia, a former schoolteacher played by Jennifer Aniston, announces that she has started working as a maid. A
few moments later Franny, played by Joan Cusack, says she and her husband will be making a $2 million
donation to their child's elementary school. When another friend asks why Franny doesn't just give the money
to Olivia, everyone laughs uncomfortably and the subject is changed.
"Money is talked about with such discomfort; it's so taboo," said Nicole Holofcener, the writer and director of
"Friends With Money." "With close friends it takes work; I have to make a conscious effort to talk about issues of
money that come up between us."
Economic barriers to friendship have come about in part because other barriers have been broken down,
sociologists say. College, where people form some of the most intense friendships of their lives, is a melting pot
of economic differences. Students from country-club families and those on scholarships are thrown together as
roommates, on athletic teams and in classes.
"There has been an incredible expansion of higher education," Professor Conley said. "More people from more
varied backgrounds are going to college. There are also more meritocratic admissions among elite institutions."
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According to data compiled by Thomas Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute in Washington, 42
percent of young adults (age 18 to 24) from the bottom quarter of family income were enrolled in college in
2003, compared with 28 percent in 1970. Enrollment for students from the two middle income quarters also
increased. Participation of students from the highest-income families changed the least, with 80 percent
attending college in 2003, compared with 74 percent in 1970.
Once college friends leave campus, their economic status can diverge widely depending on their careers. While
20 years ago a young lawyer and a new college instructor might have commiserated about their jobs over coffee
and doughnuts, today the lawyer would be able to invite the assistant professor out for a meal at a restaurant
with two sommeliers and a cheese expert.
At New York University, for instance, instructors make $35,300 for the current academic year, up from $24,500
for the 1985-86 academic year, according to the American Association of University Professors. A first-year
associate at a large New York law firm, however, can earn as much as $170,000 with a year-end bonus,
compared with about $53,000, including bonus, in 1985.
"In New York City we're on the front lines of the rise in inequality in income because it's happening at the top
half of the income distribution ladder," Professor Conley said. "The difference between the middle and the top
has grown incredibly."
Although the wealthy can wall themselves off in buildings with doormen or in high-tax suburbs, other trends in
society lead the affluent to brush up against the not-so-affluent. Gentrification, an urban movement from
Prospect Heights, Brooklyn to downtown Los Angeles, moves the professional class into the neighborhoods of
the working class. They mix when their children attend the same school or participate in athletic leagues.
Feeling awkward about the differences in net worth is not just an issue for those on the bottom of the equation.
Some wealthy people — especially the young — have trouble admitting that they are different.
"We are allegedly a classless society, and that's obviously completely untrue, but people don't want to
acknowledge that those differences exist," said Jamie Johnson, a 26-year-old heir to the Johnson & Johnson
fortune. He explored attitudes about money among his peers in his 2003 documentary, "Born Rich." His new
documentary, "The One Percent," which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 29, looks at the political
influence of wealthy Americans.
Mr. Johnson said that some of his moneyed friends act like they have fewer resources than they do, making a
show of taking the subway and saying they can't afford a cab. "It's to avoid that awkwardness of seeing the
distinction of social class," he said.
The pressure to fit in economically can be especially intense for teenagers and young adults. Marisa Gordon, a
27-year-old account executive at a midsize Manhattan advertising agency, recalled that as a student at Syracuse
University, her roommate resented that Ms. Gordon had more spending money than she did. The roommate
made comments when Ms. Gordon brought home a pair of Diesel sweatpants and cried because she couldn't
afford the same Issey Miyake perfume.
Though she and the roommate are still friendly, Ms. Gordon said money issues contributed to the fact they
aren't as close as they once were. Now it is her younger sister, a freshman at Syracuse, who is feeling the sort of
competitive pressure Ms. Gordon's roommate felt. The sister recently asked their parents for a Louis Vuitton
bag, Ms. Gordon said, because, "Everyone at school has a Louis bag."
Suze Orman, a financial writer and speaker whose latest book is "The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous and
Broke" (Riverhead Hardcover), said young adults can go into debt trying to keep up with their friends.
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"I call them 'money pods,' " she said. "Look at a group of female friends walking down the street. They're often
all dressed identically: the same shoes, the same belts, the same handbag."
But what is not easily apparent, Ms. Orman said, is that one of the women may have saved for months to buy her
one expensive handbag, or more likely, put it on her credit card. Her identically dressed friends, meanwhile,
may have the salary or the family money to afford a closet full of designer purses.
"That is how we get in trouble," Ms. Orman said. "We think our friends are just like us, and if our friend can
afford something, we fool ourselves into thinking we can afford it, too."
Mary Ochsner, a stay-at-home mother of three in San Clemente, Calif., ended a friendship after money issues
came to the fore. She had befriended a woman after college when they were both, as she put it, in "very affluent
periods." But their paths diverged when Ms. Ochsner married a Marine and her friend married a man whom Ms.
Ochsner described as an ambitious executive. She said her friend became increasingly status-conscious and
would brag about home improvements.
The final insult came, Ms. Ochsner said, when she invited the woman to a birthday party for her daughter. The
woman barely socialized but tried to poach her babysitter by offering $5 more an hour than what Ms. Ochsner
was paying. Ms. Ochsner decided the friendship wasn't worth it.
"It wasn't about the money," she said. "The money made me realize she had different social ambitions."
Perhaps the most fraught social ritual of all when it comes to money and friendship is the settling of a
restaurant bill. "I know wealthy people who are extremely troubled by the whole idea of who's going to pay the
bill," Mr. Johnson said. "They're terrified for hours before it happens."
He said he has found himself arguing over the check with a dining companion who was not as wealthy.
"Sometimes people feel obligated to buy me dinner because they don't want me to think I'm expected to pay for
the meal," he said. "I don't really appreciate it. If anything, I think it's unfortunate that people feel that
uncertainty."
The uneasiness is also acute on the other side of the income divide. A 30-year-old book editor in Manhattan who
earns less than $40,000 a year recently went to Miami for the weekend with two friends from high school who
both work for hedge funds.
"We're staying at the Shore Club, in a suite they've booked; I'm sleeping on the pullout couch and they're paying
for it, which is hugely generous of them," the editor wrote in an e-mail message. He has not been identified to
avoid offending his friends. "However, tonight they've booked a table at Nobu, with Mansion" — an expensive
night club — "to follow. I'll end up spending about a week's pay in the next two nights, probably more. It'll feel
worth it while I'm hanging out with them without any of the unpleasant reminders that our lives have seriously
diverged since high school, but it's going to sting when I get back."
Mike Seely, a 31-year-old journalist in Seattle, recently arranged a lunch date with a wealthier friend who works
in politics. He said he suggested a diner "where nothing's over $10, right in my price range." She countered by
suggesting the Dahlia Lounge, an upscale restaurant where a spinach salad costs $14.
"I said, 'Sure, as long as this is on your dime,' " he said.
It was one of the few times he has felt comfortable addressing the issue so directly, he said, because his friend
was the one to press for the more expensive place.
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Even those who study the topic for a living have a hard time when it comes to divvying up the check. "I have
friends who are economists who are comfortable getting down to the last decimal point of who owes what when
we go out," Professor Conley said. Yet he feels compelled to keep quiet when he finds himself across the table
from a friend who orders three glasses of wine to his tap water, then suggests they split the tab.
"It's probably because I don't want to appear petty," he explained. "I'd be battling pretty strong social norms."
Article #5:
The Economist
The economics of good looks: The line of beauty
Pretty people still get the best deals in the market, from labour to love
Aug 27th 2011 | from the print edition
FRANCE looked back this week at the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the walls of the Louvre. It was one of the
most startling art heists in history, but the emotions it still arouses go beyond that. Stealing Leonardo da Vinci's
painting was like stealing beauty itself. And beauty has lost none of its power to bewitch, bother and get its own
way, as three new books on the economic advantages of good looks confirm.
Physically attractive women and men earn more than average-looking ones, and very plain people earn less. In
the labour market as a whole (though not, for example, in astrophysics), looks have a bigger impact on earnings
than education, though intelligence—mercifully enough— is valued more highly still.
Beauty is naturally rewarded in jobs where physical attractiveness would seem to matter, such as prostitution,
entertainment, customer service and so on. But it also yields rewards in unexpected fields. Homely NFL
quarterbacks earn less than their comelier counterparts, despite identical yards passed and years in the league.
Not everything comes easier: good-looking women seeking high-flying jobs in particularly male fields may be
stymied by the “bimbo effect” until they prove their competence and commitment. But the importance of beauty
in the labour market is far more pervasive than one might think.
The same is true in other markets. Women have traditionally traded looks for economic support in marriage. A
Chinese study confirms that the husbands of unappealing women earn about 10% less than those of their
dishier counterparts. Attractive people also have an easier time getting a loan than plain folks, even as they are
less likely to pay it back. They receive milder prison sentences and higher damages in simulated legal
proceedings. In America more people say they have felt discriminated against for their appearance than because
of their age, race or ethnicity. Pretty people, it seems, have all the luck. These books attempt to explain why that
is, and what, if anything, should be done about it.
Daniel Hamermesh, an economist at the University of Texas, has long written about “pulchronomics”. In “Beauty
Pays” he reckons that, over a lifetime and assuming today's mean wages, a handsome worker in America might
on average make $230,000 more than a very plain one. There is evidence that attractive workers bring in more
business, so it often makes sense for firms to hire them. Whether rewarding them accordingly—and paying
their less attractive peers more stingily—is good for society is another matter.
In examining the case for legal protection for the ugly, Mr Hamermesh relies to a degree on the work of Deborah
Rhode, a law professor at Stanford University and author of “The Beauty Bias”. Ms Rhode clearly struggles to see
why any woman would willingly embrace fashion (particularly high heels). She is outraged that virtually all
females consider their looks as key to their self-image. She cites a survey in which over half of young women
said they would prefer to be hit by a truck than be fat. Her indignation is mostly moral. Billions of dollars are
now spent on cosmetic surgery—up to 90% of it by women—at a time when almost a fifth of Americans lack
basic health care. The more women focus on improving their looks, Ms Rhode argues, the less they think about
others.
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Discriminating against people on the grounds of personal appearance should be banned, she says. It limits a
person's right to equal opportunity, reinforces the subordination of groups where unappealing characteristics,
including obesity, are concentrated (ie, the poor, some ethnic minorities), and restricts self-expression. Yet
because ugliness is harder to define than race or sex, some argue that anti-discrimination laws are impossible to
maintain. And anyway, say employers, appearance is often relevant to the job at hand.
These authors are in or fast approaching their 60s. They are contemporaries of the generation of feminists who
waged war against the beauty culture, leaving unshaved legs and allegedly burned bras in their wake. But life
has moved on. Sexualised images are everywhere, and the world that has emerged is one in which no one can
afford to pretend beauty does not matter. Men too, having lost their monopoly of well-paid jobs, are investing in
their erotic capital to enhance their appeal to mates and employers. They are marching off to gyms and
discovering face cream in record numbers. Perhaps this explains Mona Lisa's bemused smile. She knew what
was coming.
from the print edition | Books and arts
Article #6:
The New York Times
NOVEMBER 30, 2010, 3:52 PM
Beauty Discrimination During a Job Search
By TARA PARKER-POPE
How much do looks matter during a job search? A new study suggests that while handsome men do better while looking for
work, good looks can end up hurting a woman’s chances of scoring a job interview.
The study, conducted by economists at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, sent 5,312 résumés to more than
2,600 employers who had advertised job openings. Two applications were sent to employers, each with virtually identical
résumés. The only real difference was that one of the résumés included a photograph of the applicant. Sometimes the
applicant was an attractive man or woman, and sometimes the photo showed a more plain-looking man or woman. (While
sending a photograph with a résumé isn’t typical in the United States, it’s not uncommon in Israel, the researchers noted.)
To choose the photographs used in the study, the researchers collected photos from 300 university students. A panel of
four men and four women rated the pictures in terms of attractiveness. To eliminate potential racial bias, the judges
selected photos of individuals who appeared to have a more ambiguous ethnic background.
Over all, employers sought interviews with 14.5 percent of the job candidates. Notably, 19.9 percent of the male candidates
who sent attractive pictures were called in for interviews, compared to 13.7 percent of the men with “plain” photos. Only
9.2 percent of the men who didn’t send a picture were called to interview.
Based on the response rate in the study, an attractive man needs to send an average of five résumés with a photo to get one
interview. An ordinary-looking man needs to send 11 résumés with a photo to get a single interview.
But the apparent bias in favor of job candidates with photos didn’t hold true for women. Women who didn’t send photos
had a 16.6 percent callback rate, the highest response rate from prospective employers. Résumés accompanied by a photo
of a “plain” woman received callback responses 13.6 percent of the time, compared with 12.8 for those accompanied by
photos of attractive women.
The researchers found that the response rate was about the same for all categories of women when the résumé was sent to
employment agencies. When résumés were sent directly to a company, however, attractive women were only half as likely
to receive a response as plain women and those who didn’t send a picture, a difference that was statistically meaningful.
That suggests that when the hiring is done by the company where the job candidate will work, the people doing the hiring
appear to strongly discriminate against attractive women.
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After the study was complete, the researchers contacted the companies to determine who at each of the firms was in
charge of screening job candidates. At nearly every firm, the person in charge of screening résumés was a young woman,
from 23 to 34 years old, and typically single. The researchers concluded that callback rates most likely were influenced by
the screener’s jealousy “when confronted with a young, attractive competitor in the workplace.”
In addition, the survey of employers found different reactions to résumés accompanied by photos, depending on the gender
of the job candidate. When a man included a photo with his résumé, employers found that it showed confidence and that
the candidate was presentable. But when a woman included a photo, it was viewed as a negative, suggesting the woman
was “attempting to market herself via her appearance.”
“Our results show that beauty distorts the hiring process,” the researchers concluded. “Suitably qualified attractive women
and plain men and women may be eliminated early on from the selection process.”
Article #7:
New York Times January 14, 2012
Among the Wealthiest 1 Percent, Many Variations
By SHAILA DEWAN and ROBERT GEBELOFF
KINGS POINT, N.Y. — Adam Katz is happy to talk to reporters when he is promoting his business, a charter flight company
based on Long Island called Talon Air.
But when the subject was his position as one of America’s top earners, he balked. Seated at a desk fashioned from a jet fuel
cell, wearing a button-down shirt with the company logo, he considered the public relations benefits and found them
lacking: “It’s not very popular to be in the 1 percent these days, is it?”
A few months ago, Mr. Katz was just a successful businessman with five children, an $8 million home, a family real estate
company in Manhattan and his passion, 10-year-old Talon Air.
Now, the colossal gap between the very rich and everyone else — the 1 percent versus the 99 percent — has become a
rallying point in this election season. As President Obama positions himself as a defender of the middle class, and Mitt
Romney, the wealthiest of the Republican presidential candidates, decries such talk as “the bitter politics of envy,” Mr. Katz
has found himself on the wrong end of a new paradigm.
As a member of the 1 percent, he is part of a club whose name conjures images of Wall Street bosses who are chauffeured
from manse to Manhattan and fat cats who have armies of lobbyists at the ready.
But in reality it is a far larger and more varied group, one that includes podiatrists and actuaries, executives and
entrepreneurs, the self-made and the silver spoon set. They are clustered not just in New York and Los Angeles, but also in
Denver and Dallas. The range of wealth in the 1 percent is vast — from households that bring in $380,000 a year, according
to census data, up to billionaires like Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates.
The top 1 percent of earners in a given year receives just under a fifth of the country’s pretax income, about double their
share 30 years ago. They pay just over a fourth of all federal taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center. In 2007, they
accounted for about 30 percent of philanthropic giving, according to Federal Reserve data. They received 22 percent of
their income from capital gains, compared with 2 percent for everybody else.
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Still, they are not necessarily the idle rich. Mr. Katz, who sometimes commutes by amphibious plane and sometimes carries
luggage for Talon Air passengers, likes to say he works “26/9.”
Most 1 percenters were born with socioeconomic advantages, which helps explain why the 1 percent is more likely than
other Americans to have jobs, according to census data. They work longer hours, being three times more likely than the 99
percent to work more than 50 hours a week, and are more likely to be self-employed. Married 1 percenters are just as
likely as other couples to have two incomes, but men are the big breadwinners, earning 75 percent of the money, compared
with 64 percent of the income in other households.
Though many of the wealthy lean toward the Republican Party, in interviews, 1 percenters expressed a broad range of
views on how to fix the economy. They think that President Obama is ruining it, or that Republicans in Congress have gone
off the deep end. They favor a flat tax, or they believe the rich should pay a higher marginal rate. Some cheered on Occupy
Wall Street, saying it was about time, while others wished the protesters would just get a job or take a bath. Still others
were philosophical — perhaps because they could afford to be — viewing the recession as something that would pass, like
so many previous ups and downs.
Of the 1 percenters interviewed for this article, almost all — conservatives and liberals alike — said the wealthy could and
should shoulder more of the country’s financial burden, and almost all said they viewed the current system as unfair. But
they may prefer facing cuts to their own benefits like Social Security than paying more taxes. In one survey of wealthy
Chicago families, almost twice as many respondents said they would cut government spending as those who said they
would cut spending and raise revenue.
Even those who said the deck was stacked in their favor did not appreciate anti-rich rhetoric.
“I don’t mind paying a little bit more in taxes. I don’t mind putting money to programs that help the poor,” said Anthony J.
Bonomo of Manhasset, N.Y., who runs a medical malpractice insurance company and is a Republican. But, he said, he did
mind taking a hit for the country’s woes. “If those people could camp out in that park all day, why aren’t they out looking
for a job? Why are they blaming others?”
To many, 99 vs. 1 was an artificial distinction that overlooked hard work and moral character. “It shouldn’t be relevant,”
said Mr. Katz , who said he both creates job and contributes to charitable causes. “I’m not hurting anyone. I’m helping a lot
of people.”
The Enclave
The placid sliver of Long Island that F. Scott Fitzgerald immortalized in “The Great Gatsby” as West Egg and East Egg seems
almost to have shrugged off the recession.
A stretch of northwest Nassau County that includes Great Neck, Manhasset and Port Washington, this area has the
country’s highest concentration of 1 percenters, and one of the lowest unemployment rates in the state. Houses in Port
Washington are worth only 10 percent less than they were at their peak, according to the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller
Home Price Index, a far smaller decline than in the rest of the country. Yearly sales at the Americana Manhasset, the upscale
granite and glass shopping center, have already exceeded their prerecession high. Even in down times, the 1 percent has
staying power, being far more likely than any other group to stay where they are rather than slip to lower rungs of the
economic ladder.
“I definitely see it around me,” said Anu Chandok, 36, an oncologist in Lake Success, referring to the country’s economic
pain. “It just personally hasn’t affected me yet.”
The area’s residents include Anthony Scaramucci, the investor who was ridiculed for asking why President Obama was
treating Wall Street “like a piñata,” and Bruce R. Bent, the financier now charged with fraud stemming from the Lehman
Brothers collapse. Bernard L. Madoff once lived here; many of the victims of his scam still do.
But there are also people whose fortunes had little to do with Wall Street, including the founders of family businesses like
J&R, the electronics retailer, and Arizona Beverages. Susan Isaacs, the best-selling writer whose crime novels — replete
WNHS: Advanced Freshman English
with cashmere bathrobes and murdered periodontists — draw an arch portrait of suburban life, resides in Sands Point.
In interviews, 1 percenters in this area tended to characterize their success as a product of talent and hard work, and many
did indeed rise from humble beginnings. But they also tended not to dwell on the advantages conveyed by factors like race
or family background. Studies show that whites have more upward mobility than blacks and that parental education level
is a strong predictor of success.
Only two racial groups make up a greater share of the 1 percent than of the population as a whole: whites, at 82 percent,
and Asians, at 7 percent. This corner of Nassau is 77 percent white, 11 percent Asian and only 3 percent black. Those
figures include a number of large ethnic enclaves, including families of Iranian, Russian and, more recently, Chinese and
Korean, heritage.
Residents say they like the area’s diversity. “As a politician, I go to black Baptist churches, Orthodox synagogues, Catholic
churches,” said Jon Kaiman, the supervisor of the Town of North Hempstead, which encompasses the area. “Some people
live in $10 million houses and some people live in half-million-dollar houses, and their kids are playing basketball
together.”
The 1 percent are family-oriented, nearly twice as likely to be married as everyone else. They have more children, but not
more cars, than middle- and upper-middle-class families. For them, education is critical. A vast majority of 1 percenters
graduated from college, and in a whopping 27 percent of couples, both partners have advanced degrees.
Voters in this area tend to lean further left than wealthy people as a whole. Nationally, a Gallup poll found, people who
make at least $500,000 a year are more Republican-leaning than everyone else (57 percent for the high earners compared
with 44 percent). The respondents were more likely than other people to identify as moderate.
This part of Nassau, on the other hand, has traditionally voted Democratic, except for pockets like Manhasset. But its status
as a dependably liberal stronghold can no longer be taken for granted, said Robert Zimmerman of Great Neck, a top
Democratic fund-raiser. “There’s a lot more tea in the vermouth now,” Mr. Zimmerman said.
Some factors of political change may include the shock of the financial crisis, disappointment with Obama administration
policies, and the steady influx of ethnic groups that tend toward the conservative.
Defining the Wealthy
Financial benchmarks in this area can differ radically from those in places where more people are struggling to put food on
the table. Many of Nassau’s affluent families think of themselves as practically middle class, saying that property values and
taxes are so high that $380,000 does not go very far.
“On Long Island, it’s barely a living,” said Steven R. Schlesinger, a lawyer and professional poker player. “In Plano, it’s a
living.”
There is something to that. Aspen’s 1 percent is very different from Akron’s. In some areas there are so many 1 percenters
that the whole income hierarchy can shift. It may take $380,000 to be in the national 1 percent, but it takes $900,000 to be
among the top 1 percent of earners in Stamford, Conn. Compared with that, the price of admission to the 1 percent in
Clarksville, Tenn., is a bargain at $200,000. Of course, the cutoff is only one measure, and perhaps not the most telling one.
The average income of the 1 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center, is $1.5 million, and the superrich — the 120,000
tax filers that make up the top tenth of this group — earned an estimated average of $6.8 million in 2011.
The gap between rich and poor also varies widely. The 1 percent in Manhattan makes $790,000 or more, or 12 times the
borough’s median income. In Macon, Ga., the 1 percent is far less lofty. The cutoff there is $270,000, roughly six times the
median income.
Location also affects politics. The wealthy in poorer states are more likely to vote Republican than the wealthy in rich
states.
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The 1 percent also has a different makeup in different cities. Nationally, for example, doctors are more likely than any other
profession to be in the 1 percent — one in five is. But in Macon, your surgeon is far more likely to make the local cut than in
Manhattan, where financial managers and bankers have crowded doctors off the dance floor.
Still, David Mejias, a divorce and personal injury lawyer who once served as a Democratic legislator for Nassau County, said
that the system everywhere was skewed in favor of the self-employed and business owners who could deduct part of the
cost of their cars, trips, dinners and even collectibles like art.
“Not only do we make more money, but if you do a lifestyle analysis, we make a lot more money,” he said. “Before we even
get paid, most of our life has been paid for already.”
The cutoff for the 1 percent varies depending on how income is calculated. On the low end, an analysis of census data puts
the cutoff at $380,000 for a household and provides a wealth of demographic characteristics that were used in this article.
On the high end, the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, which uses a broader measure of income that
includes capital gains, yielded a cutoff of $690,000 in 2007, the most recent year of data available. The Tax Policy Center, a
nonpartisan group, makes projections based on Internal Revenue Service data and adjusts for people who do not file taxes.
It puts the cutoff at $530,000 per tax return in 2011. Even by that gauge, though, $380,000 would still put a family well
above the 95th percentile. There is little current data that would allow a measurement of the 1 percent by wealth.
A higher proportion of 1 percenters (two in five) than 99 percenters (one in five) has inherited money, according to the
Federal Reserve survey. The top earners got 10 percent of the inherited wealth in the country. Still, a majority of those
earners reported no inheritance.
Dr. Chandok, the Lake Success oncologist, said that her husband, also a doctor, was still paying off his student loans. The
couple has a nanny, but Dr. Chandok’s father-in-law does the shopping and cooking.
Dr. Chandok said she had never heard the Occupy Wall Street slogan “We are the 99 percent.” Two children and 11-hour
workdays, she said, do not leave much time for politics.
But when the slogan was explained as a complaint against the wealthy’s growing share of income, she shook her head. “I
spent four years in undergraduate school, four years in medical school, three years as a resident and three years as a
fellow,” she said. “You have to look at the people who are complaining.”
An Uneasy Silence
By e-mail or telephone, via friends or via silence, dozens of 1 percenters declined to be interviewed for this article.
Some envisioned waking up to protesters on the lawn; others feared audits by the I.R.S. or other punitive government
action. A managing director at a financial firm said he did not want to dignify the rhetoric of Occupy Wall Street by
participating in an article on the 1 percent. An investor who had already been the target of protesters said he feared for his
family’s safety.
From one vantage point, these responses may seem extreme. But there is no doubt that the troubled economy has focused
anger on the fact that the rich have grown richer and the middle class, over the last decade, has lost ground. Several 1
percenters mentioned the riots in Britain and Spain; one said he kept his plane fueled up. In a recent survey, the Pew
Research Center found that Americans now ranked conflict between rich and poor as stronger than timeworn clashes
between immigrants and the native-born, blacks and whites, or young and old.
Many wealthy people have decried what they call class warfare. But that does not mean they think the system is not
unjustly rigged in their favor. The investor who declined to be identified because he feared for his family said it was not fair
that he paid a lower rate on his investment income than he would on a salary and asked why he should receive Social
Security or Medicare.
But, he said, singling out the rich was not the answer. “If you pay $50 million in taxes, is that fair or unfair?” he asked.
“When a tax is specifically designated for a tenth of a percent of the economy, it’s hard not to feel targeted.”
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Perhaps he might have taken comfort in a small placard that was on view one autumn day in Zuccotti Park in Lower
Manhattan, the center of the Occupy Wall Street protests.
“We are,” the sign said, “the 100 percent.”
Article #8:
The Rich Aren’t Like You and Me……They’re worse. Or at least that’s what a lot of
people think. Until, of course, their own ship comes in
By Daphne Merkin
What is it about money? We envy it, some of us kill for it, we look down our noses at it, some of us won't have anything to
do with it, and yet its place in the cultural consciousness is assured. Money, that is, can't be overlooked, pro or con. Freud,
who had his own complex relationship with money, cultivating some patients solely in the hope of their endowing his
psychoanalytic endeavor, thought that wealth could never bring happiness because it didn't answer an infantile wish—that
its roots lay later on in human development. Still, while blithely equating money with feces in the unconscious, he himself
was not immune to its power: "My mood also depends very strongly on my earnings," he wrote to a colleague. "Money is
laughing gas for me."
One might argue that money is laughing gas for most of us in its ability to dissipate anxiety and send our spirits soaring. It
speaks to our sense of freedom, to our wish not to be hemmed in by the prosaic circumstances of our lives. Although you
can travel on $5 a day (or used to be able to), it is far less taxing and more cushy to travel by private jet. Among money's
less overtly acknowledged uses, which is implicitly addressed by purveyors of luxury brands, is separating one from the
masses, ensuring that one feels like a king or queen for a day—or a week, or a lifetime.
But here's the odd thing: Although money in itself arouses many emotions, including admiration, we tend to despise the
people in possession of it. We suspect them of having come by it unfairly, of somehow not being "worthy" of their own
wealth. The popular animus against the rich is inscribed in our cultural narrative as surely as is our curiosity about them;
indeed, the critic Lionel Trilling observed that "the novel is born with the appearance of money as a social element."
Perhaps the most comprehending "insider" novel ever written about the damage money can do is The Great Gatsby, in
which F. Scott Fitzgerald observes of the immensely rich Tom and Daisy Buchanan: "They were careless people, Tom and
Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or
whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
I've experienced firsthand the barely veiled hostility that being rich—or merely being perceived as rich—can elicit from
veritable strangers, even those who are themselves well-off. As a writer who draws on personal material, I've been candid
about the vexed issue of money in my life in a way that few writers are; in a piece published in The New Yorker more than a
decade ago, I noted that money, "far more than sex, lingers as our deepest collective secret, our last taboo," and that I had
little idea of how even my closest friends managed to live in an expensive city like New York (and send their children to
private school to boot). My honesty about my own affluent background has left me vulnerable to various jabs. I remember,
for instance, going to lunch with a friend, a writer who happened to come from a family far wealthier than mine but who
was generally silent on this aspect of his lineage, and another writer, an Upper West Side liberal type of more modest
means, who had the usual clichéd disdain for businessmen and anything that smacked of a pecuniary imperative. We were
discussing the difficulties of supporting oneself as a writer, the unspoken but snobby assumption for both of them being
that it was beneath their principles to write out of anything but the most pure and nonremunerative of impulses. (I
refrained from pointing out that no less a literary light than Samuel Johnson had said, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote
WNHS: Advanced Freshman English
except for money.") Instead, I offered up that I actually liked writing for the sort of magazines that paid well since they
came with a larger readership and required more of a populist touch.
I might as well have announced that I'd taken up bank robbery as a sideline. My friend, heir to a real estate fortune, bowed
his head as though to avoid the palpable tension in the air that my happy embrace of profitmaking had produced. After a
brief pause, the other writer, who had enjoyed a degree of commercial success years earlier, turned to me and said in the
chilliest of tones, "I didn't think you had to write for money." I was too flustered to do anything but lamely smile, although I
was actually furious at her condescending and somewhat juvenile attitude toward the reality of economic considerations,
even for people like me. How, for one thing, did she know if my family wealth had translated into something substantial
down the line? And, for another, had she never heard of the need to stake out one's own turf? Come to think of it, where did
her pose of moral superiority come from in the first place? Since when did middle-class origins render you a better human
being than upper-class roots?
I grew up with a complicated and somewhat opaque relationship to money, fueled by my mother's unease about having
married a man who made a lot of it. My mother, who wasn't given much to introspection, succeeded in passing off to her
children any guilt she felt about marrying a successful businessman (my father began as a furrier but went on to work on
Wall Street) instead of an idealistic professional (her own father having been a lawyer and Zionist leader). My siblings and I
were instilled with the notion that there was something problematic, even shameful, about having a rich father. Beyond
this, we were also taught that the money we saw around us didn't belong to us. Just because my mother employed a staff
that included a cook, a nanny, a laundress, and a chauffeur didn't mean that we were to expect any of the usual perks. My
two sisters and I weren't bought expensive clothes or jewelry; my three brothers weren't bought cars. Instead, we were
made to understand that the money was my parents' to do with as they saw fit, which in their case included enormous
amounts of philanthropy. My father's wealth went to supporting my mother's large family in Israel and to Jewish causes of
all sorts. We, meanwhile, were brought up as unentitled—and as a result, wholly undemanding—beneficiaries of whatever
largesse happened to come our way. Compared with how I see children of the rich brought up today, this approach surely
had its benefits, but it also created an unreality of its own, in which I was viewed one way while my experience proved
otherwise.
Of course, these days, what with the tanked economy, the growing number of unemployed, and the ever more brazen Wall
Street scandals, it's even less popular to waste any sympathy—much less understanding—on the rich. It's too easy to
believe that they deserve the opprobrium that's thrown at them, even if some of them create jobs and invent things to
make our lives easier. What strikes me as paradoxical is that, notwithstanding this negative bias, we as a society remain
fascinated by the gilded life. Articles about financial trickster Bernie Madoff never failed to include details about the houses
and watches he collected or the jewelry he bought his wife. Similarly, the Real Housewives of... shows, which play to an
addicted following (a category in which I shamefacedly include myself) uniformly feature women of means, mostly by
virtue of marriage, although one or two of them—like Bethenny Frankel—appear to have made it on their own. A bonus of
watching these shows is getting to see gobs of money thrown at handbags, shoes, interior decor, and even the most minor
of celebrations. (When Ramona on The Real Housewives of New York reaffirmed her marriage vows, she rented a yacht for
her girlfriends to loll about on.) We are drawn to the parade of bling with an almost furtive fascination, in the recognition
that there is something narcissistic and morally questionable about this inflamed level of expenditure, while at the same
time vicariously enjoying the "Let them eat cake" consumerism of it. Perhaps, at heart, none of us accepts that money can't
buy happiness, and we keep pressing our noses to the glass in the belief that the rich are genuinely cushioned from
ordinary suffering by the immense scale of their toys. While it is undoubtedly true that money provides certain comforts
that may make emotional pain easier to bear—surely it is better to be depressed and provided for than depressed and also
tormented by the stress of wondering how you'll ever manage to put food on the table—you'd think by now we'd know
money's limits.
So where do we go from here? Are we destined to become a society of plutocrats, ensnared by the lure of filthy lucre even
as we hold our noses at the stench of ill-gotten gains? Amid all the talk of the subprime mortgage debacle, the shattered
dreams of homeowners, and the need to transform Wall Street, I'd bet that the culture of excess hasn't disappeared so
much as gone into hiding. Frugality fatigue seems to set in almost as quickly as you can say recession, which would help
explain why Barneys, that mecca of the monied and whimsical, sold out of a $1,700 Azzedine Alaïa sandal this past summer
as Main Street continued to tighten its belt. It would take nothing less than a radical rethinking of values—a
reconsideration of our entire aspirational, bigger-is-better American way of life—for money to stop making "the world go
round," as Joel Grey sang in Cabaret. Meanwhile, the rich will continue to be unreflectively condemned and their swanky
playgrounds will continue to hold our voyeuristic interest in a love-hate dynamic that has been going on since time
immemorial.
http://www.elle.com/life-love/society-career/the-rich-arent-like-you-me-475098