THE SCHOOL OF LIFE: What do the Rich REALLY Want?

They want respect, the kind of security that money just cannot buy.

In legend, F. Scott Fitzgerald remarked to Ernest Hemingway, “The rich are different than you and me.” To which Hemingway supposedly replied, “Yes — they have more money.”

For once, the author of The Great Gatsby — that classic novel of corrosive wealth — got the best of Hemingway. An important pilot study of the wealthiest Americans suggests that, when it comes to their political beliefs and influence, the rich are very different indeed. And the ways in which they are different have deep implications for “you and me” in 2016 and beyond — including who defines what kind of country we should be.

In 2013 three professors — Benjamin Page and Jason Seawright of Northwestern and Larry Bartels of Vanderbilt — published their survey of the policy preferences of the top 1 percent of Americans and, within that privileged cohort, the top one-tenth of one percent. Their findings illuminate central truths about how extreme wealth alters how one sees the world, and who sits at the table when public policy is determined.  MORE