Lunchtime Must-Read: Paul Krugman: Now That’s Rich

Paul Krugman: Now That’s Rich: “These 25 men (yes, they’re all men) made a combined $21 billion in 2013…

…their good fortune refutes several popular myths…. First, modern inequality isn’t about graduates. It’s about oligarchs. Apologists for soaring inequality… try to disguise the gigantic incomes of the truly rich by hiding them in a crowd of the merely affluent…. The goal of this misdirection is to soften the picture, to make it seem as if we’re talking about ordinary white-collar professionals who get ahead through education and hard work. But many Americans are well-educated and work hard… schoolteachers… don’t get the big bucks… those 25 hedge fund managers made more than twice as much as all the kindergarten teachers in America combined. And, no, it wasn’t always thus….

Conservatives want you to believe that the big rewards in modern America go to innovators and entrepreneurs…. But that’s not what those hedge fund managers do for a living…. They’re actually in the business of convincing other people that they can anticipate average opinion about average opinion. Once upon a time, you might have been able to argue with a straight face that all this wheeling and dealing was productive…. But… the evidence suggests… they don’t deliver high enough returns… and they’re a major source of economic instability….

Finally, a close look at the rich list supports the thesis made famous by Thomas Piketty… that we’re on our way toward a society dominated by wealth, much of it inherited, rather than work…. At first sight, this may not be obvious. The members of the rich list are, after all, self-made men. But, by and large, they did their self-making a long time ago…