Quote of the Day

In today's edition of the annals of the new gilded age, Hal Steger informs us that "a few million doesn’t go as far as it used to." As Gary Rivlin reports:

Silicon Valley is thick with those who might be called working-class millionaires — nose-to-the-grindstone people like Mr. Steger who, much to their surprise, are still working as hard as ever even as they find themselves among the fortunate few. Their lives are rich with opportunity; they generally enjoy their jobs. They are amply cushioned against the anxieties and jolts that worry most people living paycheck to paycheck.

But many such accomplished and ambitious members of the digital elite still do not think of themselves as particularly fortunate, in part because they are surrounded by people with more wealth — often a lot more.

This is part of the weirdness of the new era of hyper-inequality, where not only does the top one percent pulls away from the other 99 percent, but the top 0.001 percent pulls away from the other 99.999 percent. Even very rich people feel the even richer pulling further and further away and don't feel themselves to be as privileged as, objectively speaking, they really are.