Dittoville

“The very rich are different from you and me,” F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, eliciting the famous rejoinder from Ernest Hemingway, “Yes, they have more money.” Today he might add that they are apt to be Democrats, often exceedingly liberal Democrats, fond of talking of “fairness” and equity as they rake in what seems like vast sums of money, and spend immense sums on themselves. Confronted with tales of their zillionaire populists, liberals claim (a) that the way that they vote counts for more than the way they spend money; and (b) that many great names in political history have lived well and had money themselves. The last point is true, but there is a difference in degree and in kind that has only come recently. Let us consider the facts.