A piece in today’s NY Times reminded me of an article in the NYT Magazine and subsequent letter to the editor from nearly 20 years ago.   It was concise and lucid.  (Read the comments section from today’s piece to see why I was reminded.)  I’ll adapt Kaplan’s letter for today’s times:

The 0.1% are part of a culture that values only the act of selling something for more than it was bought. When they and other like them are finished, they will, no doubt, have become more wealthy and more powerful. Yet they will have contributed so very little to the society from which they skim their profits. For all their talent, they offer nothing to the arts, nothing to the sciences and nothing to our shared stock of human ideas.

That’s it in a nutshell.  From my standpoint, the super rich do little more than consume resources and generate huge piles of excrement.  You want to understand my class hostility?  There it is in one paragraph.

PS  Dean Baker addresses Sorkin’s criticism of Sen. Warren here.

PPS A less angry take on compensation disparities and the super rich:  Janna Malamud Smith, Toward A Better America: Readjusting The Value Of Low-Paid, High-Commitment Work.  (I’m not a low-paid worker but I respect people who take on low-paid high-commitment work.)