Evan Osnos inherited “two very different philosophies on money”. His mother, a Midwestern Wasp Brahmin, was suspicious of showiness and warned him against filling his house with junk. “All you need are a few fine things,” she advised. His grandfather, a Polish Jew and the only one of seven siblings to survive the Second World War, rebuilt the family fortunes and couldn’t fill their New York apartment fast enough with books, furniture, carpets and artwork. “Money, to them, meant arrival, grace, and cosmic revenge.”
The psychology of class is at the heart of Osnos’ The Haves and Have-Yachts, which updates and builds on a collection of New Yorker essays about America’s new oligarchy, and inequity scholar Joan Williams’ book Outclassed. Both tell us much about how wealth creation, wealth inequality and the growing economic and emotional gap between elites, super-elites and the precariat in the United States are shifting the political and cultural landscape.
Financial Times
