It's not about the money

Arthur Brooks asks in today's Wall Street Journal ($) What's Wrong With Billionaires? He rejects the stereotypes of greed, of wealth acquisition as a kind of arms race among the upper classes to see who can own the most.

These explanations for the acquisitive tendencies of the world's billionaires (and all the rest of us, for that matter) are convenient for social critics and tax collectors, but they ignore an explanation that doesn't reflect quite so poorly on the rich: What people hunger for is not money per se, but success at creating value. Money just tends to come along for the ride.

Interestingly enough, that's the perspective that we always try to inject into our newsletters!