NYT finally gets it right on how culture effects the
Mar 16, 2015, 9:58 AM
economic divide.
But the basic point is this: In a substantially poorer American past with a much thinner safety net, lower-income Americans found a way to cultivate monogamy, fidelity, sobriety and thrift to an extent that they have not in our richer, higher-spending present.
So however much money matters, something else is clearly going on.
It's to the NYT's credit that he's still writing for them. Anyway, there is some evidence that affluence is an enemy of sober morality. Unfortunately, as Charles Murray suggest and Leonard Cohen writes, "the rich have their channels in the bedrooms of the poor," and the poor tend to bear the brunt of libertine behavior more than the rich who are insulated by their money.