"Life Is a Game and Money Is How We Keep Score"

"What jumps out from MacGillis’ article is the dynamic that Hanley traces, though I’m much more explicitly critical of it than Hanley is. The hedge fundis think that capitalism is great because it gives rise to meritocratic success stories like them. Beyond this—and Hanley leaves this part out, perhaps because it’s so distasteful—they think that they are great because they themselves embody such success stories. And what might seem to us like imperceptible tax increases seem to them like direct insults. Their net worth proves, as it were, their net worth. And the President, in aiming at their bottom line, is threatening the personal quest that defines their lives."

Andrew Sabl at Washington Monthly considers recent writing about hedge fund managers.