To own the dominant, or only, newspaper in a mid-sized American city was, for many decades, a kind of license to print money. In the Internet age, however, no one has figured out how to rescue the newspaper in the United States or abroad.

Half the U.S. population owns barely 2 percent of its wealth, putting the United States near Rwanda and Uganda and below such nations as pre-Arab Spring Tunisia and Egypt when measured by degrees of income inequality.

For the past eight years, the right has been better at working the refs. Now the left is learning how to play the game.

Warren Buffett pays taxes on a smaller percentage of his billions in income than his cleaning lady.

Certainly there are worse sins than doing everything possible to make your presidency matter.

History is replete with examples of empires mounting impressive military campaigns on the cusp of their impending economic collapse.

As a parent and a citizen, I'll take a Bill Gates (or Warren Buffett) over Steve Jobs every time. If we must have billionaires, better they should ignore Jobs's example and instead embrace the morality and wisdom of the great industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.