As usual, Matt Taibbi doesn't mince words in dissecting a series of quotes from some of America's richest men about their responsibility to the rest of us.

These people honestly don't seem to understand that the world they live in is nothing like the world the rest of us live in. As Taibbi says, they "buy their own social infrastructure." It's easy for them to decry government spending as wasteful, because they don't need anything the government supplies (except subsidies and tax breaks, of course). They don't need the police, the courts, Medicare, or school lunches. They buy whatever they want and wonder why the rest of us don't just do the same. Their idea of who has "skin in the game" is completely backwards.

Nobody hates them for being successful. And not that this needs repeating, but nobody even minds that they are rich.

What makes people furious is that they have stopped being citizens.

The whole thing is worth a read.

And for a refreshingly different take on all this from a member of the 1%, see this piece by Seattle's own Nick Hanauer. Sadly, there are few like him.