People like George Soros and Warren Buffet have warned against market fundamentalism, and I don’t recall anyone out of a major Wall Street investment bank that has recently called for unfettered capitalism. (Hedge funds are different.)

One of the funny ironies involves sitting at a trading desk, and going through a maddening socialist central-planning bureaucracy trying to get a phone installed.

One other observation is that the very wealthy are less opposed to high taxes that one would otherwise assume they would be, in part because money is not a huge motivating factor in their behavior. There comes a point in which you have more money they you can possibly spend, but people that are self-made generally keep wanted to make more, because it satisfies some deep psychological need. In the case of entrepreneurs it is usually the desire to create. In the case of people in corporate bureaucracies the motivating factor often is the power.

My experience is that having people understand economic theory doesn’t really change behavior that much. When people are in a situation they stand to lose something immediately in exchange for some long term and hard to define benefit for the common good, people forget about the common good.

Also one of the consistent themes that I’ve heard from people who have started their own companies is that it is economically irrational to do so. If your goal is to make money, don’t start your business since the risks are much too high. People who do start their own companies usually have some desire to do so that can’t be described in terms of utility functions.

The problem with economic education is that it does no good for people to replace left-wing anti-market dogma with right-wing pro-market dogma. Rather I think that economic theory should start by first teaching a variety of different economic theories, and then by making available first hand information about economic institutions really work. People then can try to figure out how to fit the theories with experiences.

The issue that I face is that large corporations don’t like to talk about what they are doing since there is a perception that talking will only get you in trouble. This is a problem because what they happens is that only bad corporations and the worst parts of corporations get publicized.

It’s basically the limited pie philosophy sponsored by people who think that other do well because they inherit money or they steal it from others. In some cases, it’s that basic belief systems that keeps them where they are.

Study the life store of Larry Ellison is you want to see how to close the gap.

As for Steve’s example, interesting point of view, but I do think most people are concerned about percentage of growth, not absolute dollars. But it takes a lot of money to make a lot of money in more cases than not. I think that is where the gap really comes from. Also the instant gratification notion. If people at the lower end of the earning spectrum would invest some of their money, even a little bit, they would eventually make it to the ranks of the millionaires.