This is a shockingly terrible rhetorical device. Shocking because its so beneath Kinsley pay-grade as a writer. Lets compare a rich guy to a coal miner!!! Tee hee, aren't I clever?

On its face, the comparison could apply to any titan of industry. Washington Post Executives, the head of PETA, heads of the major charitable foundations all live easy, wealthy lives compared to coal miners. Kinsley singles out Private Equity without explaining the singularity.

Even getting past the terrible construction of an argument, let us assume that those who get rich in private equity don't have to work long hours but merely buy "Financial Engineer" software at a Mac store.

To anyone who's been paying attention for the last 25 years, compensation for intangibles (charisma of actors, steely determination of athletes, financial products of bankers, encyclopedic legal, accounting, or knowledge, the common sense of advice gurus, or people who buy software and combine it with soemthing else to create soemthing people will pay for) is pretty normal. Most of the wealth of this country is in its intangible assets.

Its been a long time, if ever, since you got rich by trading hours of labor; you've got to deliver intellect, creativity, ideas, sythensis or something similar.

This is not say that hours aren't required in creating such assets, just that the hours aren't delivered on a clock, 9-to-5-- they come from a life time of study, gaining experience, brainstorming, or sometimes just inspiration. The hours needn't be consecutively arranged within a single geographic space like in a coal mine or office, but can come even in the Hamptons on conference calls or knocking back a few Amstel Lights with like minded people.

If he wants to maximize his intellectual assets, Kinsley should stick to political commentary and stay away from the financial world, which he so clearly doesn't understand.

US has mostly Intangible assets? That is either massively stupid or a flat out lie.

US capital finances manufacturing (and extraction) in China and elsewhere in the globe, in fact, the US working class now lives in China and is Chinese! Next, I suppose, they will ravage India, leaving CHina like the Northeast US in the 1950s/60s when they moved to the US South for cheap laber (somehow, I expect the Chinese might be prepared for this, however).

You have no idea how the world works. Go study.

. . . look up the meaning of the word satire.

Your replies show no greater evidence for your point of view, and they lack the leavening of humor. You have no idea how to write. Go read a book.

I think Sassafras misses the point. Kinsley isn't criticizing private equity managers for making money, he's criticizing their hypocrisy in claiming that they work so hard that they have "earned" pay that is about one thousand times the national average.

That they then aren't even required to pay tax rates as high as the janitors who clean out their trash cans (or the coal miners who work their mines) is beyond outrage.

Next time you pay your taxes, ask yourself why you're subsidizing these gentlemen's lives of luxury, and assisting them in making sure their great great great grandchildren will never have to work a day in their lives.

I'm sure Kinsley would be the first to agree that it doesn't take phenomenal cleverness to write this kind of satire. It writes itself.