>Today's rich, at least those in the U.S.,
> typically work long hours. Even today's rentiers often put in 10-12 hour
> days at trading desks. As far as I know, pure coupon-clippers aren't a
> significant social force.
somehow i never thought that the idle rich were really ever significant in capitalism. except as a hangover of the aristocracy. even 19th C industrialists would have spent time managing, getting other to work harder. the moralism against idleness increasingly resolves down into, otoh, the industrialists' complaints about money-capitalists, and otoh, a whine about the unemployed. --the distinction b/n productive and unproductive that's transformed into a pious venerations of what is productive/unproductive _from the perspective of capital_ than a critical approach to, or account of, either.
Angela