David Brooks: Yes. I was going to say that for the first time in human history, rich people work longer hours than middle class or poor people. How do you construct a rich versus poor narrative when the rich are more industrious?

Gail Collins: It may be true that the more hours you work on average, the wealthier you are likely to be. But while it’s harder to quantify, I’m pretty sure that the work gets more and more pleasant the higher up the ladder you climb. Forty hours in a chicken-plucking factory feels a lot longer than 60 hours managing a large corporation. Is it possible that college-educated parents are spending more time passing down their advantages than other parents?

David Brooks: Here’s the trickiest case of all. I don’t know if you saw Tara Parker-Pope’s piece in the Science section on Tuesday, but she reported on an interesting set of statistics. First, parents are spending more time with their kids today than in previous generations. Before 1995, mothers spent on average 12 hours a week with their children. By 2007, that number had leapt to 21.2 for college-educated moms and 15.9 hours for those with less education. Paternal time leapt from 4.5 hours to 9.6 hours, among the college-educated and from 3.7 to 6.8 among the less educated.

I was fascinated by how parental time correlates to education. Is it possible that college-educated parents are spending more time passing down their advantages than other parents? Could it be that the rich replicate themselves by dint of hard work and parental attention, on top of all the other less worthy advantages?

Uncomfortable questions.

The whole thing is much worse than the part I quoted. Veblen's response would be that "industrious" work does not include making bets on mortgage defaults. For a satisfying frying of Mr. Brooks, I present Matt Taibbi. (Warning strong language and vulgar name calling).