YES, THEY ARE DIFFERENT

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Rich Boy, All the Sad Young Men

I recalled reading about the phrase "wheels up" and I tracked it down to this NY Times article:

“I have a unique perch from which to write about this world,” said Ms. Peterson, who lives with her husband, an investment banker, and their three children on Park Avenue near 72nd Street. “I’ve got a big fat toe in it. Most people in this world don’t write about it and most journalists don’t see it.”

Ms. Peterson is willing to embarrass her class of mothers for a multitude of overconsumptive sins, such as alluding to ownership of a private plane by ostentatiously using the phrase “It’s wheels up at 3 p.m.,” and dressing their sons in lederhosen to mimic the famous image of John-John Kennedy in suspenders at the White House.

I think this is what Edwards is referring to when he speaks of 2 Americas and sometimes I wonder if great wealth is itself a "moral hazard." Paul Krugman finds this gem from from book RICHISTAN by Robert Frank:

They had built a self-contained world unto themselves, complete with their own health-care system (concierge doctors), travel betwork (Net Jets, destination clubs), separate economy….The rich weren’t just getting richer; they were becoming financial foreigners, creating their own country within a country, their own society within a society, and their own economy within an economy.

This brings up an important issue: Can the very rich even think clearly about the rest of us?