Anthony Esolen of Touchstone magazine reminds us of the unnoticed gift of trickle-down decadence:

The rich can afford their vices, for a time anyway; the poor have no such margin for comfort. They are, in fact, endangered by the vices of the rich. I dont simply mean that the rich man can extort his will from the poor, or wield the law as a club to keep the poor man in his place. He can do worse: He can infect the poor man with his vice, and that may be the quicker way to destroy him.

Read the rest of Esolen's editorial here.