Inequality makes everyone unhappy, the poor most of all, and that is well within the remit of the state. More money gives less extra happiness the richer we get, yet we are addicted to earning and spending more every year.
I shall always be grateful for this curious love of history, allowing me to spend a lifetime looking back into the past, allowing me to learn from these large figures about the struggle for meaning for life.
I quite like antiques. I like things that are old and the history they bring with them. I would rather fly to Morocco on an $800 ticket and buy a chair for $300 than spend $1,100 on one at Pottery Barn.
So we want to change the tax system. We want it to be fair, and we want to see some tax relief because people do three things when they get a little extra money in their pocket: They save it or they spend it or they invest it.
I think I'm pretty smart on what I spend my money on. I still don't have a new car, I drive my old car that I've had forever. But I bought a house in downtown Chicago.
My father was a die maker for 39 years, so I had a basic understanding of the automobile industry and what the manufacturing world was like, just from the opportunity to spend time with him - just talking, because he was a car buff.
I spend an extraordinary amount of time in my car, so I can justify the expense. That's the only extravagance in my life - it's my car.
Buyers of powerful cars place a high premium on the exhaust note, and manufacturers spend a lot of money getting it right. At the same time, high-end cars are expected to filter out the sounds of the mundane world.
Honestly, the average American spends about 52 minutes a day in commute traffic. And as much as I love driving my car and many people like driving their car, commuting has never been fun for me.
In my experience, those who make the biggest fuss about not spending much at Christmas are generally the ones who buy what they want and eat where they want 12 months a year.
Christmas is a huge thing in my family. We usually start decorating the day after Thanksgiving. We spend Christmas Eve with one set of grandparents, and Christmas Day with the other grandparents and our family.
We spend most of our lives cutting down our ambitions because the world has told us to think small. Dreams express what your soul is telling you, so as crazy as your dream might seem - even to you - I don't care: You have to let that out.
I hadn't really thought about this until 'The Lake of Dreams,' but I've set all my stories in places that are familiar to me. It frees me up to spend more imaginative time on the characters.
People with film careers get a whole onslaught of people they spend 12 hours a day with every three months. It's like speed dating. You've got a fast-track to social intimacy with a whole bunch of people.
I moved to Seattle when I was two or three years old. Had my early education there, and would spend summers on the farm in Maryland. Then I went to boarding school in New Hampshire, to St. Paul's School. From there, I moved to London.
As women slowly gain power, their values and priorities are reshaping the agenda. A multitude of studies show that when women control the family funds, they generally spend more on health, nutrition, and education - and less on alcohol and cigarettes...
Take Hispanic voters. They favor Democrats because they like the party's programs, from health care reform to government spending on education. It's not because the Republicans don't have a big enough Office of Hispanic Outreach.
You can't stand for too many things. You can't use the bully pulpit for too many things. So, I promise you, every day, I am going to talk about jobs, spending, and education.
I think we spend too much on K-12 education a.k.a. teachers' salaries. It's the only industry where you never see any productivity increases.
Whether it's threats to Medicare, cuts in education spending, or Internet privacy, the ramifications got young people out to vote and should be enough to keep them involved in our political system.
We're throwing money down a rat hole drain of public education! We lead the world in public education spending. We lead the world in getting the least for it.
