All That Glitters
What I learned from years observing wealth.
8 min readAug 10, 2021
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It wasn’t until the stoic German executive popped open the champagne and began drinking straight from the bottle that I feared we might die in the next few minutes. We were approaching Florence airport but the air-traffic controller wasn’t responding. We were lower on fuel than anyone aboard would have liked, and while some people might have respected a $40…