On the other hand, I am not so naive as not to understand where these snickers about my teaching come from. 'They need it!' people say, or they follow with a sarcastic 'Good luck.' I hold my students in very high regard, believe they uphold the highest ethical principles and am never certain how to respond to these remarks. When people ask me what I teach, and I reply, 'I teach a class about ethical decision-making to MBA students,' I typically get amused responses. When classes begin, I am reminded of the primary purpose of my job, which is to teach. Just this week, classes have officially started at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, where I am a professor. Recently, a confluence of events have led me to wonder whether-regardless of the stereotype's accuracy-its existence is problematic. Rich people elicit jealousy and envy, and not the type that leads us to aspire to be more like them. We perceive the rich to be untrustworthy and cold to the point where we even take joy in their misfortunes (such as when a businessmen gets soaked by a taxi driving through a puddle-admit it, you laughed). Unlike, say, people who repair laundry machines, or Aleut musicians, or female cricketers (about whom we do not hold well established stereotypes) we have a fairly consistent view of the rich, and it is not good. The main problem with rich people and ethics, has nothing to do with them per se it has to do with us, and the fairly well developed stereotypes we hold about what the ethics of the rich are.

And the rich people problems