The world’s population of ultra-high-net-worth individuals, a super-elite with assets of at least $30m, has now mushroomed beyond 250,000 people, all in need of somewhere to store their wealth.
More than a third of them are based in North America.
 
Mas is tracking more than 100 proposals for super-tall towers (taller than 180 metres) in the pipeline, from a Russian-backed project at 262 Fifth Avenue – likely to block views of the Empire State building from Madison Square Park – to 80 South Street, a vertiginous needle for Lower Manhattan, whose 426,000 sq ftof air rights account for almost half its height.

This idea of a “following wind”, a gust of privilege, gets to the heart of what we call the class ceiling.
It neatly captures the propulsive power provided by an advantaged class background – how it acts as an energy-saving device that allows some to get further with less effort.
Equally, the metaphor also describes the experience of the upwardly mobile who, very often, have the wind against them.
It is not that such individuals cannot move forward, or never reach the top; just that, generally, it takes longer, happens less frequently and often represents a markedly more labour-intensive, even exhausting experience.
 
He wants to be convinced that he ‘deserves’ it, and above all, that he deserves it in comparison with others … good fortune thus wants to be legitimate fortune.”
Only 6% of doctors, for example, are from working-class backgrounds.
If you have a parent who is a doctor, you are 24 times more likely to become a doctor.
The children of lawyers are 17 times more likely to go into law and the children of those in film and television 12 times more likely to go into these fields.
 
Yet significantly, even Oxford and Cambridge, supposedly the ultimate sorting houses of academic ability, do not wash away the advantages of class origins.
Graduates from privileged backgrounds still go on to earn £5,000 a year more than their working-class peers.
 
Here money acts as an important early career lubricant, allowing the privileged to manoeuvre into more promising career tracks, resist exploitative employment and take risky opportunities – all of which increase their chances of long-term success.

The link between high evaluations of debate performances and the candidates’ heights is well known – taller candidates have a leg up.
 
But even though Trump had intimidation down to a T, this didn’t necessarily help him against his female opponent in the general election.
Between the sexes, all bets are off. Fighting behaviour is bound by rules.
 
The assumption here was that in order to be an alpha, one must be big and strong, ready to annihilate one’s rivals.
I have never heard alpha references thrown around as freely as during this period.
But the primate alpha male is much more complex and responsible than just a bully.

In fact, the smallest male may become alpha if he has the right supporters.
Most alpha males protect the underdog, keep the peace and reassure those who are distressed.
This is where Trump deviated dramatically from a true alpha male. He struggled with empathy.
 
When Richard Nixon realised he would have to resign the next day, he got down on his knees, sobbed, struck the carpet with his fists and cried: “What have I done? What has happened?”, as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein describe in their 1976 book The Final Days.
Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s secretary of state, comforted the dethroned leader as he would a child, literally holding him in his arms and reciting his accomplishments over and over until he calmed down.

The research suggests that up to 62 per cent of women experience fantasies about some sort of non-consensual sexual encounter at least once in their lives, 14 per cent of them have these fantasies at least weekly, and 9 to 14 per cent consider them their most frequent or favourite fantasies.
 
Some say that the fantasies are a protective mechanism for women taught to believe that they should not have sexual urges.
 
It might be tempting to reject the notion of rape fantasies as toxic cultural conditioning by swinging the other way and arguing that they are an inherent part of our animal nature: males are dominant and females are submissive, naturally.
 
Some who have directly experienced sexual violence might use such fantasies to reassert their sexual agency and control.
Others might have these fantasies because dominant people like others who are dominant.

This song was composed by Sean Lennon, John Lennon's son