What do people with money really care about?   I assume that most of the people in airports have some extra money to burn; you generally don’t see poor folks in airports.  I also assume that airport magazine shops know what they can most easily sell to people with some money to burn.   It’s natural selection in action at airports–the magazines that didn’t sell have been weeded out of our airports.

What do Americans with money care about?   They care about the things that loom large on the covers of the magazines you can see in big airports.  At a major airport I recently visited, I took six photos to give an idea of all of the types of magazines on display (click the title of this article to see the gallery of photos).   In airport magazine shops, you’ll see things such as movie stars, how to make money without much effort, the coolest electronic gadgets, almost naked bodies, romance, status symbols such as luxurious trips, fancy clothes and expensive cars, eating food and talking about dieting, corporate filtered news, how to impress others, and looking young, looking young, looking young . . . 

But can you really determine what people think a lot about by looking at the magazines they buy? I think so. This is definitely the sort of thing a Martian anthropologist would do to find out what people with at least some money really cared about.

What don‘t they care about?  Everything else.  You won’t see magazine covers featuring starving children or homely people.  You won’t find magazine covers telling you how to give up your wealth to others in need, how to speak truth to power, and how to hang around criminals, sick people and prostitutes like Jesus supposedly did.