Luck plays a crucial role in our lives: If you’re successful, you’ve already won the lottery, Robert H Frank writes in The New York Times, and not acknowledging the material role of randomness in success has a major impact on public policy. “Most of us have no difficulty recognizing luck when it’s on conspicuous display, as when someone wins the lottery. But randomness often plays out in subtle ways, and it’s easy to construct narratives that portray success as having been inevitable.” Simple “lucky” events like a person’s month of birth or first letter of their last name have a measurable impact on success. Still, “to acknowledge the importance of random events is not to suggest that success is independent of talent and effort. In highly competitive arenas, those who do well are almost always extremely talented and hard-working” That said, more contribution to “making success possible” could be achievable, Frank suggests, hinting at higher top tax rates. He says “evidence from the social sciences demonstrates that beyond a certain income threshold, people’s sense of well-being depends much more on their relative purchasing power than on how much they spend in absolute terms. If top tax rates were a little higher, all homes would be a little smaller, all cars a little less expensive, all diamonds a little more modest and all celebrations a little less costly. The standards that define ‘special’ would adjust accordingly, leaving most successful people quite satisfied.”