Plutocrats

Skocpol, Anders Aslund, Roman Frydman, Rob Johnson, Sergei Guriev, Michael McFaul, Ernesto Zedillo, John Van Reenen, Raghuram Rajan, Shamus Khan, and the late Yegor Gaidar.

I sometimes describe my own political philosophy as being simply “Canadian,” and my Maple Leaf community has been central to my thinking. Important friends and teachers are Roger Martin, Geoff Beattie, Mark Carney, Diana Carney, Paul Martin, Dominic Barton, Mark Wiseman, David Thomson, John Stackhouse, Anne McLellan, Annalise Acorn, Don Tapscott, and Morris Rosenberg.

Many plutocrats have helped me to understand their world and some have become friends (though that does not mean we always agree). They include: George Soros, Eric Schmidt, Victor Pinchuk, David and Mary Boies, Nikesh Arora, Jeff Immelt, Peter Weinberg, Mark Gallogly, Roger Altman, David Rubenstein, Bill Ford, Bob Rubin, Klaus Schwab, Aditya Mittal, Mikhail Fridman, Vladimir Gusinsky, and Igor Malashenko.

My editors, researchers, and agents have been amazingly committed. Above all, the wise and brilliant Ann Godoff has steered this book through many iterations and tolerated my efforts to appoint her my surrogate mother. Peter Rudegeair, my erudite and fastidious researcher, has done a huge amount of research and has been an essential intellectual sounding board. Ben Platt, Ann’s assistant, will one day run Penguin. He has been terrifically supportive together with Peter and rescued the endnotes. From Olympus, Marjorie Scardino and John Makinson blessed this project early on. My agents, first Pat Kavanagh and Zoe Pagnamenta and now Andrew Wylie, found an audience for me and encouraged me to keep going. Andrew, who never sleeps, read my drafts seemingly before they were written.

Several colleagues and friends went above and beyond the call of duty to help pin down elusive facts. I am especially grateful to my colleagues Amy Stevens and Nate Raymonds for their legal expertise and to Kieran Murray, Dave Graham, Cyntia Barrera, and Krista Hughes in Latin America. Mark MacKinnon, a colleague from the Globe and Mail, generously shared his China expertise. Boris Davidenko, of Forbes Ukraine, helped with facts about my second homeland. Four professional fact- checkers—Rachael Brown, Ellie Smith, Nicole Allen, and Esther Yi—combed through the book collaboratively, meticulously, and at very short notice.

My best friends have been unflagging cheerleaders and sources of great ideas. Thank you Alison Franklin, Roberta Brzezinski, Lucan Way, Annette Ryan, Karen Berman. The Ukrainian women of Nannies, Inc., particularly Nadiya Basaraba and Ira Andreychuk, have kept my kids alive during the gestation of this book, which has often seemed to be my fourth child.

Finally, I am more dependent on my extended family than anyone else I know. My aunts Natalka Chomiak, Maria Hopchin, and Chrystia Chomiak, and my mother-in-law, Barbara Bowley, have been mothers and intellectual supporters throughout this project. My father, Don Freeland, and my sister Natalka Freeland have been critical intellectual and moral influences. My sister Anne Freeland and my cousin-sisters Katrusia Ensslen and Eva Himka have taken care of me and my brood. Above all, whatever is good about this book is thanks to my husband and writing comrade, Graham Bowley, and the three most important people in our lives—Natalka Bowley, Halyna Bowley, and Ivan Bowley.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

“The poor enjoy what the rich” Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth,” North American Review 148:391 (June 1889).

“I was once told” Branko Milanovic, The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality (Basic Books, 2011), p. 84.

“I didn’t attack them for their success” Bill Clinton, Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy  (Knopf, 2011), p. 93.

“often the word ‘rich’” Graeme Wood, “Secret Fears of the Super-Rich,” The Atlantic, April 2011.

“If one looks closely” Alexis de Tocqueville, Memoir on Pauperism: Does Public Charity Produce an Idle and Dependent Class of Society? 1835.

“Americans grew together” Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, The Race Between Education and Technology (Belknap Press, 2008), p. 87.

Ariely showed people Michael I. Norton and Dan Ariely, “Building a Better America—One Wealth Quintile at a Time,” Perspectives on Psychological Science  6 (2011).

“for the first time since the Great Depression” For a more developed take on this, see Lawrence Summers, “The fierce urgency of fixing economic inequality,” Reuters, November 21, 2011.

Look more closely at the data Emmanuel Saez, “Striking It Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States (Updated with 2009 and 2010 Estimates),” March 2, 2012. http://elsa.berkely.edu/~saez/saez- UStopincomes-2010.pdf

“This association of poverty with progress” Henry George, Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry in the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth; The Remedy (Cambridge University Press, reprint, 2009), p. 8.

CHAPTER 1: HISTORY AND WHY IT MATTERS

USA Today advised its readers Deirdre Donahue, “Able, Entertaining The Manny Does Triple Duty,” USA Today, June 18, 2007.

“There’s so much money” Several CF interviews with Holly Peterson, 2009–2010.

In 2005, Bill Gates was worth Robert Reich, Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life (Knopf, 2007), p. 113.

A 2011 OECD report showed “Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising,” OECD report, December 2011.

“I’ve never understood in my life” CF interview with Naguib Sawiris, November 18, 2011.

“the World is dividing into two blocs” Ajay Kapur, Niall Macleod, and Narendra Singh, “Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances,” Citigroup Global Markets Equity Strategy report, October 16, 2005.

“The U.S. stock markets and the U.S. economy” James Freeman, “The Bullish Case for the U.S. Economy,” Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2011.

“very distorted” Alan Greenspan, interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, August 1, 2010.

“consumer hourglass theory” Ellen Byron, “As Middle Class Shrinks, P&G Aims High and Low,” Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2011.

On February 10, 1897, seven hundred members Sven Beckert provides an excellent description of the Bradley Martin ball in The Monied Metropolis (Cambridge University Press, 2001) in his smart and highly readable account of New York City and the consolidation of the American bourgeoisie, pp. 1–2.

“British history is two thousand years old” Walter L. Arnstein, “Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee,” American Scholar, September 22, 1997.