CHAPTER 2: CULTURE OF THE PLUTOCRATS
“Somebody ought to sit down” Scott Turow,
“men like Henry George” Albert Einstein, letter to Anna George de Mille, 1934. http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/einstein-albert_letters-to-anna-george-demille- 1934.html.
“the battle cry for all” Joanne Reitano,
“Not even Lincoln had a more glorious death” “Expressions of Regret: The Comments of Many Prominent Persons in New York Upon the Death of Henry George,”
“I stopped a man” Henry George, Jr.,
“Why should there be” Ibid., pp. 468–69.
“The present century has been marked” Henry George,
“We are coming into collision” Ibid., p. 5.
“Some get an infinitely better” Ibid., p. 7.
“show that their sympathies” Edward Robb Ellis,
“born rich” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Rich Boy,” in
“The ordinary progress of a society which increases in wealth” John Stuart Mill,
“Fat cats who owe it to their grandfathers” Freeland, “The Rise of the New Global Elite.”
“As a consequence, top executives” Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “The Evolution of Top Incomes: A Historical and International Perspective,”
Speaking at a Columbia University conference Paul Sullivan, “Scrutinizing the Elite, Whether They Like It or Not,”
“Capital income excluding capital gains” “Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007,” Congressional Budget Office study, October 2011, Section XI, p. 17.
This is true even at the very, very top Jon Bakija, Adam Cole, and Bradley T. Heim, “Jobs and Income Growth of Top Earners and the Causes of Changing Income Inequality: Evidence from U.S. Tax Return Data,” working paper, April 2012, p. 4, footnote 3.
“While I have been richly rewarded” Leon G. Cooperman, “An Open Letter to the President of the United States of America,” November 28, 2011. http://www.thestreet.com/tsc/common/images/pdf/Omega%20Advisor1.pdf.
“We are fighting the caste system with capitalism” Lydia Polgreen, “Scaling Caste Walls with Capitalism’s Ladders in India,”
“We have witnessed substantial changes” Oliver H. Holiet, “Torsten Muller-Otvos, CEO of Rolls-Royce,”
“During that 80-year period” Goldin and Katz,
In one example, the wage premium Ibid.
p. 50.
Getting a college degree
Anthony P. Carnevale, Stephen J. Rose, and Ban Cheah, “The College Payoff: Education, Occupations, Lifetime Earnings,” Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, August 5, 2011.
wage premium for a college education
Thomas Philippon and Ariell Reshef, “Wages and Human Capital in the U.S. Finance Industry: 1909–2006,” National Bureau of Economic Research, working paper no. 14644, March 2011.
“Most of the increase in wage inequality”
Thomas Lemieux, “Postsecondary Education and Increasing Wage Inequality,”
96:2 (May 2006), pp. 195–99.
That contest has prompted absurdities like the story of Jack Grubman
“The Wall Street Fix,” PBS
, May 8, 2003.
“With those numbers in mind”
John Quiggin, “Cutthroat Admissions and Rising Inequality: A Vicious Duo,”
, September 11, 2011.
“There’s a kid. You know”
CF interview with Larry Summers, November 22, 2011.
“have the courage to follow your heart and intuition”
Steve Jobs, Stanford University commencement address, June 12, 2005.
“Don’t park ten blocks away”
Drew Gilpin Faust, “Living an Unscripted Life,” 2010 baccalaureate speech, Memorial Church, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 25, 2010.
But the winner-take-all economy turns out “The New Wave of Affluence,”
“of 55 American laureates, 34 worked” Robert K. Merton, “The Matthew Effect in Science,”
“The conditions of industry change so fast” Alfred Marshall,
“A lot of professional writers apply here”
David Streitfeld, “Funny or Die: Groupon’s Fate Hinges on Words,”
, May 28, 2011.
This volatility makes us unhappy
See Carol Graham,
(Oxford University Press, 2010).
Carlos Slim, who bought his first
David Luhnow, “The Secrets of the World’s Richest Man,”
, August 4, 2007.
