The Rich Don't Always Win
The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The Occupy Wall Street protests have captured America's political imagination. Polls show that two-thirds of the nation now believe that America's enormous wealth ought to be "distributed more evenly." However, almost as many Americans--well over half--feel the protests will ultimately have "little impact" on inequality in America. What explains this disconnect? Most Americans have resigned themselves to believing that the rich simply always get their way.
Except they don't.
A century ago, the United States hosted a super-rich even more domineering than ours today. Yet fifty years later, that super-rich had almost entirely disappeared. Their majestic mansions and estates had become museums and college campuses, and America had become a vibrant, mass middle class nation, the first and finest the world had ever seen.
Americans today ought to be taking no small inspiration from this stunning change. After all, if our forbears successfully beat back grand fortune, why can't we? But this transformation is inspiring virtually no one. Why? Because the story behind it has remained almost totally unknown, until now.
This lively popular history will speak directly to the political hopelessness so many Americans feel. By tracing how average Americans took down plutocracy over the first half of the 20th Century--and how plutocracy came back-- The Rich Don't Always Win will outfit Occupy Wall Street America with a deeper understanding of what we need to do to get the United States back on track to the American dream.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Labor journalist Pizzigati (Greed and Good: Understanding and Overcoming the Inequality that Limits Our Lives) brings a distinctly progressive sensibility to his examination of the economic history of 20th-century America. Beginning with historian Frederick Lewis Allen's observation that between 1900 and 1950 the super-rich vanished from the United States, Pizzigati traces the economic policies and political decisions that led to this diminishment, and then applies the same methods to the recent return of the "Big Rich." "Our overall economic output has doubled over the last thirty years, yet our middle class families are reeling, and our numbers of desperately poor families are rising to record levels by modern standards." Pizzigati reviews the introduction and evolution of estate and income taxes, FDR's proposed income cap, the immediate post-WWII "economic turmoil," and the Treaty of Detroit that balanced good benefits for auto workers with labor peace for auto makers. All this helped create the "middle class golden age" of the 1950s and 1960s. Though some readers may disagree with Pizzigati's take on history, his suggestions for ways to increase economic equality such as " our maximum tax rate to the minimum wage so the wealthy have an interest in preventing poverty" deserve discussion.
Customer Reviews
Crucial
Historical information that's been sadly neglected for the last 30-40 years of American history.... The values of collective organizing, equity, fairness, and equality, all highlighted by this book as integral to American prosperity, have been smothered by decades of cable news and billions of dollars of corporate advertising. It's books like these that help remind Americans of their true national heritage, and hopefully, will spark a movement to break the stranglehold corporate privilege has upon the American economy and way of life.