![]() ![]() ![]() In the United States, it is as eight millions to zero or as all to none.” Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting America two decades later, returned home to report that “nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions among the people.”Īmerica, in the eyes of Jefferson and Tocqueville, was the Sweden of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Were I to guess that they are four in every hundred, then the happiness of the nation would to its misery as one in twenty-five. ![]() In England, happiness is the lot of the aristocracy only and the proportion they bear to the laborers and paupers you know better than I do. …Jefferson contrasted this egalitarian Arcadia with an England of paupers and plutocrats: “Now, let us compute by numbers the sum of happiness of the two countries. Readers who enjoy this excerpt should consider reading the whole book, which can be purchased online here, here, or here. Many thanks to Penguin Press for allowing us to re-print this excerpt from the first chapter of Plutocrats. Whether these efforts come in the form of lobbying or as philanthropy, they create challenges for the principles of political equality and equal opportunity for influence, which are central to the idea of democracy. Yet, these super-wealthy invest their vast resources in efforts to develop and advance their notions of good policy - in areas like education, health, economic development, tax policy, and regulation - in the United States and abroad. Today’s rise of the extremely wealthy - a class of global “plutocrats” - has led to social and cultural shifts in which the powerful are increasingly disconnected from the vast majority. Later in the book, Freeland explores the implications of economic inequality for American democracy. Through the mid-1900s, the American political system worked to constrain economic inequality through unprecedented taxation, safety net programs and regulation of finance and business - what Freeland calls the “compromise between the plutocrats and everyone else.” The result was healthy economic growth and a shrinking of economic disparities from the end of World War II into the 1970s. A century later, after the Industrial Revolution took hold, economic disparities blossomed. Society within the young democracy of America was quite unlike today instead it was significantly more egalitarian - in part because the American colonies lacked the extreme wealth of the aristocracies of Europe. In this excerpt Freeland explores the trajectory of economic inequality in the United States beginning with the time of its founding. Recently out in paperback, Plutocrats was one of Financial Times’ Best Book of 2012 and winner of the 2013 Lionel Gelber Prize. This post is part of an occasional series highlighting the first chapters of recent books by speakers and participants in the Challenges to Democracy public dialogue series. Freeland spoke at the Challenges to Democracy launch event, an October 3 panel discussion moderated by WBUR and NPR’s On Point host Tom Ashbrook on the threat economic inequality poses to the health of American democracy. First Chapter: Plutocrats by Chrystia FreelandĪn excerpt from journalist Chrystia Freeland’s book Plutocrats in which the author gives two brief historical narratives, one of America’s economic inequality and the other of political inequality, from the 1770s to the 1970s.īelow is an extended excerpt from the first chapter of Chrystia Freeland’s latest book, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.
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