The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph Over Plutocracy That Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970

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"The Rich Don't Always Win," book by Sam ... youtube.com2012년 11월 19일 - 5분 - 업로더: InstPolicyStudies Sam Pizzigati, Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, discusses his new book, "The Rich Don't ...

The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph Over Plutocracy That Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970

by Sam Pizzigati

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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

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.

Review:

"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‚--îsuch as 'tying our maximum tax rate to the minimum wage so the wealthy have an interest in preventing poverty'‚--îdeserve discussion. "
Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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About the Author

A veteran labor journalist, SAM PIZZIGATI has written widely on economic inequality for both popular and scholarly readers. His op-eds and articles on income and wealth have appeared in a host of major American dailies, from the New York Times to the Miami Herald, and a broad variety of magazines and journals. His last book, Greed and Good: Understanding and Overcoming the Inequality that Limits Our Lives, won a coveted "outstanding title" rating of the year Choice rating from the American Library Association. Pizzigati ran the publishing operations of America's largest union, the 3.2 million-member National Education Association, for twenty years and now serves as an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. His online weekly on excess and inequality, Too Much, goes to a national audience of journalists, researchers, and economic justice activists. Pizzigati has appeared as an expert commentator on inequality on 150+ radio and TV talk and news programs, from Pacifica to Fox Business News.

New Book: "The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class"

November 15, 2012

“Make room for The Rich Don't Always Win on your bookshelf right next to Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of The United States. In his lively, engrossing new book, Sam Pizzigati tells the story of class inequality in America, from the robber barons to today’s ‘1%.’ The title alone is a refreshing reminder that there have been times when the middle class pushed back against the growth of plutocracy—and won. We can do that again and, as Pizzigati makes clear, we have to.”—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed

“Labor journalist Pizzigati makes the case that graduated tax rates and strong unions once led to an economic golden age for average Americans—and could do so again…[An] ambitious, readable look at economic reformism over the last century.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Only 50 years ago, America ‘soaked’ the rich with a 91 percent income tax. And guess what? America prospered! Not just the rich, but ordinary families. With colorful detail, Sam Pizzigati tells us why we should revisit that policy of prosperity for ALL, rather than for the plutocratic few.”—Jim Hightower, national radio commentator and New York Times best-selling author

“Bold, thorough, and above all inspiring—an energizing and spirited reminder of what it took, and what it will take, to once again make ours a nation of equals.”—Gar Alperovitz, author of America Beyond Capitalism, and Lionel R. Bauman, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland

Washington DC — America’s rich have never been richer, or more politically dominant. Wealth inequality is at an all-time high for the last 100 years. America’s richest 1 percent now holds more wealth—over $2 trillion more—than America’s entire bottom 90 percent.

** ORDER YOUR COPY HERE, or if you are a reporter or book reviewer, please contact Lacy MacAuley to inquire about a review copy of the book, lacy@ips-dc.org. **

So what’s the good news? Over the first half of the twentieth century, the American people took on plutocracy. And won. The Rich Don’t Always Win (Seven Stories Press; November, 2012) tells the American story of money lords, fortune bankers, and tobacco kings...and the populist movement of unionists and muckrakers that blew it all apart.

Beginning in the early 1900s, a movement began to end the reign of plutocracy and strive toward a more equal society. These early activists shared revulsion for the concentrated wealth and power they saw amassing in the hands of a few and struggled for two generations to limit the power of this wealthy minority. From the street protests and legislative action this movement inspired came equalizing institutions, including the revolutionary system of steeply graduated progressive tax rates and trade unions that protected the rights of workers.

This lively popular history speaks directly to the political hopelessness so many Americans feel.

The Rich Don't Always Win outfits citizens with a deeper understanding of what we need to do to get the United States back on track to the American dream. With a new century at their disposal, the American people can do it again…if they just remember the power that they have.

A veteran labor journalist, SAM PIZZIGATI has written widely on economic inequality for both popular and scholarly readers. His op-eds and articles on income and wealth have appeared in a host of major American dailies, from the New York Times to the Miami Herald, and a broad variety of magazines and journals. His last book, Greed and Good: Understanding and Overcoming the Inequality that Limits Our Lives, won a coveted “outstanding title” rating of the year Choice rating from the American Library Association. In 2008, Pizzigati played a lead role on the team that generated The Nation magazine’s special issue on extreme inequality. That issue went on to win the 2009 Sidney Hillman Prize for magazine journalism. Pizzigati ran the publishing operations of America's largest union, the 3.2 million-member National Education Association, for twenty years and now serves as an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. His online weekly on excess and inequality, Too Much, goes to a national audience of journalists, researchers, and economic justice activists. Pizzigati has appeared as an expert commentator on inequality on 150+ radio and TV talk and news programs, from Pacifica to Fox Business News.   

The Rich Don’t Always Win, Sam Pizzigati, $18.95 | 9781583228715 | 384 pp

Praise for Sam Pizzigati’s Greed and Good:

“This extraordinary book begins with a detailed demolition of the trickle-down case for inequality . . . No brief description can adequately describe the mass of valuable insight and information contained within this volume. . . . This book deserves the highest possible recommendation.”—Choice

“[A] highly engaging, encyclopedic survey ofarguments for and against equality”—In These Times

“In the tradition of ‘men of letters,’ Pizzigati ranges widely, using political economy, history, philosophy, and modern social science to demolish what New Dealer Thurman Arnold called the "folklore of capitalism" in the 1930s.”—Political Affairs

“No book suggests a more thought-provoking strategy for ending the gross inequalities that are rotting the American dream.”—Congressman George Miller (D-California)

“Think you know all this? Try him. At worst you get a powerfully argued refresher course. And, though it’s a big book, Pizzigati’s fluid prose makes for highly enjoyable reading.”—Labor Party Press

“Sam Pizzigati takes us on a sweeping tour of life in these United States that is both depressing and angering, even embarrassing to see how gravely our country and democracy have been overwhelmed by the greed and power of concentrated wealth. His story, however, ends in hope and vision — big ideas for rescuing American ideals from plutocracy and for restoring our bedrock values of equity and equality.”
—William Greider, author of The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy

“Sam Pizzigati has put together the definitive case against the excessive inequality of income, wealth and power in our society. He gives us hard numbers and common sense observations, as well as imaginative proposals for reversing our slide into plutocracy and social decay. If you care about your country, read this book.”—Jeff Faux, distinguished fellow, co-founder, Economic Policy Institute, Washington, D.C.

** ORDER YOUR COPY HERE, or if you are a reporter or book reviewer, please contact Lacy MacAuley to inquire about a review copy of the book, lacy@ips-dc.org. **

http://www.ips-dc.org/pressroom/new_book_the_rich_dont_always_win_the_forgotten_triumph_over_plutocracy_that_created_

the_american_middle_class 

We Used to Make the Rich Porer and the Poor Richer

By: David Swanson Friday November 30, 2012 10:00 am

poorer?  It seems so impolite and improper and cruel.  Surely Bill Gates earned, deserves, and needs his $66 billion.  While he might live exactly as comfortably as before if he lost 65 of those billions, how could we expect others to do all the good Gates has done (surely he’s done some) if they can’t expect to also be permitted to hoard $66 billion while other people starve and go homeless.  In fact, without the possibility of hoarding your own $66 billion, nobody will work (will they?) or “create jobs” for others, and in the end if we took $65 billion away from Gates it would vanish into the air leaving the poor even poorer than they’d been.  Or so we like to fantasize.

Pizzigati points to the polling that shows that Americans imagine their nation is much more equal than it is, and that they would like it to be more equal still — would in fact far prefer Sweden’s distribution of wealth to our own.  But what does this tell us about our willingness to do what it takes to get there?  I just saw an article in Mother Jones claiming that President Obama’s caving in and permitting the continuation of the “Bush” tax cuts for the super wealthy was actually a progressive victory because of other things Obama got in the process.  Such analyses suffer, I think, not just from hero-worship and partisan defensiveness, but from misplaced priorities.  Taxing the rich is absolutely essential to every humanitarian cause and the viability of representative government.

“We can have democracy in this country,” Louis Brandeis accurately said, “or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

The history that Pizzigati tells demonstrates this.  Democracy and wealth concentration rise and fall in opposition to each other.  Limitations on extreme wealth do nothing to reduce work and initiative.  Extreme wealth impoverishes the poor; it doesn’t enrich them.  Trying to enrich the poor while allowing the rich to grow richer is an uphill if not impossible struggle, as the super-rich rewrite the rules to their own advantage.  Thus “Tax Cuts For Everybody!” is an even worse policy than we commonly understand.  It’s not just that Congress rigs such deals to give the wealthiest the biggest cuts, but beyond that the wealthy will gain the power to quickly enact even worse legislation for the rest of us.

In the decades before World War I, authors and activists built an understanding that survived that horror, an understanding that the rich needed to be brought down if the poor were going to be brought up, that a rising tide doesn’t lift all ships, that voodoo economics doesn’t work just because preaching it can get you elected.  It took decades of struggle, partial victories, and many setbacks.  It took civil disobedience.  It took third political parties.  It took a willingness to spend money on World War II that we have yet to compel our government to spend on green energy or infrastructure or education or health.  It took the alternative of communism competing for the world’s approval.  It took until the 1940s and 1950s for success to come.  It was never a perfect success, and it came under greater threat of reversal the more people came to take it for granted.  The success came after some who had worked for it had died.  It came slowly.

And this is what worries me.  Dave Lindorff speculated the other day that the rich and powerful in the United States may be driving climate disaster forward because they actually think that they and their friends will be able to weather the storms (and the millions who will suffer and die be damned).  If at the start of the last century global warming had been what it is now, the struggle for success by mid-century in bringing down plutocracy would have come too late.  We don’t have a half century to play with.  We can’t leave power in the hands of maniacs willing to destroy the planet for a half century.  “Those who succeed us,” said Senator William Andrews Clark at the turn of the last century as he proposed hacking down the national forests, “can well take care of themselves.”  Many U.S. senators clearly feel the same way today under the cloud of greater dangers.

This is not an argument against reading Pizzigati’s book.  It’s an argument for reading it immediately and acting on it even more swiftly than that.  It’s an argument for building a cultural awareness, not of hatred and vengeance, not of violence, not of counterproductive spasms of rage, but of awareness that aristocracy is incompatible with democracy, that in one form or another 99% of us must join together, undo the status of the 1%, and then welcome them as 1% among equals.  There is much we can learn from the history of how the rich have sometimes lost.

Is there ought we hold in common with the greedy parasite

Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?

Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?

For the union makes us strong.

They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,

But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.

We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn

that the union makes us strong.

http://my.firedoglake.com/davidswanson/2012/11/30/we-used-to-make-the-rich-poorer-and-the-poor-richer/