Wealth

The distinguished journalist & former British Ambassador to the United States offers an epic history of mankind's quest to invent, trade & make money. Black & white photos throughout.

"a new twist on the eternal question of inequitable income distribution, though they focus on wealth (accumulated income) rather than income. The authors document the dramatic disparities in the distributions of income and wealth and describe the problems these cause. Their solution, the alternative distribution system," is quite simple: tax inheritance rather than estates. Individuals could inherit up to $1 million tax free. Each succeeding million would be taxed at progressively higher rates. This plan, they argue, would force an estate to be distributed among more people and would cuase beneficiaries to use inheritances more vigorously and creatively.' The authors do an excellent job of making obscure economic data understandable." Booklist

Analyzing the Gross National Product (GNP) and other national economic statistics is one way to look at the financial well being of a country. Another more revealing and more interesting way is to analyze the variety and amount of goods and services consumed by citizens, businesses, and the various levels of government. The Handbook presents a systematic and statistical portrait of consumption and wealth, allowing readers to better understand America's economic, political, and cultural landscape. This handbook focuses on the latest statistical information available on U.S. spending habits by exploring a wide range of economic, demographic, and geographic variables.

Based on roundtable discussions by a variety of scholars over a two-year period, these essays explore the complex and often contradictory matrix of sentiments, feelings, and beliefs that frame America's contemporary social doctrine of wealth. The seven Boston College faculty members whose writings comprise this volume are professors of classics, economics, ethics, history, literature, scripture, and sociology. Each scholar reviews a a range of writings and narratives that enunciate definite theses about the genesis and prospects as well as the uses and abuses of wealth. Today, as the discussion of wealth creation and distribution become framed less frequently under the rubrics of capitalism and socialism, it is propitious to examine other pieces of the debate that come to us from our Western classical, biblical, literary, and ethical traditions. The talk for and against wealth, so well articulated by Adam Smith and Karl Marx, is only one axis on which this important Western motif turns. Schervishand his contributors enable us to consult several other texts that can guide our repositioning on the controversies surrounding the moral status of wealth and the wealthy.

What does it mean to be a man of wealth & power? How is the "worth" of wealth translated into moral worth in the identity of wealthy men? How does this identity comprise a mythical place of masculine desire in the social imagination of the American dream? These are the central themes The "Better Angels" of Capitalism explores. Beginning with a series of ethnographic interviews of a variety of wealthy American men, Andrew Herman draws upon diverse perspectives to present a coherent exploration of the sociopolitical implications of being wealthy in an economically unequal-& increasingly unstable-society.