Who Is Inherited Wealth?
Who Is?
iHeartRadio + NowThis
4.1 • 803 Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2021
⏱️ 47 minutes
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Summary
If you work hard in the United States, there is no limit to the possibility of what you might achieve. That’s the American Dream. But the reality is that America today increasingly resembles aristocratic societies of the past, which were characterized by little social mobility and dramatic inequality perpetuated in part by the passage of enormous fortunes from one generation to the next. How and why this has occurred in the United States is largely the result of power, politics, and policy choices--choices that enable the coding of wealth in the legal systems that structure not only our economy, but our society and our democracy. The system is rigged--and rigged in favor of the few. Join Sean Morrow on the final episode of the third season of “Who Is?” for a look directly at the money, what it means for the rest of us, and what we can do about it.
- James Henry, an economist, attorney, tax justice activist, and a senior advisor to the Tax Justice Network
- Paul Krugman, an economist, author, and longtime columnist at The New York Times. His most recent book is “Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future”
- Katharina Pistor, a professor at Columbia Law School. Her most recent book is “The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This, in fact, is our new American moment. |
| 0:04.0 | There has never been a better time to start living the American dream. |
| 0:09.0 | No matter where you've been or where you've come from, this is your time. |
| 0:15.0 | If you work hard, if you believe in yourself, if you believe in America, |
| 0:24.5 | then you can dream anything, you can be anything. |
| 0:29.9 | And together, we can achieve absolutely anything. |
| 0:38.5 | Is America really a place where if you work hard, you can do anything? |
| 0:43.3 | Our myth about ourselves is that we're a country, we're the Horatio Alger country, |
| 0:45.4 | we're the country where anybody can become president, |
| 0:49.9 | anybody can make their way up through hard work and enterprise. |
| 0:53.5 | And we can see, you know, we have data. |
| 0:55.0 | It doesn't happen very often. It happens, in fact, very rarely. |
| 0:57.0 | And we can also compare ourselves with other countries. |
| 1:00.0 | And it turns out at this point, among wealthy countries, we have less social mobility than just about anybody else. |
| 1:09.0 | We're a place where who your parents were, what your |
| 1:12.9 | social class at birth was, is more determinative of what your life is going to be like than |
| 1:19.6 | pretty much anywhere else. And it appears that we've become less mobile over time, too, |
| 1:26.2 | that the chance of making your way up the social ladder |
| 1:30.6 | has gone down over the generations. Today I want to talk about a near-ancient problem. Like, |
| 1:37.6 | let me read you something from Percy Shelley in 1821. Quote, to him that hath, more shall be given. And from him that hath not, the little |
| 1:47.0 | that he hath, shall be taken away. One hundred years later, Richard Whiting and Raymond Egan, |
| 1:52.9 | released one of the biggest bangers of 1921. There's nothing sure of. The rich gets rich and the poor get children. |
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