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The flood of effective altruists into the firm was worrisome. These people arrived with their own value system. They had their own deep loyalties to something other than Jane Street. They didn’t have the usual Wall Street person’s relationship to money; they didn’t care about their bonuses in the ways Wall Street people were supposed to care. Sam
... See moreMichael Lewis • Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
Harpers ran an article in 1887 about a “typical” American worker and his family, who had a pleasant house and garden in Brooklyn. The father was a carpenter, averaging $900 per year, close to the top of the scale a carpenter could expect. His two daughters and his son lived at home, and all were employed. The girls worked in a straw hat factory,
... See moreCharles R. Morris • The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy
The new knowledge economy created a new class of Americans: men and women with college degrees (at the very least), skilled with symbols and numbers, salaried professionals in information technology, scientific research, design, management consulting, the upper civil service, financial analysis, medicine, law, journalism, the arts, higher
... See moreGeorge Packer • Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal
How the 1 Percent’s Savings Buried the Middle Class in Debt
chicagobooth.eduThese people’s wealth is determined almost exclusively by how high they can push flows — stocks and rates of return be damned. Everybody else is left with low or negative real returns and depleted stocks of capital and wealth. This is why GDP growth can be positive, while almost everybody feels poorer. Almost everybody is poorer. Objectively so.
... See moreSacha Meyers • Bitcoin Is Venice: Essays on the Past and Future of Capitalism
Personal fortunes have outpaced the public purse, slowly choking public investments. This trend has occurred in red and blue states alike. Between George H. W. Bush’s time in the Oval Office and Donald Trump’s, incomes in Oregon grew by 112 percent, far outpacing increases in education spending, which grew by only 54 percent. During that time,
... See moreMatthew Desmond • Poverty, by America
While the rich got richer, the poor stopped having children. High levels of student debt, weak income growth and elevated house prices discouraged young couples from starting a family. In the United Kingdom, the birth rate and housing market were inversely related: as house prices went up, the number of births fell.105 In parts of Europe worst
... See moreEdward Chancellor • The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest
“They have hired astronomers; they have hired mathematicians; they have hired physicists; they have even hired theologists. They never even interviewed an economist.”