Quote of the Day, from Stefan Jovanovich
Stiglitz's massively egregious factoid (without which his entire argument ends up in the historicist circular file):
"The vast inequalities that seemed so troubling in the mid-19th century— inequalities that are but a pale shadow of what we are seeing in America today."
The NY Times did a very useful study of inequality a few years ago; they measured personal fortunes against the wealth of country. Of the 30 wealthiest Americans in our country's history exactly 3 lived in our present age of inequality: Sam Walton, the Oregano and Paul Allen's former friend. All the others accumulated their fortunes in that golden age of social equality– the period before WW I.