Summary |
Who is the richest person in the world, ever? Does where you were born affect how much money you’ll earn over a lifetime? How would we know? Why- beyond the idle curiosity- do these questions even matter? In The Haves and the Have-Nots, Branko Milanovic, one of the world’s leading experts on wealth, poverty, and the gap that separates them, explains these and other mysteries of how wealth is unevenly spread throughout our world, how and through time.
Milanovic uses history, literature, and stories straight out of today’s newspapers to discuss one of the major divisions in our social lives: between the haves and the have-nots. He reveals:
• Just how rich Elizabeth Bennet’s suitor Mr Darcy really was
• how much Anna Karenina gained by falling in love
• how wealthy ancient Romans compare to today’s super-rich
• where in Kenyan income distribution was Obama’s grandfather
• how we should think about Marxism in a modern world;
• how the location where one is born determines his wealth
He goes beyond mere entertainment to explain why inequality matters, how it damages our economic prospects, and how it can threaten the foundation of the social order that we take for granted
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