I subscribe to the Financial Times and the Left Business Observer—two surprisingly well-written publications. Despite their different takes on capitalism, they almost always come up with the same statistics about the current economy. Those are the figures I most often cite in these pages. The Financial Times is a salmon-colored paper available at newsstands. To subscribe to the Left Business Observer, go to: www.leftbusinessobserver.com.
While writing this book I attended Professor Richard D. Wolff’s monthly Update on the State of Global Capitalism (see www.rdwolff.com). Wolff’s forthright Marxist analysis highlighted the fatal folly of lending to workers instead of paying them sufficiently.
From the very start of the Great Recession, economists including Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman described it as a crisis of insufficient demand. They struggled against a sea of pseudo truisms to show that the kindly policy response would also be the hard-nosed and effective one. Economists from URPE, the Union for Radical Political Economics, did the same in their circles.
None of the economists I’ve mentioned agree entirely with each other nor are they responsible for my conclusions. But this unusual collection of credentialed economists who happen to speak and write clearly gave me confidence in my own observations.
I feel a twinge of guilt whenever I use the figures 99 percent or 1 percent, because so many other people did the collective work of making statistics about inequality mean something. Thanks to the folks I spent time with at Liberty Square and to others who occupied Wall Street and elsewhere.
Despite the vicissitudes of the publishing industry, great books will always emerge somehow. But books like mine would not be written without passionate, literate, traditional editors like Gerald Howard and old-fashioned, on-your-side agents like Joy Harris. Thank you both for keeping on.
Friends who know my darling husband, Frank Leonardo, wonder why I don’t thank him for his support and inspiration the way other authors thank less deserving spouses. Frank loves me no matter what I do or don’t accomplish in the world, and he shows it. This unconditional love inspires me to sit comfortably on the couch for hours. Without it I might write more, I suppose. That’s O.K., though. I love him back the same way.
Salutations, in order of age, to Miriam Zissel, Chaya Mushka, Stefan, Menucha Rachel, August, Alice, and Rifka.