NOTES
1: BY 2007, THERE WERE MORE THAN TEN MILLION MILLIONAIRE HOUSEHOLDS Federal Reserve Surveys of Consumer Finance.
2: THE COMBINED ANNUAL INCOMES OF THE TOP 1 PERCENT Facundo Alvaredo, Tony Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez, Top Incomes Database.
3: IN THE EIGHTEEN-MONTH PERIOD BETWEEN THE END OF 2007 Specterem Group.
4: INCOMES FOR THE TOP 1 PERCENT OF EARNERS Jonathan A. Parker and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, “The Increase in Income Cyclicality of High-Income Households and Its Relation to the Rise in Top Income Shares,” Northwestern University, September 7, 2010.
1: HE TRAVELS AT A MOMENT’S NOTICE Marc Weingarten, “The Learjet Repo Man,” Salon.com, June 6, 2009; Sean Silcoff, “Foreclosing on a Plane, Then Flying It Away,” New York Times, March 13, 2009.
2: BETWEEN 1995 AND 2010, THE NUMBER OF PRIVATE JETS JPMorgan Business Jet Monthly, June 3, 2010.
3: JEFF HENDERSON, A MICHIGAN-BASED “Economic Tide Is Rising for Repo Man,” New York Times, May 20, 2008.
4: MINNESOTA AUTO DEALER DENNY HECKER Dee Depass, “Hecker Lists $767 Million in Debt; Bankruptcy Filing Tells Tale of Spending and Debt,” Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), July 3, 2009.
5: “THERE IS A CERTAIN TYPE OF AFFLUENT CUSTOMER” Joel Schechtman, “A Pawnshop for the Affluent,” Newsweek, October 28, 2010.
1: IT WAS MORE LIKE THE DARKNESS BEFORE THE DAWN “1982 Year in Review,” UPI.com.
2: AS KEVIN PHILLIPS, THE POLITICAL COMMENTATOR Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy (New York: Random House, 2002), 132.
3: DURING THE CONSUMER-LED EXPANSION OF THE 1950s Facundo Alvaredo, Tony Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez, Top Incomes Database.
4: THE ELITE WERE EQUALLY RESTRAINED Edward N. Wolff, Top Heavy: The Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America and What Can Be Done About It (New York: New Press, 2002), 9.
5: IN 1955, ONLY 276 PEOPLE Larry Samuel, Rich: The Rise and Fall of American Wealth Culture (New York: AMACOM, 2009), 121.
6: IN 1982, HALF OF THE MEMBERS OF THE FORBES 400 Phillips, Wealth and Democracy.
7: IN THAT SAME YEAR, THERE WERE ONLY THIRTEEN BILLIONAIRES Peter W. Bernstein and Annalyn Swan, eds., All the Money in the World: How the Forbes 400 Make—and Spend—Their Fortunes (New York: Knopf, 2007), 65.
8: SCIENCE DIGEST observed Samuel, Rich.
9: AN ARTICLE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES “Palm Beach Calm Oasis of Wealthy,” New York Times, March 21, 1982.
10: TIME magazine in 1982 NAMED THE COMPUTER Otto Friedrich, “The Computer,” Time, January 4, 1983.
11: “THE SERVICES OF THE BEST PERFORMERS” Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook, The Winner-Take-All-Society (New York: Penguin, 1996).
12: IN 1981, RONALD REAGAN PERSUADED CONGRESS Congressional Budget Office.
13: IN THE SNOWBALL Alice Schroeder, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (New York: Bantam, 2008), 436.
14: BY 1986, MANY OF THE COUNTRY’S TOP ONE HUNDRED EARNERS Phillips, Wealth and Democracy, 140.
15: THE TOP NETWORK TV SHOW Top TV shows, 1982, The ’80s Server.
16: THE LIST RECALLED THE FABLED “FOUR HUNDRED” Bernstein and Swan, eds., All the Money in the World, 238.
17: TEXAS HAD SIXTY-FIVE RESIDENTS ON THE 1982 LIST Ibid., 65.
18: IN 1981, THE TOP 1 PERCENT HAD 8 PERCENT OF THE NATION’S INCOME Facundo Alvaredo, Tony Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez, Top Incomes Database.
19: IN 1981, THERE WERE ABOUT 638,000 MILLIONAIRES Internal Revenue Service, “Trends in Personal Wealth 1976–1981.”
20: IN TWO YEARS, HE HAD $400 MILLION UNDER MANAGEMENT Robert Frank, “Now, Mutual Funds Under Fire—Charges Against Canary Capital Cast a Spotlight on the Sterns; A Journey from Hartz to Hedge,” Wall Street Journal, September 4, 2003.
21: IN 2000, WHEN THE S&P 500 FELL 9 PERCENT Peter Elkind, Christopher Tkaczyk, and Doris Burke, “The Secrets of Eddie Stern,” Fortune, April 19, 2004.
22: THE STERNS ARE PART OF WHAT John Bellamy Foster, “The Financialization of Accumulation,” The Monthly Review, October 1, 2010.
23: AS WE NOTED EARLIER, THE TOP 1 PERCENT OF EARNERS Parker and Vissing-Jorgensen, “Increase in Income Cyclicality.”
24: A STUDY OF PAY FOR ALL CEOS Steven N. Kaplan, “Some Facts About CEO Pay and Corporate Governance,” 2011.
25: BETWEEN 2008 AND 2010 Spectrem Group.
26: AT THE VERY TOP, THE LOSSES DURING DOWNTURNS Duncan Greenberg, “America’s Biggest Billionaire Losers of 2008,” Forbes, December 6, 2008.
27: HIS EFFORTS TO EXPAND WERE SOON BLOCKED “History,” Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, WCNYH.org.
28: IN THE MID-1950s, PORT NEWARK SERVED “The Container Industry: The World in a Box,” Economist, March 16, 2006.
1: IN LAS VEGAS, MORE THAN A QUARTER OF THE MANSIONS John Gittelsohn, “Wealthy Leaving Las Vegas Mansions as Foreclosures Spreading,” Bloomberg.com, April 26, 2011.
2: THE SHARE OF THEIR FORTUNES DEVOTED TO REAL ESTATE Arthur B. Kennickell, “Ponds and Streams: Wealth and Income in the U.S., 1989 to 2007,” Finance and Discussion Series, Division of Research and Statistics and Monetary Affairs, Federal Reserve Board, Washington, D.C., January 7, 2009.
3: A RUSSIAN BILLIONAIRE IN GREENWICH Robert Frank, “Greenwich Mansion Planned with 26 Toilets,” The Wealth Report (Blog), April 22, 2008.
1: JACK WARNER WAS A “MIDDLE-CLASS MILLIONAIRE” Russ Alan Prince and Lewis Schiff, The Middle-Class Millionaire: The Rise of the New Rich and How They Are Changing America (New York: Currency/Doubleday, 2008).
2: A STUDY OF AMERICANS WITH $1.5 MILLION OR MORE Barclays Wealth, “The Age Illusion: How the Wealthy Are Redefining Retirement.” Barclay’s Wealth, September 2010.
1: IN THE 1980s, TIM’S BUSINESS CRASHED Scott McMillion, “Past Plagues Taylor Ranch Bidder,” Denver Post, January 8, 1994.
2: “SHE HAS BEEN RECKLESSLY SPENDING MONEY AS IF IT GROWS ON TREES” “Yellowstone Club Founder Speaks Out,” PR Newswire, June 15, 2009.
3: HE TOLD FAST COMPANY “Plagued by lawsuits, McAfee Founder Hunts for Cures in Belize,” Jeff Wise, Fast Company, May 1, 2010.
4: IN 2008, THE NEW YORK TIMES RAN AN ARTICLE David Leonhardt and Geraldine Fabrikant, “Rise of the Super-Rich Hits a Sobering Wall,” New York Times, August 20, 2009.
1: THE PAEPCKES VACATIONED ON A LARGE RANCH Ted Conover, “Lives Well Lived: Elizabeth Paepcke; Eve in the Garden of Aspen,” New York Times, January 1, 1995.
2: THERE WAS ALSO, OF COURSE, THE APPEAL F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (New York: Scribner, 2004 [1925]), 5.
3: THE ASPEN DAILY NEWS, IN ITS APRIL FOOL’S ISSUE Robert Frank, “The Billionaire and the Bookstore: Sam Wyly Buys Left-Leaning Aspen Landmark,” Wall Street Journal, October 5, 2007.
4: “OUR JOB IS TO WELCOME THESE VISITORS TO TOWN” Susan Greene, “ ‘Big Money’ Song Draws Aspen Skiing Co.’s Ill Will,” Denver Post, January 12, 2010.
5: THE ASPEN SKI CO. TOLD DAN Scott Condon, “Aspen Skico: Mistake Made in Firing of Musician,” Aspen Times (Aspen, Colorado), January 8, 2010.
1: “THE CONSUMPTION OF HIGH-CONSUMPTION HOUSEHOLDS” Jonathan A. Parker and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, “Who Bears Aggregate Fluctuations and How?” January 2009.
2: “THEIR SPENDING BEHAVIOR IS A LOT MORE VOLATILE” Ajay Kapur, Mirae Asset Management, “The Global Investigator; Michael Moore, Misrepresentation and Migrating Plutonomies,” October 7, 2009.
3: IN OTHER WORDS, THE FEW MILLION AMERICANS AT THE TOP Robert Frank, “U.S. Economy Is Increasingly Tied to the Rich,” Wall Street Journal, August 5, 2010.
1: CAPITAL GAINS REALIZATIONS TRIPLED Elizabeth Hill and Bradley Williams, “California’s Changing Income Distribution,” Legislative Analyst’s Office, State of California, August 2000.
2: BY 1998, THE TOP 1 PERCENT OF EARNERS IN CALIFORNIA Ibid.
3: WHEN THE DOT-COM BUBBLE BURST Jacob M. Schlesinger and Bryan Gruley, “Main Street: A Tale of a Broker and His Clients and an Era’s End,” Wall Street Journal, December 27, 2002.
4: IN NEW YORK, THE TOP 1 PERCENT PAY Interview with Donald J. Boyd, senior fellow at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, February 2011.
5: IN A REPORT DOWNGRADING NEW JERSEY’S CREDIT RATING S&P, Global Credit Portal, Ratings Direct, New Jersey General Obligation, February 9, 2011.
6: THE COMMISSION RECOMMENDED LOWERING TAX RATES Commission on the 21st Century Economy, press release, September 29, 2009.
1: LINKEDIN’S FOUNDER—Robert Frank, “Reid Hoffman Is Silicon Valley’s Newest Billionaire,” The Wealth Report (blog), May 19, 2011, http://blogs.wsj.com.
2: BY THE END OF 2010—Mark Zandi, Moody’s Analytics, Personal Outlays by Income 2010, q3.
3: AS THE GLOBAL INVESTOR—Lauren Rublin, “Buy Low, Stay Nimble,” Barron’s, June 11, 2011.
4: ALAN GREENSPAN—CNBC Transcript, Alan Greenspan on CNBC’s Squawk Box, July 1, 2010.
5: ERIC LEFTKOFSKY—Robert Frank, “How to Earn $4 Billion on Coupons,” Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2011.
6: IN HIS 2009 BOOK—Thomas J. Stanley, Stop Acting Rich … and Start Acting Like a Real Millionaire (John Wiley & Sons, 2009), 11.
7: A RECENT STUDY—Graeme Wood, “Secret Fears of the Super Rich,” Atlantic, April 2011.
8: KEVIN PHILLIPS WROTE IN—Wealth and Democracy, 110.
9: “THE TOP 1 PERCENT”—Joseph Stiglitz, “Of the 1 Percent, by the 1 Percent, for the 1 Percent,” Vanity Fair, May 2011.
10: “WITH NO CHARTERED”—Herman Meville, Pierre: or the Ambiguities (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1852), 9.
11: “ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE”—Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (D. Appleton & Co.), 668, 1092, 1835.