Wealth and Democracy by Kevin Phillips 2002  

Copyright 2002 Kevin Phillips, Broadway Books, A Division of Random House

ISBN Hardcover 0-7679-0553-4

               First my apologies to Mr. Phillips because  I am going to disagree with the author’s sub-title of this book “A Political History of the American Rich.”  In fact I think that subtitle is unfortunate because the book’s scope and contribution to American political-economic history are much broader than that subtitle suggests, and therefore may have discouraged a much wider readership which the book deserves.

               As a certified “History Geek” since 7^th grade, I found Mr. Phillips tome the best I have ever read on the subject matter which is really how American republican democracy has failed to solve the millennial problem in the history of civilization of the unequal distribution of wealth between the only persons in a business who make any money for that business—i.e. the persons who provide its services, make its product and/or sell them--and management and investors.

               True Mr. Phillips seems centered on measuring the concentration of Americans’ total net work in its top 1%  of the population, but whether we use that metric to measure wealth inequality which currently stands at 34% or a broader metric that 86% of the nation’s wealth is currently owned by 20% of its population, the end result is the same.  Since the 1970s America’s wealth has progressively been concentrated into fewer and fewer hands.

               What I found makes Mr. Phillips book particularly  timeless is the chapter in which Mr. Phillips briefly reviews the economic history of the three greatest economic powers before the international economic ascendancy of the U.S.: Spain, Holland and Britain (and BEFORE the world wars decimated the wealth of all three).

               In of each of these countries their middle classes made significant gains in wealth while each of these countries remained primarily industrial and exporting powers and then all three suffered significant declines in equitable distribution of wealth when each country’s elites converted their respective economies from manufacturing and exporting to trade and finance—i.e. from an industrial to a service economy.  Of course the most immediate effect was lower wage earnings generally associated with service sector jobs vs jobs that require skilled work. (And in the U.S. as of 2018 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (“BLS”) average industrial wages remain 85% higher than average service sector wages.)

               That historical review is particularly poignant to America today where according to the BLS just 8.5% of American workers are employed in manufacturing.

               One of  the epigraphs Mr. Phillips chose to precede Wealth and Democracy is President Truman’s “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.”  So far, I have not read a better book that fills the knowledge gap regarding American Wealth and Democracy than Mr. Phillips" work.