Notes

Preface

1. CitCap.org will be established by Tamara Belinfanti.

Introduction

1. Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2016).

2. Louis K. Liggett Co. et al. v. Lee, Comptroller et al., 288 U.S. 517 (1933) 548, 567.

3. Leon Walker, “BP, Shell Biofuel Investments Hit Seven-Year Low,” Environmental Leader (July 9, 2013), https://www.environmentalleader.com/2013/07/bp-shell-biofuel-investments-hit-seven-year-low; Shell recently trumpeted new plans to develop cleaner energy technologies, budgeting $200 million for investment in its New Energies division. See Julia Pyper, “Shell Plans to Boost Clean Energy Sources,” Greentech Media (July 11, 2017), https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/shell-boost-clean-energy-spending-1-billion-2020#gs.GlDWZ8M. This figure is less than 6 percent of the company’s 2016 profits of $3.5 billion—too little and far too late to avoid the enormous future losses our society can expect to see as atmospheric carbon levels continue to rise. See Silvia Amaro, “Shell Posts Earnings of $3.5 Billion in 2016; an 8% Slide from $3.8 Billion in 2015,” CNBC (February 2, 2017), https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/02/shell-posts-earnings-of-35-billion-in-2016-an-8-slide-from-38-billion-in-2015.html.

4. Jesse Bricker, et al., “Changes in US Family Finances from 2013 to 2016: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances,” Federal Reserve Bulletin (September 2017), https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf17.pdf.

5. Ben Casselman, “The American Middle Class Hasn’t Gotten a Raise in 15 Years,” FiveThirtyEight (September 22, 2014), https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-american-middle-class-hasnt-gotten-a-raise-in-15-years.

6. Alana Semuels, “Poor at 20, Poor for Life,” The Atlantic (July 14, 2016), https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/social-mobility-america/491240.

7. Raj Chetty et al., “The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001–2014,” Journal of the American Medical Association 315 (2016): 1750–1776.

8. Tae Kim, “Indefensible: Hedge Fund Tax Loophole Shows ‘Swamp’ Still Rules Over Washington, D.C.,” CNBC (December 21, 2017), https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/indefensible-hedge-fund-tax-loophole-shows-swamp-still-rules-d-c.html.

9. See generally Lynn Stout, The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations, and the Public (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2012).

10. FRED, “Nonfinancial Corporate Business, Total Assets, Level,” Economic Research, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (2018), https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TABSNNCB.

11. CitCap.org will be established by Tamara Belinfanti. You can visit the website to receive information on events and join discussions.

Chapter 1

1. The Sierra Club, “About,” https://www.sierraclub.org/about.

2. Laura Johannes, “AARP Faces Competition from Conservative Leaning Groups,” Wall Street Journal (March 30, 2014), https://www.wsj.com/articles/aarp-faces-competition-from-conservative-leaning-groups-1394667995.

3. National Public Media, “2017: A Record-Breaking Year for NPR on the Radio” (January 2018), https://www.nationalpublicmedia.com/news/2017-a-record-breaking-year-for-npr-on-the-radio.

4. Statista, “Number of Visits to Smithsonian Museums and Institutions in the United States from 1970 to 2017 (in Millions),” https://www.statista.com/statistics/258337/total-number-of-visits-to-smithsonian-museums-und-institutions.

5. Community Associations Institute, “Community Associations in the United States,” https://www.caionline.org/AboutCommunityAssociations/Pages/StatisticalInformation.aspx.

6. Congressional Budget Office, “The Federal Budget in 2016: An Info-graphic” (February 8, 2017), https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52408.

7. Fortune, “Global 500,” http://fortune.com/global500/2016.

8. Congressional Budget Office, “Federal Personnel,” https://www.cbo.gov/topics/employment-and-labor-markets/federal-personnel.

9. Walmart, “Company Facts,” https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/company-facts.

10. Corning’s 2016 Form 10-K, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/24741/000002474117000011/q4201610k.htm.

11. Ibid.

12. Corning Incorporated Foundation, “Financial Statements 2016,” http://www.corningfoundation.org/who-we-are/who-we-are-financial.

13. Senator Bernie Sanders, “America’s Top 10 Corporate Tax Avoiders,” https://www.sanders.senate.gov/top-10-corporate-tax-avoiders.

14. Stephen Leahy, “Hidden Costs of Climate Change,” National Geographic (September 27, 2017), https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/09/climate-change-costs-us-economy-billions-report. Nor can we expect our government to fill the funding gap; the Environmental Protection Agency’s entire annual budget has just been cut from $8.2 billion in 2016 to only 5.7 billion in 2018. See Zahra Hirji, Georgina Gustin, and Marianne Lavelle, “Trump Budget Plan Targets Climate Science,” Inside Climate News (May 24, 2017), https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23052017/budget-donald-trump-scott-pruitt-climate-change-science-funding-epa-usda-nasa.

15. Negin, “Documenting Fossil Fuel Companies’ Climate Deception.”

16. Stephen Marche, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?”, The Atlantic (May 2012), https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-facebook-making-us-lonely/308930.

17. Stout, The Shareholder Value Myth.

18. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 2751 at 2771 (2014).

19. Lawrence Fink, “Lawrence D. Fink’s 2016 Corporate Governance Letter,” New York Times (February 2, 2016), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/02/business/dealbook/document-larry-finks-2016-corporate-governance-letter.html.

20. Lynn Stout, Cultivating Conscience: How Good Laws Make Good People (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).

21. Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (New York: Free Press, 2004).

22. Unilever, “About Unilever,” www.unilever.com/about/who-we-are/about-Unilever.

23. Ibid.

24. Hindustan Unilever, “Enhancing Livelihoods Through Project Shakti,” https://www.hul.co.in/sustainable-living/case-studies/enhancing-livelihoods-through-project-shakti.html.

25. Ibid.

26. Danone, “Products & Brands,” https://www.danone.com/brands.html.

27. Danone, “A Global Leader with a Health-Focused Portfolio in Food and Beverages,” https://www.danone.com/about-danone/at-a-glance/danone-data.html. Danone estimates its annual sales figure to be 24.7 billion euros. We applied the USD/euro exchange rate as of the date of publication of 1.16 USD:1 euro.

28. Grameen Creative Lab, “Grameen Danone Foods Ltd.,” http://www.grameencreativelab.com/live-examples/grameen-danone-foods-ltd.html.

29. Ibid.

30. Tamara C. Belinfanti, “Contemplating the Gap-Filling Role of Social Intrapreneurship,” Oregon Law Review 94 (2016): 67 (discussing corporate initiatives that seek to achieve both financial value and social value).

31. FRED, “Nonfinancial Corporate Business.”

Chapter 2

1. Editorial Board, “Where Have All the Public Companies Gone?”, Bloomberg (April 9, 2018), https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-09/where-have-all-the-u-s-public-companies-gone.

2. ProxyPulse, “2017 Proxy Season Review” (September 2017), https://www.pwc.com/us/en/governance-insights-center/publications/assets/pwc-proxypulse-2017-proxy-season-review.pdf.

3. Ibid.

4. Jeffrey M. Jones, “U.S. Stock Ownership Down Among All but Older, Higher-Income,” Gallup (May 24, 2017), https://news.gallup.com/poll/211052/stock-ownership-down-among-older-hire-income.aspx.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Rebecca Tippet, et al., “Beyond Broke: Why Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Is a Priority for National Economic Security,” Center for Global Policy Solutions (May 2014), http://globalpolicysolutions.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Beyond_Broke_FINAL.pdf.

8. Edward N. Wolff, A Century of Wealth In America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap of Harvard University Press, 2017), 103, table 3.7. In 2001, 52 percent of households owned stock directly or indirectly; this figure has varied from 32 percent to 46 percent from 1989 to 2013 (123, table 3.11b). The top 1 percent of wealth holders own 50 percent of all stocks and mutual funds and the next 9 percent own 41 percent, for a total of 91 percent held by the top decile (103, table 3.7).

9. See ProxyPulse, “2017 Proxy Season Review.” Increasingly, many firms that do go public are adopting a classified share structure that concentrates a disproportionate amount of voting power in the hands of initial investors. More often than not, these initial investors are also in the upper deciles of wealth and income, and thus the dual class share structure further solidifies the coziness between wealth and corporate governance influence. Examples of companies that recently have gone public with dual class share structures include Google, Zynga, LinkedIn, Groupon, Facebook, and Snapchat. See Andrea Tan and Benjamin Robertson, “Why Investors Are Fretting Over Duel-Class Shares,” Bloomberg Businessweek (July 10, 2017), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-10/why-investors-are-fretting-over-dual-class-shares-quicktake-q-a.

10. This figure is based on a summary of the 2016 corporate election season published by Broadridge, which analyzed 4,200 annual meetings between January 1 and June 30, 2016. See ProxyPulse, “2016 Proxy Season Review,” https://www.broadridge.com/_assets/pdf/broadridge-2016-proxy-season-review.pdf.

11. Ibid.

12. In 1988, the US Department of Labor took the position that voting proxies of shares of stock held in an employee benefit plan was part of the plan’s fiduciary duty. See Employment Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, 29 C.F.R. § 2509.94-2 (2006) (setting forth the Department of Labor’s interpretation of ERISA as it relates to the voting of proxies). To satisfy their fiduciary duties, fund managers sought help from proxy advisory firms. However, the watershed moment for the proxy advisory industry came in 2003 when the SEC passed a new rule requiring registered investment companies to disclose their complete voting records on an annual basis. See Disclosure of Proxy Voting Policies Voting Records by Registered Management Investment Companies, Investment Company Act Release No. n25922, 17 C.F.R. 239, 249, 270, 274 (January 31, 2003). For a general overview of the proxy advisory industry, see Tamara C. Belinfanti, “The Proxy Advisory and Corporate Governance Industry: The Case for Increased Oversight and Control,” Stanford Journal of Law, Business, and Finance 14 (2009): 384.

13. ProxyPulse, “2017 Proxy Season Review.”

14. This causes many fund managers to turn to “active investing”: the quest to juice portfolio performance by earning trading profits buying and selling stocks. Actively managed funds are especially short-term investors, holding the shares in their portfolios for an average of two years or less. As Paul Bogle, founder of Vanguard Funds, put it, the mutual fund industry has become a “rent-a-stock” industry. See John C. Bogle, “Reflections on the Evolution of Mutual Fund Governance,” Journal of Business & Technology Law 1 (2006): 47. For a more fulsome discussion of fund manager behavior, see Lynn Stout, The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations, and the Public (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2012), 66–67.

15. Stout, The Shareholder Value Myth. See also Einer Elhauge, “Sacrificing Corporate Profits in the Public Interest,” New York University Law Review 80 (2005): 733, 776–817, and Usman Hayat, “Shareholder Value Maximization: The World’s Dumbest Idea?”, CFA Institute (October 23, 2014).

16. Bakan, The Corporation; Aspen Institute for Business and Society, “Overcoming Short-Termism: A Call for a More Responsible Approach to Investment” (September 2009), https://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/docs/pubs/overcome_short_state0909_0.pdf (describing the risks created by a focus on short-term stock price and performance); the Roosevelt Institute, “Financialization Project, Understanding Short-Termism: Questions and Consequences” (2015), http://rooseveltinstityte.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Understanding-Short-Termism.pdf (concluding that “by pressuring managers to pay out funds instead of investing them, shareholders are simply reducing production and income in the economy as a whole”); and William Lazonick, “Profits Without Prosperity,” Harvard Business Review (September 2014), 48, 50, https://hbr.org/2014/09/profits-without-prosperity/ar/1 (arguing that incentivizing executives to maximize shareholder value led to executives undertaking share repurchases, which in turn led to a failure to translate corporate profitability into widespread economic prosperity). One potential counter to short-termist tendencies and outcomes is the rise of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) funds, SRI (socially responsible investments) funds, and impact investors whose investment strategy seeks to take into account both financial and nonfinancial risks. In 2016, a Wall Street Journal report estimated that ESG/SRI/impact investments accounted for 22 percent of the market (approximately $8.72 trillion), which represented a 33 percent increase from 2014–2016. See Matthew Kassel, “How Much Do You Know About Ethical Investing?”, Wall Street Journal (July 6, 2016), https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-much-do-you-know-about-ethical-investing-1499349815.

17. Letter, dated February 23, 1988, from the deputy assistant secretary of the Pension Welfare Benefits Administration to Mr. Helmuth Fandl, chairman of the Retirement Board of Avon Products, Inc. (the “Avon Letter”). The Avon Letter took the position that the fiduciary act of managing employee benefit plan assets included a duty to vote proxies associated with shares owned by the plan. See also US Securities and Exchange Commission, “Proxy Voting: Proxy Voting Responsibilities of Investment Advisers and Availability of Exemptions from the Proxy Rules for Proxy Advisory Firms,” Staff Legal Bulletin, no. 20 (June 30, 2014), https://www.sec.gov/interps/legal/cfslb20.htm.

18. US Government Accountability Office, “Corporate Shareholder Meetings. Issues Relating to Firms That Advise Institutional Investors on Proxy Voting,” Report to Congressional Requesters (June 2007), https://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07765.pdf, 13, table 1; Sheryl Cuisia, Adam Rose, and Eugenie Laurian, “Top 15 Things You Should Know About Proxy Advisory Agencies,” Boudicca (January 5, 2017), https://boudiccaproxy.com/2017/01/05/top-15-things-you-should-know-about-proxy-advisers.

19. Cuisia, Rose, and Laurian, “Top 15 Things You Should Know About Proxy Advisory Agencies.”

20. See David F. Larcker, Allan L. McCall, and Gaizka Ormazabal, “Outsourcing Shareholder Voting to Proxy Advisory Firms,” Journal of Law and Economics 58 (2015): 173–178 (surveying past research findings and noting that although it is hard to precisely measure the influence, “proxy advisor recommendations have a significant impact on the voting outcomes on various types of shareholder ballot items”); David F. Larcker, Allan L. McCall, and Brian Tayan, “The Influence of Proxy Advisory Firm Voting Recommendations On Say-on-Pay Votes and Executive Compensation Decisions,” Director Notes (March 2012), https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/sites/gsb/files/publication-pdf/cgri-survey-2012-proxy-voting_0.pdf (finding that proxy advisor recommendations “have a substantial impact on the design of executive compensation programs”); Jennifer E. Bethel and Stuart L. Gillan, “The Impact of the Institutional and Regulatory Environment on Shareholder Voting,” Financial Management 31 (2002): 29 (analyzing the impact of ISS recommendations on governance issues); and Belinfanti, “The Proxy Advisory and Corporate Governance Industry” (discussing the perceived influence of ISS’s vote recommendations).

21. US Government Accountability Office, “Corporate Shareholder Meetings. Proxy Advisory Firms’ Role in Voting and Corporate Governance Practices,” Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Economic Policy, Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate (November 2016), https://www.gao.gov/assets/690/681051.pdf.

22. “All Locked-Up,” Economist (August 2, 2007), http://www.economist.com/node/9596328; “How Hedge Funds Are Structured,” Hedgefundamentals.org (June 2016), https://www.managedfunds.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06.09.16-How-HFs-are-Structured.pdf.

23. The Alternative Investment Management Association, Global Report of 2015, https://www.aima.org/uploads/assets/uploaded/7da17150-817d-4cb2-9deb771b6f3ab69f.pdf.

24. Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, 2016 U.S. Shareholder Activism Review and Analysis (November 28, 2016), 7, https://www.sullcrom.com/siteFiles/Publications/SC_Publication_2016_U.S._Shareholder_Activism_Review_and_Analysis.pdf.

25. ValueAct held at least some stock in Valeant for ten years.

26. Nathan Vardi, “Hedge Fund ValueAct Capital’s Valeant Legacy,” Forbes (June 6, 2016), https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2016/06/06/hedge-fund-valueact-capitals-valeant-legacy/#7c09064f203a.

27. Bethany McLean, “The Valeant Meltdown and Wall Street’s Major Drug Problem,” Vanity Fair (June 5, 2016), https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/the-valeant-meltdown-and-wall-streets-major-drug-problem.

28. Carly Helfand, “Valeant Starts $500M in Salix Cost-Cutting with 250 Layoffs,” FiercePharma (April 6, 2015), https://www.fiercepharma.com/m-a/valeant-starts-500m-salix-cost-cutting-250-layoffs; Tracy Staton, “Shionogi Cutting 350 Reps as BioVail Boosts Layoffs,” FiercePharma (September 8, 2010), https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/shionogi-cutting-350-reps-as-biovail-boosts-layoffs; Tracy Staton, “Valeant to Fire Thousands, Restructure Ops after Bausch Buyout,” FiercePharma (July 29, 2013), https://www.fiercepharma.com/m-a/valeant-to-fire-thousands-restructure-ops-after-bausch-buyout; Business Staff, “Buyer of Dendreon Lays Off 77 Seattle Employees” Seattle Times (March 2, 2015), https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/buyer-of-dendreon-warns-77-seattle-employees-of-layoffs.

29. Andrew Pollack and Sabrina Tavernise, “Valeant’s Drug Price Strategy Enriches It, but Infuriates Patients and Lawmakers,” New York Times (October 4, 2015), https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/business/valeants-drug-price-strategy-enriches-it-but-infuriates-patients-and-lawmakers.html?ref=topics.

30. Melody Petersen, “How 4 Drug Companies Rapidly Raised Prices On Life-Saving Drugs,” Los Angeles Times (December 21, 2016), http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-senate-drug-price-study-20161221-story.html.

31. Peter J. Henning, “As Valeant Struggles, Its Tally Sheet of Scandals Grows,” New York Times (March 28, 2016), https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/business/dealbook/as-valeant-struggles-its-tally-sheet-of-scandals-grows.html.

32. McLean, “The Valeant Meltdown.”

33. Ibid.

34. Alexandra Bosanac, “CEO of the Year: Mike Pearson, Valeant,” Canadian Business (October 19, 2015), https://www.canadianbusiness.com/leadership/ceo-of-the-year/top-ceo-mike-pearson-valeant.

35. Pollack and Tavernise, “Valeant’s Drug Price Strategy Enriches It.”

36. Bausch Health, “Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) Recommends Allergan Shareholders Call a Special Meeting of Shareholders,” Valeant News Releases 2014 (August 6, 2014), http://ir.valeant.com/news-releases/2014/06-08-2014.

37. Antione Gara, “Bill Ackman and Valeant Settle Allergan Insider Trading Lawsuit for $290 Million,” Forbes (December 30, 2017), https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2017/12/30/bill-ackman-and-valeant-settle-allergan-insider-trading-lawsuit-for-290-million/#17b4dd6f1f32.

38. Andrew Pollack, “Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight,” New York Times (September 20, 2015), https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/business/a-huge-overnight-increase-in-a-drugs-price-raises-protests.html.

39. Wolf Richter, “EpiPen Is Getting Crushed by a $10 Copycat,” Business Insider (March 8, 2017), http://www.businessinsider.com/after-years-of-price-gouging-mylans-epipen-gets-crushed-2017-3.

40. Ibid.

41. Ari I. Weinberg, “How Activist is Your Index Fund?”, Forbes (April 25, 2012), https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariweinberg/2012/04/25/how-activist-is-your-index-fund/#5e1ba6bb7d94.

42. Editorial Board, “Where Have All the Public Companies Gone?”

Chapter 3

1. Our concept of the universal citizen-shareholder should not be confused with the “universal investor” or “universal owner” label sometimes applied to large institutional investors like pension and mutual funds, which are so broadly diversified that they are more concerned with the performance of the economy as a whole than with the performance of a single company. See generally James P. Hawley and Andrew T. Williams, The Rise of Fiduciary Capitalism: How Institutional Investors Can Make Corporate America More Democratic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).

2. This would require legislative intervention, and the tax treatment would depend on how the new regulation allowing the deduction were drafted.

3. The Giving Pledge, “A Commitment to Philanthropy,” https://givingpledge.org.

4. Ibid.

5. See generally Guido Calabresi and A. Douglas Melamed, “Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral,” Harvard Law Review 85 (1972): 1089.

6. Although some shareholders nearing the end of their life expectancy may be more short-term oriented (for example, preferring that companies adopt overly generous dividend policies), their interests will be counterbalanced by other, more altruistic or well-off shareholders nearing the end of their life expectancy as well as by younger shareholders who prefer that corporations invest optimally for future returns. This dynamic is different from the incentives of today’s shareholders, who typically hold shares for two years or less.

7. Where the typical actively managed stock fund charges expenses of 1.34 percent of assets annually, Vanguard, BlackRock, and Schwab offer ETF equity funds that charge annual fees of only 0.05–0.03 percent. See Heather Long, “The Best Cheap Investment Funds,” CNN Money (June 2016), http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/06/investing/invest-in-funds-with-low-fees/index.html. Another point of comparison might be with the management fees charged by the actively managed Alaska Permanent Fund, which charges expenses of less than 30 basis points annually. See Peter Barnes, With Liberty and Dividends for All (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2014), 73.

Chapter 4

1. John J. Havens and Paul G. Schervish, A Golden Age of Philanthropy Still Beckons: National Wealth Transfer and Potential for Philanthropy Technical Report, Center on Wealth and Philanthropy, Boston College (May 28, 2014), http://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cwp/pdf/A%20Golden%20Age%20of%20Philanthropy%20Still%20Bekons.pdf, cited in David Callahan, The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017), 18, 318.

2. Edward Yardeni, Joe Abbott, and Mali Quintana, Stock Market Indicators: S&P 500 Buybacks and Dividends, Yardeni Research Inc. (July 13, 2018), 3, figure 1, https://www.yardeni.com/pub/buybackdiv.pdf.

3. See Census’ table on Electorate Profiles: Selected Characteristics of the Citizen, Voting-Age Population; Danielle Kaeble, et al., “Correctional Populations in the United States, 2014,” US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistic, Bulletin (December 2015, revised January 21, 2016), https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus14.pdf.

4. Sean Ross, “A History of the S&P 500 Dividend Yield,” Investopedia (July 16, 2016), https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/071616/history-sp-500-dividend-yield.asp. Although dividend yields have fallen a bit in recent years to just over 2 percent, this is because companies are paying back even more money to shareholders in the form of share purchases, which are the economic equivalent of dividends.

5. Barnes, With Liberty and Dividends for All, 73–77; Matthew Berman and Random Rearney, Permanent Fund Dividends and Poverty in Alaska, Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of Alaska Anchorage (November 2016), http://www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu/Publications/2016_12-PFDandPoverty.pdf.

6. See Vito J. Racanelli, “The U.S. Stock Market Is Now Worth $30 Trillion,” Barron’s (January 18, 2018), https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-u-s-stock-market-is-now-worth-30-trillion-1516285704; SIFMA, SIFMA Insights: US Fixed Income: Market Structure Primer (July 12, 2018), https://www.sifma.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/SIFMA-Insights-FIMS-Primer_FINAL.pdf; Heather Rupp, “The U.S. Fixed Income Market,” Seeking Alpha (August 16, 2016), https://seekingalpha.com/article/4000049-u-s-fixed-income-market (estimating size of US fixed income market to be approximately $39 trillion); “U.S. REIT Industry Equity Market Cap. FTSE Nareit Real Estate Index Historical Market Capitalization, 1972–2017” (estimating size of REIT equity market cap of $1.1 trillion in 2017), https://www.reit.com/data-research/reit-market-data/us-reit-industry-equity-market-cap; and Scott Reyburn, “What’s the Global Art Market Really Worth? Depends On Who You Ask,” New York Times (March 23, 2017), https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/23/arts/global-art-market.html (estimating size of global art market sales to be around $50 billion in 2017, of which US sales accounted for 40 percent).

7. Yardeni, Abbott, and Quintana, Stock Market Indicators (in the first 2018 quarter buybacks amounted to approximately $750 billion).

8. See Richard Dobbs and Werner Rehm, “The Value of Share Buybacks,” McKinsey Quarterly (August 2005).

9. This would require legislative intervention, and the tax treatment would depend on how the new regulation allowing the deduction was drafted.

10. See, for example, Sara Bernow, Bruce Klempner, and Clarisse Magnin, “From ‘Why’ to ‘Why Not’: Sustainable Investing As the New Normal,” McKinsey & Company (October 2017), https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/private-equity-and-principal-investors/our-insights/from-why-to-why-not-sustainable-investing-as-the-new-normal (stating that “[m]ore than one-quarter of assets under management globally are now being invested according to the premise that environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors”). See also US SIF Foundation, Report on US Sustainable Responsible and Impact Investing Trends (2016), https://www.ussif.org/files/SIF_Trends_16_Executive_Summary(1).pdf (“The demand for sustainable and impact investing is growing—investors now consider environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors across $8.72 trillion of professionally managed assets, a 33 percent increase since 2014.”).

11. See Suntae Kim, et al., “Why Companies Are Becoming B Corporations,” Harvard Business Review (June 2016), https://hbr.org/2016/06/why-companies-are-becoming-b-corporations; King Arthur Flour, Benefit Corporation Annual Report 2017, https://www.kingarthurflour.com/our-story/bcorp-report.html; see also “100 Best Corporate Citizens 2018,” Corporate Responsibility (Summer 2018), http://www.3blassociation.com/files/exV4MF/CR_Summer%2018_100%20Best_revised.pdf; “See the Numbers—Giving USA 2017 Infographic,” Giving USA (June 12, 2017), https://givingusa.org/see-the-numbers-giving-usa-2017-infographic/ (noting that giving from corporations amounted to $18.55 billion in 2016). Corporate philanthropy can also attract substantial positive attention.

12. Julia Creswell and Michael Corkery, “Wal-Mart and Dick’s Raise Minimum Age for Gun Buyers to 21,” New York Times (February 28, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/business/walmart-and-dicks-major-gun-retailers-will-tighten-rules-on-guns-they-sell.html.

13. Global Reporting Initiative, “About Sustainability Reporting,” https://www.globalreporting.org/information/sustainability-reporting/Pages/default.aspx.

14. Curtis C. Verschoor, “Sustainability Reporting Increases,” Strategic Finance (October 1, 2017), http://sfmagazine.com/post-entry/october-2017-sustainability-reporting-increases.

15. Uniya S. Luther, “The Culture of Affluence: Psychological Costs of Material Wealth,” Child Development 74 (2003): 1581.

16. Callahan, The Givers, 43.

17. Ibid., 16, 43. See also at 18 (nearly seventy thousand individuals living in North America have liquid assets of $30 million or more).

18. This would require legislative intervention, and the tax treatment would depend on how the new regulation allowing the deduction was drafted.

19. This would require legislative intervention allowing the deduction and would depend on the details of the new regulation determining the tax treatment.

20. National Philanthropic Trust, “Charitable Giving Statistics,” https://www.nptrust.org/philanthropic-resources/charitable-giving-statistics; See also Vartan Gregorian, “Philanthropy in America,” Carnegie Reporter (January 8, 2018), https://medium.com/carnegie-reporter/philanthropy-in-america-3a63879cb75c; Giving USA, “Giving USA 2017: Total Charitable Donations Rise to New High of $390.05 Billion” (June 12, 2017), https://givingusa.org/giving-usa-2017-total-charitable-donations-rise-to-new-high-of-390-05-billion.

21. “The Giving Pledge is an effort to help address society’s most pressing problems by inviting the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to commit more than half of their wealth to philanthropy or charitable causes either during their lifetime or in their will.” The Giving Pledge, “About,” https://givingpledge.org/About.aspx.

22. See generally Jenny Santi, The Giving Way to Happiness: Stories and Science Behind the Transformative Power of Giving (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2015); Azim Jamal and Harvey McKinnon, The Power of Giving: How Giving Back Enriches Us All (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2008); Christian Smith, The Paradox of Generosity: Giving We Receive, Grasping We Lose (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

23. Callahan, The Givers, 40–41.

24. Ibid., 19. In organizing the Giving Pledge, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett quickly learn that “many of America’s richest people had yet to figure out what they would ultimately do with their money,” 20.

Chapter 5

1. See Stout, The Shareholder Value Myth, 70. For a recent overview on the need for reform in how proxy advisors develop guidelines, see James R. Coplan, David F. Larcker, and Brian Tayan, Proxy Advisory Firms: Empirical Evidence and the Case for Reform, Manhattan Institute (May 21, 2018), https://www.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-JC-0518-v2.pdf (concluding that proxy advisor guidelines lack transparency, that institutional investors are influenced by proxy advisor recommendations, and that corporations are influenced by proxy advisory guidelines). See also Belinfanti, “The Proxy Advisory and Corporate Governance Industry” (discussing the one-size-fits-all nature of proxy advisory guidelines) and Lynn A. Stout, Why Should ISS Be the Master of the Corporate Governance Universe, Dow Jones Corporate Governance (January 4, 2006) (highlighting the flaws in current proxy advisory system).

2. See Coplan, Larcker, and Tayan, Proxy Advisory Firms (discussing lack of transparency in how proxy advisors develop their voting guidelines).

3. See Henry Hansmann, “The Role of Nonprofit Enterprise,” Yale Law Journal 89 (1980): 835 (arguing that nonprofits have what Hansmann terms a “nondistribution constraint”, i.e., any net earnings must be retained and devoted to the purpose of the enterprise and cannot be distributed to any residual claimants). As Hansmann described, the nondistribution constraint avoids creating an incentive to maximize profits.

4. ProxyPulse, 2018 Proxy Season Preview and 2017 Mini-Season Wrap-Up, https://www.pwc.com/us/en/governance-insights-center/publications/assets/pwc-broadridge-proxypulse-2018-proxy-season-preview.pdf.

5. See Kassel, “How Much Do You Know About Ethical Investing?”

6. Audrey Choi, “How Younger Investors Could Reshape the World,” Morgan Stanley (January 24, 2018), https://www.morganstanley.com/access/why-millennial-investors-are-different.

7. Benjamin Ernst, Daniel Kobler, and Felix Haubler, “Millennials and Wealth Management: Trends and Challenges of Our New Clientele,” Inside, Quarterly Insights from Deloitte 9 (June 2015): 56, https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/lu/Documents/financial-services/lu-millennials-wealth-management-trends-challenges-new-clientele-0106205.pdf.

8. Stout, Cultivating Conscience.

9. For example, SHARE (Shareholder Association for Research and Education) is a nonprofit proxy advisor based in Canada, and Ethos is a Swiss proxy advisory service focused on socially responsible investments. See SHARE, https://share.ca/, and Ethos, https://www.ethosfund.ch/en/products-and-services/proxy-voting-service. It is worth noting that two of the authors are in the process of developing a nonprofit that would fill the existing gap in the US market. For more information on this nonprofit, see ethicalshareholder.org.

Chapter 6

1. Adam Smith, An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter II (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black; and London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longman, 1850, originally published in 1776) 199.

2. John de Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas H. Naylor, Affluenza: How Overconsumption Is Killing Us—and How to Fight Back (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2014); David Pilling, The Growth Delusion: Wealth, Poverty, and the Well-Being of Nations (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2018).

3. Claudia Rosett, “Free Market Victory? Yalta Looms,” Wall Street Journal (November 8, 1991), A14.

4. Rana Foroohar, Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business (New York: Crown Business, 2016); Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (New York London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012); Thomas Piketty, Capital In the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014); Geoff Mulgan, The Locust and the Bee: Predators and Creators in Capitalism’s Future (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); Robert B. Reich, Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few (New York: Vintage Books, 2015); Wolff, A Century of Wealth In America.

5. Max Ehrenfreund, “A Majority of Millennials Now Reject Capitalism, Poll Shows,” Washington Post (April 26, 2016), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/26/a-majority-of-millennials-now-reject-capitalism-poll-shows/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6f9d0fd77226 (also highlighting how a few years earlier, a 2011 poll of the same demographic found that 46 percent had positive views of capitalism and 47 percent had negative views).

6. Mulgan, The Locust and the Bee.

7. Joseph E. Stiglitz, Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity, Roosevelt Institute (2015), http://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Rewriting-the-Rules-Report-Final-Single-Pages.pdf. Stiglitz also published his findings in a book with the same title: Joseph E. Stiglitz, Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2016). In the language of economics, this is called “rent-seeking.”

8. Foroohar, Makers and Takers; Andrew Ross Sorkin, Too Big to Fail: T he Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves (New York: Viking, 2009).

9. Stout, Cultivating Conscience.

10. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth.

11. In designing a Universal Fund, one policy choice that would need to be made is whether returns from the Fund should count toward income for purposes of determining eligibility for certain government programs, such as Medicare, Social Security Disability, and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).

12. Louis Dembitz Brandeis, “What Publicity Can Do,” Harper’s Weekly (December 20, 1913), 10.

13. Associated Press, “Sugar Industry Funded Research to Cast Doubt On Sugars Health Hazards, Report Says,” Los Angeles Times (September 12, 2016), http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-sugar-industry-coverup-20160912-snap-story.html.

14. Ibid.

15. Edward T. Walker, “Grassroots Mobilization, by Corporate America,” New York Times (August 10, 2012), https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/opinion/grass-roots-mobilization-by-corporate-america.html?mtrref=www.google.com&assetType=opinion&mtrref=www.nytimes.com&gwh=03866D1598500AAA5A1BF5003601F1C7&gwt=pay&assetType=opinion.

16. Transparency International, “Corruption in the USA: The Difference a Year Makes” (December 12, 2017), https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_in_the_usa_the_difference_a_year_makes.

17. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000) 432.

18. Andrew Kohut, “What Will Become of America’s Kids?”, Pew Research Center (May 12, 2014), http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/05/12/what-will-become-of-americas-kids.

19. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth.

20. David Sloan Wilson and Peter Barnes, “How to Construct a New Invisible Hand: A Conversation with Peter Barnes,” Evonomics (March 3, 2018), http://evonomics.com/new-invisible-hand-conversation-peter-barnes-david-sloan-wilson.

21. David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House Publishing, 2011), 66, 59–69, 136.

22. Ibid., 59, 63.

Chapter 7

1. Kurt Vonnegut Jr., “Harrison Bergeron,” Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (October 1961).

2. Pew Charitable Trusts, Moving On Up: Why Do Some Americans Leave the Bottom of the Economic Ladder, but Not Others? (November 1, 2013), http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2013/11/01/movingonuppdf.pdf. (“One of the hallmarks of the American Dream is equal opportunity: the belief that anyone who works hard and plays by the rules can achieve economic success.”)

3. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality.

4. Horatio Alger Jr. was an American writer best known for his “rags to riches” stories.

5. Taxpayers for Common Sense, “Fact Sheet: Federal Subsidies for Corn Ethanol and Other Corn-Based Biofuels,” (June 15, 2015) https://www.taxpayer.net/energy-natural-resources/federal-subsidies-corn-ethanol-corn-based-biofuels.

6. Yussuf Saloojee and Elif Dagli, “Tobacco Industry Tactics for Resisting Public Policy on Health,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 78 (2000): 902.

7. Warren E. Buffett, “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich,” New York Times (August 14, 2011), https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=CBA96E947ED4F83CE7BB7B92BAD1848F&gwt=pay&assetType=opinion.

8. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America 489.

9. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2000).

10. Aaron Smith, “Civic Engagement in the Digital Age,” Pew Research Center (April 25, 2013), http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/04/25/civic-engagement-in-the-digital-age-2.

Chapter 8

1. Piketty, Capital In the Twenty-First Century; Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality; Chris Hughes, Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2018).

2. “The Rich, the Poor, and the Growing Gap Between Them,” The Economist (June 15, 2006), https://www.economist.com/node/7055911; Moses Naim, “The Problem with Piketty’s Inequality Formula,” The Atlantic (May 27, 2014), https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/05/the-problem-with-pikettysinequality-formula/371653/; Jesse A. Myerson, “Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For,” Rolling Stone (January 3, 2014), https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/five-economic-reforms-millennials-should-be-fighting-for-102489.

3. Matt Egan, “Record Inequality: The Top 1% Controls 38.6% of America’s Wealth,” CNN Money (September 27, 2017), https://money.cnn.com/2017/09/27/news/economy/inequality-record-top-1-percent-wealth/index.html (“What factors were driving Americans’ financial insecurity? The ultimate culprit was wage stagnation, occurring now for over 40 years.”); Wolff, A Century of Wealth In America, 679.

4. Egan, “Record Inequality” (citing changes in US family finances from 2013 to 2016); “Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2013 to 2016: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances,” Federal Reserve Bulletin, vol. 103, no. 3, September 2017, https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf17.pdf). See also Wolff, A Century of Wealth In America, 644 (“Virtually all the growth in (marketable) wealth between 1983 and 2013 accrued to the top 20% of households … Indeed, the bottom 40% of households saw their wealth decline in absolute terms.”)

5. Wolff, A Century of Wealth In America, 55.

6. We discuss top 10 percent wealth holders in chapter 1. Saez and Zucman discuss the top .01 percent in Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, “Wealth Inequality in the United States Since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 131 (2016): 519–520.

7. Semuels, “Poor at 20, Poor for Life.”

8. Wolff, A Century of Wealth In America, 103, table 3.7 (in 2001, 52 percent of households owned stock directly or indirectly; this figure has varied from 32 percent to 46 percent from 1989 to 2013), 123, table 3.11b; (the top 1 percent of wealth holders own 50 percent of all stocks and mutual funds; the top decile owns 91 percent), 103, table 3.7.

9. Oxfam International, “An Economy for the 99%: It’s Time to Build a Human Economy That Benefits Everyone, Not Just the Privileged Few,” Oxfam briefing paper (January 2017), https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/bp-economy-for-99-percent-160117-en.pdf.

10. Pew Charitable Trusts, Moving On Up; Wolff, A Century of Wealth In America, 529 (“households headed by people younger than 25 had remarkably high asset poverty rates—for example, in 2001 more than 72% did not have net worth or liquid assets sufficient to support poverty line consumption for a three-month period”).

11. Semuels, “Poor at 20, Poor for Life.”

12. Sarah Sattelmeyer, Sheida Elmi, and Joanna Biernacka-Lievestro, “Typical Family Income Improved in 2016—but Financial Stability Remained Elusive,” Pew Charitable Trusts (October 2, 2017), http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/analysis/2017/10/02/typical-family-income-improved-in-2016-but-financial-stability-remained-elusive.

13. Ibid.

14. Pew Charitable Trusts, “The Role of Emergency Savings in Family Financial Security: What Resources Do Families Have for Financial Emergencies?” (November 2015), http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2015/11/emergencysavingsreportnov2015.pdf?la=en; Erin Currier and Sheida Elmi, “The Racial Wealth Gap and Today’s American Dream: Data Suggest Dramatic Differences in Financial Well-Being by Race,” Pew Charitable Trusts (February 16, 2018), http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/analysis/2018/02/16/the-racial-wealth-gap-and-todays-american-dream.

15. Raj Chetty et al., “The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001–2014.”

16. See Katie Rogers, “Life Expectancy In the U.S. Declines Slightly, and Researchers Are Puzzled,” New York Times (December 8, 2016), https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/health/life-expectancy-us-declines.html.

17. Julia Belluz, “What the Dip In U.S. Life Expectancy Is Really About: Inequality,” Vox (January 9, 2018), https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/1/9/16860994/life-expectancy-us-income-inequality.

18. Wolff, A Century of Wealth In America, 400–401 (from 1983 to 2013, the median wealth of single males almost doubled while the median wealth of single women with children fell by a 93 percent, reaching $500 in 2013), 423; (“households headed by people younger than 25 had remarkably high asset poverty rates—for example, in 2001 more than 72% did not have net worth or liquid assets sufficient to support poverty line consumption for a three-month period”), 529; Currier and Elmi, “The Racial Wealth Gap and Today’s American Dream”; “The Role of Emergency Savings in Family Financial Security: What Resources Do Families Have for Financial Emergencies?” (in 2014, the typical white household had enough liquid assets to replace thirty-one days of income, where the typical black household had just five days’ worth); Pew Charitable Trusts, “Retirement Security Across Generations: Are Americans Prepared for Their Golden Years?”, (May 2013), http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_assets/2013/empretirementv4051013finalforwebpdf.pdf?la=en (“early boomers may be the last cohort on track to retire with enough savings and assets to maintain their financial security through their golden years”).

19. “The Hollowing of the American Middle Class,” Pew Research Center, Social & Demographic Trends (December 9, 2013), http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/1-the-hollowing-of-the-american-middle-class.

20. Federico Cingano, “Trends In Income Inequality and Its Impact On Economic Growth,” OECD Social, Employment, and Migration Working Papers, no. 163 (2014), 11–12, 15, 18. A 2015 study similarly concluded that raising the income share of the top 20 percent by one percentage point would reduce GDP growth by .08 percentage points over five years. Era Dabla-Norris, Kalpana Kochhar, Nujin Suphaphiphat, Frantisek Ricka, and Evridiki Tsounta, Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality: A Global Perspective, IMF Staff Discussion Note (June 2015), https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2015/sdn1513.pdf.

21. Douglas Rushkoff, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2015).

22. Alberto Gallo, “How the American Dream Turned Into Greed and Inequality,” World Economic Forum (November 9, 2017), https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/the-pursuit-of-happiness-how-the-american-dream-turned-into-greed-and-inequality.

23. Nick Hauner, “The Pitchforks Are Coming … for Us Plutocrats,” Politico (July/August 2014), https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014; Josh Hoxie, “How to Redistribute Wealth—Without Guillotine,” The American Prospect (April 28, 2016), http://prospect.org/article/how-redistribute-wealth—without-guillotine.

24. Barb Darrow, “The Bright Side of Job- Killing Automation,” Fortune (April 5, 2017), http://fortune.com/2017/04/05/jobs-automation-artificial-intelligence-robotics.

25. Paul Davidson, “Automation Could Kill 73 Million U.S. Jobs By 2030,” USA Today (November 29, 2017), https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/11/29/automation-could-kill-73-million-u-s-jobs-2030/899878001.

26. Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, “What’s Next for Humanity: Automation, New Morality, and a ‘Global Useless Class,’” New York Times (March 19, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/world/europe/yuval-noah-harari-future-tech.html. Harari explores this idea further in Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (New York: Harper/HarperCollins, 2017). An excellent discussion of how automation will eliminate even “expert” jobs can be found in Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

27. John Maynard Keynes, “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” Essays in Persuasion (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1963, originally published 1930).

28. Marjorie Kelly, The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2003).

29. Martin Gilens, Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press; New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2012).

30. Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12 (2014): 564, 575.

31. Stiglitz, Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy; Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2010); Jesse Eisinger, The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017).

32. Matt Egan, “Record Inequality: The Top 1% Controls 38.6% of America’s Wealth,” CNN Money (September 27, 2017), https://money.cnn.com/2017/09/27/news/economy/inequality-record-top-1-percent-wealth/index.html, citing a Federal Reserve report.

33. Pew Charitable Trusts, “Employer-Sponsored Retirement Plan: Access, Uptake and Savings” (September 2016), http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2016/09/employer-sponsored-retirement-plan-access-uptake-and-savings.

Chapter 9

1. Andy Stern and Lee Kravitz, Raising the Floor (New York: PublicAffairs, 2016); Charles Murray, In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 2006); Hughes, Fair Shot; Phillipe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght, Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).

2. Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 191–194. A selection of recent books on the UBI includes: Guy Standing, Basic Income: A Guide for the Open-Minded (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2017); Barnes, With Liberty and Dividends for All; and Annie Lowrey, Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World (London: Ebury Publishing, forthcoming July 2018).

3. Catherine Clifford, “What Billionaires and Business Titans Say About Cash Handouts in 2017 (Hint: lots!),” CNBC (December 28, 2017), https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/27/what-billionaires-say-about-universal-basic-income-in-2017.html. See also Michael Hiltz, “Conservatives, Liberals, Techies, and Social Activists All Love Universal Basic Income: Has Its Time Come?”, Los Angeles Times (June 22, 2017), http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-ubi-20170625-story.html.

4. On a beta test in Kenya, see Annie Lowrey, “The Future of Not Working,” New York Times Magazine (February 23, 2017), https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/magazine/universal-income-global-inequality.html. On the Y Combinator project in Oakland, see Amy Graff, “Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator to Give People Up to $1,000 a Month In Latest Basic Income Trial,” SFGATE (September 21, 2017), https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/basic-income-Y-Combinator-Oakland-money-free-12218570.php.

5. Hughes, Fair Shot, 5.

6. In fairness to Charles Murray, he does propose slightly reducing (but not eliminating) the size of the UBI payments to those making more than $60,000 annually. Murray, In Our Hands, 8.

7. Ibid., ix.

8. Robert H. Frank, “Let’s Try a Basic Income and Public Work,” Cato Unbound (August 11, 2014), https://www.cato-unbound.org/2014/08/11/robert-h-frank/lets-try-basic-income-public-work.

9. Stern and Kravitz, Raising the Floor, 215.

10. Barnes, With Liberty and Dividends for All, 76. In addition to serving the American value of fairness in the form of people opportunity, citizens’ dividend programs are also more consistent with the American value of personal responsibility than UBI proposals because the value of the dividend can change according to the financial performance of the asset on which the dividend is based. It thus does not provide a guaranteed payment, instead requiring its recipients to continue to bear some degree of risk, which they are responsible for dealing with.

11. Van Parijs and Vanderborght, Basic Income, 71.

12. Christopher May, Global Corporations in Global Governance (New York: Routledge, 2015) 104–105.

13. Van Parijs and Vanderborght, Basic Income, 71.

Chapter 10

1. Stout, Cultivating Conscience.

2. Albert O. Hirschman, The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).

Conclusion

1. Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1974), 102.

2. CitCap.org is overseen by author Tamara Belinfanti.