Mind the gap daisy!

INÊS SALPICO July 2013

Mind the Gap Daisy!

In early May a new film version of that masterpiece titled The Great Gatsby premiered in in the movie theaters and shop windows across the western world. [I’ll delay watching it, fearful as I am that Baz Luhrman’s visual paraphernalia has crushed Scott Fitzgerald’s subtle genius….] It certainly isn’t a matter of chance. The same paralyzing perplexity – a deep impairment of Critical, ethical and political thinking – that is keeping us unable to make sense of the crisis we found ourselves in is making us look back to eras of comparable collective bewilderment.

Instead of empowered and creative imagination about the future, we’ve retreated to a passive indulgence with the glamorous scent of that comparable moment of hopelessness that followed the roar of 1920’s.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, c.1916

Inês Salpico_July2013

2|17

Mind the Gap Daisy!

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote like no one else about the loss of innocence that followed the pungent vibrancy and wondrous belief in the future of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There isn’t a single dispensable word in The Great Gatsby, each carrying a bit of the disenchanted spirit of a whole generation – “all the sad young men” of the post-war – and the sad ridicule of letting oneself be eluded and hanging on to dreams that have already been lost. Indeed Scott prophesized what would become obvious, in 1929, 4 years after his novel was published in 1925.

In these times of perplexity and disenchantment, the most conservative have looked upon protest movement with contempt, saying that the near future of critical thought is not disruption and Revolution, but little more than a nostalgic glance back to periods of similar anxiety.

Judging by how we keep failing at learning from history, they could be – dangerous and sadly – right. The Great Gatsby is the most sublime requiem to the American Dream and yet here we are now, announcing its death, again, using the Present Tense.

What is that American dream The Great Gatsby mourns for? It’s one of equality and leveled access to opportunities. The very same we screamed had been shattered after the 2008 Financial Crisis.

Yet it stroke us as unexpected that the world portrayed in “The Great Gatsby” bore so much familiarity with our own: the (re)invention of the self through wealth, the carelessness of the rich; the uselessness of institutions rendered hostages of capital; the display of powers (true and fictional) through the parading of status symbols; the illusion of an equality based on nothing but consumption; the fragility of it all.

To think that the Dream that is now wailing in its death bed had been built and rebuilt in the 20th century, saved from the ashes of the Great Depression, is naïve. It was had been corrupted all along. In fact, it was the failure of such dream that motivated its christening in the first place.

We assume the idea and concept of “American Dream” was born along the birth of the American Nation but that’s certainly not the case. The phrase was first used in 1917 in a novel called Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise and found print a second time in 1923, in a Vanity Fair article by Walter Lippman – “Education and the White-collar class” – in which he argued that limiting access to higher education under the pretext that the economic pressure it created in a time when (like now) there were not enough while-collar jobs would be the “failure of the American Dream” of universal education. But the phrase would only become part of the collective popular jargon as late as 1931, when James Truslow Adams’ book The Epic of America was published. It described “"the American dream of a better, richer and happier life for all our citizens of every rank, which is the greatest contribution we have made to the thought and welfare of the world. That dream or hope has been present from the start. Ever since we became an independent nation, each generation has seen an uprising of ordinary Americans to save that dream from the forces that appear to be overwhelming it." His words triggered a national debate about the failed promise of a meritocratic society in which the effort and "the

Inês Salpico_July2013

3|17

Mind the Gap Daisy!

genuine worth of each man or woman" would find reward and recognition, restricted by "no barriers beyond their own natures".

This illusive promise of wealth for all, along with the drunkenness with quick money and quicker spending under the influence of which American society crashed against 1929 is the fundamental subject-matter of The Great Gatsby. As the Great Depression revealed the impossibility of social justice in a society ruled by capital, many voices rose against a moral system in which meaning and power was found only through money. Had they listened to Fitzgerald’s clear and eloquent voice years before...

Visited by a reporter in 1927 Fitzgerald said "The idea that we're the greatest people in the world because we have the most money in the world is ridiculous. Wait until this wave of prosperity is over!” The reporter was amused by hearing the writer of the jazz age utter absurd prophecies "forecasting doom, death and damnation to his generation".

His prophetic vision went, however, far beyond the mourning of a romantic ideal of equality. He saw its inner workings as perhaps few before (and after) him. It was him that in The Swimmers, a short story published in 1929 (a mere 5 days before the stock market crashed and 10 days before the Black Tuesday), coined the now vulgar idea of the 1% versus the 99%, brought to the spotlight on the banners of the Occupy Movement.

Suddenly she pointed to an American girl going into the water: “But that young lady may be a stenographer and yet be compelled to warp herself, dressing and acting as if she had all the money in the world.”

“Perhaps she will have, some day.”

“That’s the story they are told; it happens to one, not to the ninety-nine. That’s why all their faces over thirty are discontented and unhappy.”

F.Scott Fitzgerald – The Swimmers

Amazing indeed that, just like that reporter in 1927, some people still label Fitzgerald as a fatalist. He saw the death of the American Dream, yes, but more than that he grasped the real depth and meaning of such death: the deceiving triumph and the ensuing revelation of the structural injustice of Capitalist Western Society and of its socio-economic model, with its abyss of inequality lying beneath what looked like a green prairie.

Inês Salpico_July2013

4|17

Mind the Gap Daisy!

Occupy Wall Street protests, New York, September, 2011

It was quite appropriate, then, that in a speech in January 2012, Alan Krueger, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers presented a chart named the The Great Gatsby Curve, showing how inequality is linked with lack of social mobility. Using data from economist Miles Corak it shows how the extent to which an individual’s economic status is determined by his or her parent’s status is greater the more unequal a society is.

The Great Gatsby Curve: more inequality is associated with less mobility across the generations Source: Corak (2013), Income Inequality, Equality of Opportunity, and Intergenerational Mobility, forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Perspectives

Inês Salpico_July2013

5|17

Mind the Gap Daisy!

This acknowledgement, catalyzed by the 2007/2008 events, clashed with the general believe that Western society had been walking towards greater and growing equality since the end of World War II.

In the U.S., the Share of Income Earned by the Top 1 Percent Has Doubled Since 1979 (the chart also demonstrates increases in the annual income of the top 1% before economic crises) Source: Alvaredo, Atkinson, Piketty, and Saez (The World Top Incomes Database) In Alan B. Krueger, “Land of Hope and Dreams: Rock and Roll, Economics and Rebuilding the Middle Class”

The end of the conflict indeed marked the beginning of a period of greater social parity which was what in fact allowed for the rise of the middle-class. The institutions created in the wake of the war tried to guarantee not only peace but also a sense of justice that meant equal opportunities for all. These institutions defined a number of procedures (bureaucracies) aimed at creating structured paths all individuals needed to follow, thus erasing the shortcuts of privilege. Their relative success of these institutions – enabling the rebuilding of nations, creating jobs – established the value system that allowed for the cohesion and stability necessary for economic growth. But already the underlying contradiction was brewing: economic growth, urban expansion and the gospel of consumption served the empowerment of an old-new financial elite and the ultimate weakening of those same institutions that were created to mediate power and level society. The apparent meritocracy that arose rewarded such merit with wealth that had to be displayed through the status symbols that would become the signifiers of the successful post-war middle-class of the suburbs. The rise of the middle-class was less about what it could do than about what it could have. This apparent protagonism given by relative wealth in fact coated an effective disempowerment as citizens. Power and decision remained the privilege of an elite. But tired of the hardships of conflicts and rhetoric of politicians people easily converted to the new ideology of comfort and easy earning and spending. The middle-class willfully disempowered itself as a critical mass.

Inês Salpico_July2013

6|17

Mind the Gap Daisy!

In 1933, John Truslow Adam wrote in The New York Times about how the American Dream had thus been hijacked: "Throughout our history, the pure gold of this vision has been heavily alloyed with the dross of materialistic aims. Not only did the wage scales and our standard of living seem to promise riches to the poor immigrant, but the extent and natural wealth of the continent awaiting exploitation offered to Americans of the older stocks such opportunities for rapid fortunes that the making of money and the enjoying of what money could buy too often became our ideal of a full and satisfying life. The struggle of each against all for the dazzling prizes destroyed in some measure both our private ideals and our sense of social obligation."

All income groups grew together in the Post-War period through 1979 (left) Since 1979, the top has done better than the middle (right) Source: institutions USA Census Bureau Political were used as platforms for peace and socio-economic stabilization so that, In Alan B. Krueger, “Land of Hope and Dreams: Rock and Roll, Economics and Rebuilding the Middle Class” ultimately, the capital could thrive. The path was open for the erosion of politics, merely used (and discarded) by a ruling class whose real power was financial capital. Politicians became the naïve fools or corrupt pawns, public service just a joke at the service of concealed private games and interests. Bureaucracies lost their purpose as tools of justice and mediation and gained the useless complexity necessary to justify the jobs created in their inception, turning institutions into laughable agents of inefficiency and pointless spending.

The contempt and sense of uselessness of politics spread across society namely through the acritical distance of the new educated middle-class, hypnotized by the idea that they too could, in theory, get to the richests’ height of wealth. The system that allowed for the richest to get richer was therefore legitimized and sustained by the white-collared and mildly well-off bluecollared – the same system that after growing obese would (again) bring misery upon them.

This also corresponded to a conservative derive: it seemed only natural that the thriving middleclass would vote protectively of whatever wealth it had, marching for the family values that came in the same package as the fenced house and the car and shielding itself from the growing ineptitude of institutions, amplified by the contrasting speed and assertiveness of the galloping finance. Capital and the Rich were the Gods, Idols and Leaders.

Inês Salpico_July2013

7|17

Mind the Gap Daisy!

Money made this country, built its great and glorious cities, created its industries, covered it with iron network of railroads. It’s money that harnesses the forces of Nature, creates the machine and makes it go when money says go, and stop when money says stop.

F.Scott Fitzgerald – The Swimmers

Detached from politics, from people and from place was how the educated middle-class defined itself and matured, on the flowerbed of Financial Capitalism and Globalization. A new notion of success linked to Global Capital - the money itself an abstract entity, not tied to goods, people or places, profits no longer the clear return of investment in production capacity – created a system of its own, supranational and apolitical.

Drunk with cheap credit, everyone believed profoundly that equal access to opportunities was a given. The common men and women, fuelled with ambition and hope, became perhaps even more “careless” - the word Fitzgerald chose to define the wealthy – than the rich, the girl next door as amoral as Jay Gatsby’s spoiled love Daisy Buchanan. And, above all, nonchalantly oblivious to how wealth was being distributed, corrupting the Dream through the assumption that it was already a – at least potential – reality.

The middle-class allowed for the 1% - 99% breach to open and grow wider by legitimizing the actions of those on top – which seemed only natural as climbing up there seemed possible and likely. But in assuming that the dream could be fulfilled, in taking it for granted, the middle-class was helping kill the conditions for it to be possible.

This [the 90’s] was the decade in which finance reigned supreme. Those on Wall Street were making millions, in some cases billions, putting together deals, raising finance for start-ups. The best and the brightest of American youth wanted to join the excitement. […]

It was natural that young people would be attracted to the frenzy. They could do well for society by doing well for themselves.

Joseph Stieglitz – The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World's Most Prosperous Decade

The present, enduring sense of entitlement of the Millennial Generation is still based upon this naïve belief on that deceptive myth of equality and social mobility. More than selfish the Millennial Generation is tenderly credulous, unprepared and childish – the apolitical naivety and nostalgic carelessness that bread both Yuppies and Hipsters. (its urgent to inform them, by the way, that Hipsterism is dead!!?).

There’s yet another aspect to be taken into account : the 99% surrendered not only as a mass of silent consumers but also as an immense stock of purchasable items. The individual became transactionable, all personal distinction and professional output measured through the market Inês Salpico_July2013

8|17

Mind the Gap Daisy! value with which it could be met. As Michael Sandel points out in his latest book “What money can't buy: the moral limits of markets” we went from a having a market economy – a tool for organizing productive activity – to being a market society – “a way of life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavor”. If the “appeal of markets is that they don’t require judgment on the preferences they satisfy”, market reasoning also, and because of that, empties public life of moral argument, forgetting that some goods might require different ways of valuation and not accessed through purchase. The recent debate around the internship auctions the University of Westminster was preparing to hold is a good example of this pervasiveness of the amorality of market values, bulldozing the fair systems through which some things should be obtained not in exchange for money but through merit and effort. (That’s what bureaucracies were once, originally, for.)

The existence of the citizen of today is anxious and fragile because it is defined by having – what he/she can buy – and for selling – what of him/her can be bought – and how these transactions can be displayed. Not unlike like Jay Gatsby, who “invented” himself and existed only through what he possessed and how he ritualistically paraded it to others. His parties were enough to represent him – he did not need to participate in them himself.

Alas when having and selling are not possible the means to define oneself have been lost.

Which helps explaining why the current crisis has been met with such fractured and feeble reactions by individuals untrained in forms of self-representation beyond the commercial.

Willingly and blindly giving oneself in to the ownership of Capital meant renouncing to the commitment to the Political, forever shifting the scales of civic power that (should) balance society. This sense of detachment and cynicism was what contributed to erode whatever relevance institutions still had and made its predation by corporations and financial capital all too easy. Then it was all a matter of survival: the strength, efficiency and agility of the Capital could only thrive against the clumsiness and slowness of weakened public institutions. As for the citizens/consumers: well, the herd just follows the Alpha male.

Writing on the preface of the already quoted The Roaring Nineties, Joseph Stieglitz puts it plainly: The remarkable changes that have confronted our economies, our societies, in the past fifteen years put enormous strains on the balance between state and market; and we have failed to respond appropriately. The problems that have come to the fore in the past several years are, in part, a reflection of that failure.

Joseph Stieglitz – The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World's Most Prosperous Decade

Sadly, the true face of this political fragility became strikingly obvious when the access to goods was removed from our once glorious middle class. Once jobless and therefore deprived disposable income to consume, there was little left for individuals to stand for themselves having before renounced to their relative power as voters: consumption had been its only voice

Inês Salpico_July2013

9|17

Mind the Gap Daisy!

and way of intervention. Consumerism did not gain space within the core of society and its institutions: it completely replaced its ideological core. Which is why, with our pockets empty, unable to spend, go out and play, we now feel such a sense of grim void and helplessness.

The very idea of the equal access to opportunities and resources was unmasked, proving to be not a foundation but just a fortunate by-product of continuous economic growth. In times of contraction – like the Great Depression and like now – the farce is exposed and it becomes obvious how only the privileged few indeed maintain control of and access to the opportunities and the resources to flourish and prosper (as individuals as a group).

If education seemed to have been the tool and answer to inequality, the number of high educated victims of unemployment (and more will be affected by the “automation of knowledge work”, as explained in the report recently released by the Mckinsey Global Institute on the “disruptive” technologies likely to affect market and social arrangements), that invested time, energy, money and many dreams and expectations in acquiring highly specialized skills, clearly questions such assumption. Students leave College sunk in debt and having a degree is certainly not a guaranteed ticket to a tranquil life with a job and steady income.

Beginning in the 1980s, Compensation for Production and Non-Supervisory Workers Failed to Keep Pace With Productivity Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Bureau of Economic Analysis; CEA calculations.

In Alan B. Krueger, “Land of Hope and Dreams: Rock and Roll, Economics and Rebuilding the Middle Class” Moving to a post-industrial society did not improve the respect for the laborer or foster a fairer access to meaningful, purposeful work. Just that instead of factory workers we would now need to talk about graphic designers, programmers, statisticians, architects, highly qualified and specialized; cloudy collective contracts were replaced by the precariousness of the freelance.

Inês Salpico_July2013

10|17

Mind the Gap Daisy!

The wondrous independence and informality of the new creative and tech professionals actually created an army of extremely qualified people that was startlingly easy to dismiss – which accounts for the unprecedented high rates of youth unemployment observed in the past few years. Individualism and ambition together with a sense of cosmopolitan mobility prevented from seeing what benefits they did not have and how underpaid they in fact were.

For a long while the sermon preached – and everyone bowed and said “Amen” – that the prosperity of the richest meant everyone would be better off. But then the perplexity came: the richest kept prospering while everyone else found their pockets empty. In fact the rich kept prospering at the expense of everyone else. It’s impossible not to think this way when looking at the graph above or if bringing to mind bank executives and their scandalous bonus) The new arrangement of markets and finance meant that the share of income going to capital instead of labor. Increased significantly, leveraging the opening of the gap.

A typical CEO made 18 times the average worker in 1965, but today CEOs make over 200 times the average worker Source: Economic Policy Institute, The State of Working America, 12th Edition and Issue Brief #331 (May 2012) in Alan B. Krueger, “Land of Hope and Dreams: Rock and Roll, Economics and Rebuilding the Middle Class”

Inês Salpico_July2013

11|17

Mind the Gap Daisy!

Income inequality in America – The 99 Percent The Economist, Oct 26th 2011 Inequality and wealth gap are not abstract concepts. They express themselves tangibly in people’s lives and opportunities. In response to some recent voices claiming that inequality of opportunities is not a reason to worry about the might of the 1% (I refrain from adding a row of exclamation marks here), Miles Corak has just released the draft version of his new paper Income Inequality, Equality of Opportunity, and Intergenerational Mobility

where he draws

attention to data on eye-opening indicators, such as families’ enrichment expenditure on children.

Money matters: higher income families in the United States have higher enrichment expenditures on their children Source: Adapted from Duncan and Murnane (2011, figure 1.6, page 11).

Note: “Enrichment expenditures” refers to the amount of money families spend per child on books, computers, high-quality child care, summer camps, private schooling, and other things that promote the capabilities of their children. in Inequality, Equality of Opportunity, and Intergenerational Mobility, Miles Corak

Inês Salpico_July2013

12|17

Mind the Gap Daisy!

As obvious and expected the richest spend a lot more on their children, but the gap has widened quite dramatically which has a dramatic impact on what resources, first, and opportunities, later, the children in the top quintile have compared to the children in the bottom quintile. Little wonder Bristol schools have started treating applicants from state schools as disadvantaged.

How lower/higher enrichment expenditures manifest impacts children education: The Gap in Participation in Extracurricular Activities Has Widened Source: Putnam (2012) In Alan B. Krueger, “Land of Hope and Dreams: Rock and Roll, Economics and Rebuilding the Middle Class”

There is however an alternative, Conservative, view over these issues, according to which this cleavage between rich and poor is exaggerated and we should perhaps not even be looking at it. That what matters to people is not how they are doing relative to the rich but how they are doing relative to their own past and expectations.

Patronizing as it is, this argument speaks of an idea of society in which there isn’t indeed a true understanding of true equality. It makes a case for passive acceptance of one’s limitations and circumstances and for the simple impossibility of absolute dreams and ambitions: we should all settle for the relative satisfaction of our condition. Precisely the opposite of the leveling and convergence of expectations and opportunities the American Dream stands for.

This dangerous relativity invites us not to question or argue for a balanced distribution of wealth and, above all, for our progress not as a crowd of atomized individuals but as a society perceived as a whole entity in itself. If we indeed understand society as a collective system, questioning the disproportionate success of the top of the pyramid is inevitable and necessary – because, no matter how well people “are doing relative to their own past and expectations”, this structural inequality means that the key to this relative well-being is in fact in the hands of the

Inês Salpico_July2013

13|17

Mind the Gap Daisy!

rich. For this well-being relies on education, health and jobs and, as the past few years have made clear, the rich take the available seats when the dance stops.

On the other hand, Conservatives have also been insisting on the idea that it’s not about money it’s about morals (could this be, I wonder, fearing “redistribution” and the increase on tax income?). They claim this inequality stems from crumbling of working-class family values are and the loss of church as a binding social institution. They fail however to look at statistic carefully enough. Even as traditional families were giving place to other domestic models, indicators of social dysfunction (teenage pregnancy, violent criminality, etc.) had been declining in all racial groups since 1990. So could it be that, as some indicators worsen, what people are missing is not religion or the paradigm of a perfect family but rather work opportunities and income? And could it be, in fact, that less “traditional” families persevere because people have no prospects of a stable and successful life? Unemployment deeply affects both people’s finances and mental well-being, and both can all too easily erode relationships or simply kill the desire to start a family.

New York City teenage pregnancy prevention campaign: could it be that the causality is inverted in the thought underlying this type of campaigns. Wouldn’t guaranteeing access to education and jobs be the best prevention to begin with?

For those still sticking to the theory of the moral feebleness of the poor, the work of sociologist William Julius Wilson provides the ultimate counter argument. In 1996 he wrote When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor, in which he attributed the social disarray among African-Americans not to collapsing values, as popularly believed, but to the shortage of bluecollar jobs in urban areas. He therefore expected that the same would ultimately be observed in other social groups (white-collared whites, for example) if subjected to comparable economic losses. And right he was.

Blaming inequality on the moral failing of those being pushed further down by the hardship of their circumstances is itself immoral. If there’s a crisis of values it stems precisely from the possibility of such inequality in our society.

Inês Salpico_July2013

14|17

Mind the Gap Daisy!

A pervasive feeling of exclusion and meaninglessness does come nevertheless from the loss of God. Just not the God some still might find comfort with in their prayers, but the gods of Finance and Capital that left us cuddling a stillborn called the American Dream.

So it seems only natural – the roaring 90’s startlingly similar, in some ways, to the roaring 20’s – that “The Great Gatsby” appeals to today’s artists and audiences, reverberating feelings that find a direct parallel in today’s unrest. It is fascinating, albeit tragic, to realize that “We didn’t see it coming” when that means we hadn’t seen it coming or 100 years. A century of distraction and denial. We’re at once sad at the obvious death of a dream and still hanging on to it. Looking at a glamorous depiction of its degradation seems like a good compromise.

It represents the lasting belief. We’re trying to hold on to the dream that we too can become wealthy, famous and powerful. Regardless of anyone and anything. Because that was what society had turned into: not a school swimming together but a struggling crowd of individuals trying to make their own way. Finding motivation by worshiping the ones on top.

But now that those Gods have perished nostalgic contemplation is not enough. Structural changes are needed because, as Joseph Stiglitz explains: The problem is not just with the implementation of the ideas, but with the ideas themselves […] there needs to be balance between the role of the government and the market. […]

Today the challenge is to get the balance right, between the state and the market, between collective action at the local, national, and global levels, and between government and nongovernmental action. As economic circumstances change, the balance has to be redrawn.

Government needs to take on new activities, and shed old ones. We have entered into an era of globalization, in which the countries and the peoples of the world are more closely integrated than ever before. But globalization itself means that we have to change that balance: we need more collective action at the international level, and we cannot escape issues of democracy and social justice in the global arena.

Joseph Stieglitz – The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World's Most Prosperous Decade

It’s high time we to retrieve (or conquer for the first time?) the possibility of a meritocracy-based society and build functioning institutions in which bureaucracies are not ridiculous procedures promoting and legitimizing the efficiency of the capital but just simple rules that level everyone’s access to services. Without, at the same time, slaughtering competitiveness and individual initiative.

Inês Salpico_July2013

15|17

Mind the Gap Daisy!

The responsibility of disentangling the present now falls, though, on a generation with a different past than that of Jay Gatsby, that doesn’t feel the same loss of something earned or the thread of a fiction of itself. It feels not being given something it was entitled to and deprived of tools to write a personal narrative. A generation that was dazzled, before feeling betrayed, by the 1%.

So now it’s the time to mind the gap at start dancing a different tune. It’s not even about them.

It’s about not seating on the other side of the fence trying to hear the music playing inside the mansions and throw the real party outside. Take action. Together. Jazz it up!

How? Voting will be, for many, a disruptive start.

Inês Salpico_July2013

16|17

Mind the Gap Daisy!

References, Quotes and (inevitably biased) Reading Recommendations: - Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Swimmers. Saturday Evening Post, 19 October 1929 - Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Great Gatsby. London: Penguin, 2011 (if you haven’t read this go sit in the corner and get up only when you’re done!)

- Churchwell, Sarah: The Great Gatsby and the American dream. The Guardian, 25 May 2012 - Corak, Miles: Income Inequality, Equality of Opportunity, and Intergenerational Mobility. (draft) June 18, 2013 - forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

- Lanchester, John: Capital. London: Faber & Faber, 2012 - Krueger, Alan B.: Land of Hope and Dreams: Rock and Roll, Economics and Rebuilding the Middle Class - delivery address, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, June 12 2013 - Krugman, Paul: Profits Without Production. The New York Times, June 20, 2013 - Krugman, Paul: Sympathy for the Luddites. The New York Times, June 13, 2013 - Krugman, Paul: Money and Morals. The New York Times, February 9, 2012 - Sandel, Michael: What money can't buy: the moral limits of markets. London: Allen Lane, 2012.

- Shlaes, Amity: The Myth of Gatsby’s Suffering Middle Class. The New York Times, June 1, 2013 - Stieglitz, Joseph: The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World's Most Prosperous Decade.London: Penguin, 2003 - Stieglitz, Joseph: Student Debt and the Crushing of the American Dream. The New York Times, May 12, 2013 - Wilson, William Julius: When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996

This work by Inês Salpico is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Inês Salpico_July2013

17|17