UNJUST DESERTS

• How much of wealth is the result of being born into a society with a rich heritage that is shared by all and how much is due to individual effort?


• Why should only a tiny fraction of our citizens keep most of the money made off this heritage if, in fact, it is this common background that gave them their success?


• Does this argument make income inequality morally and economically unjustified?

As our financial system lurches into an unknown future, traditional views of wealth and personal rewards are being questioned. Consequently, there is no better time for a conversation about the creation of wealth today -- who is entitled to it and who will control it. As our national financial crisis puts into stark relief, aren?t we are all in the economy together, whether rich or not?

With a bold salvo challenging the status quo, authors Professor Gar Alperovitz and Demos fellow Lew Daly tip the scales with the answers to these questions in what will be one of the most talked about books of the season: UNJUST DESERTS: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back (The New Press, publication date: November 18, 2008; $24.95 hardcover, 220 pages).

Alperovitz and Daly are in good company when they write that culture has more to do with individual success than we generally acknowledge. One of the wealthiest men on the planet, Warren Buffett, with a current net worth of $60 billion, acknowledges that "society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I?ve earned." Bill Gates, Sr. agrees when he writes, "Success is a product of having been born in this country, a place where education and research are subsidized, where there is an orderly market, where the private sector reaps enormous benefits from public investment. For someone to assert that he or she has grown wealthy in America without the benefit of substantial public investment is pure hubris."

Drawing on cutting-edge research as well as their knowledge of philosophy and economics, Alperovitz and Daly prove that up to 90 per cent ?or even more ? of private earnings are the result not of individual ingenuity, effort or investment, but of what they describe as the "unjust" appropriation of our collective inheritance. In other words, the cumulative or aggregate knowledge that we all inherit is key to individual achievement.

The authors demonstrate that if the market rewarded people according to their contributions it would make up only 10-20% of their income. The rich don?t work harder and are not morally justified in deservingness, or ?deserts? as philosophers describe it than the rest of us. We get the commonly held viewpoint that we are entitled to own whatever wealth we create from philosopher John Locke. In his agrarian society and that of our Founding Fathers, wealth was mostly based on physical labor. In our knowledge-based society, Locke?s argument doesn?t work, since all knowledge that we receive from previous generations is a social contribution.

The individual?s role in advancing art, science and technology again is mostly based on our common heritage, too. The authors make an historically-based case for the wave of cultural and scientific knowledge that pushes a few people to the next level, the "geniuses" who create what happens next. Some enlightening examples of this argument include:

• Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray, who both filed for a telephone patent on the same day, though they were working independently


• Gary Kindall who created the same computer operating system that Bill Gates then "perfected"


• Charles Darwin racing to complete The Origin of the Species because Alfred Russel Wallace was developing the same scientific argument.

Alperovitz and Daly rightly conclude that the individual isn?t really important in the case of each breakthrough. Instead, the development of knowledge is society?s forward-moving catalyst.

The second half of the book bolsters their thinking further by detailing how knowledge is shared. They note and quote widely from philosophers and economists starting with 18th century Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin though 20th century Nobel Laureate Herman Simon and Cass Sunstein, to name a few. The reader understands that there has always been this debate about what society owns and what is rightly owned by the individual.

What reforms do the authors suggest could begin the process of income redistribution along the lines of social justice? They say that income taxation for the top 1-2% should be increased, raising the current cap on Social Security taxes, increasing corporate taxes ? especially on windfall gains in connection with oil industry profits, and increasing inheritance taxes on large estates would be a beginning. Proceeds from the new taxes could be used for the common good, such as instituting universal health care or propping up decaying infrastructures like bridges and tunnels. In addition, education and research could receive additional funds. There is a promising plan put forth by Yale law professors Bruce Ackerman and Anne Abbott that suggests and ?capital stake? or allocation of $80,000 to every citizen upon reaching adulthood ? to be used most likely for a college education. The capital stake would be recouped at death through an inheritance tax.

Bound to be a flashpoint of discussion and contention, this bold new book will be the talk of the political circles this fall and to come.

The authors will be touring in New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Seattle.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Gar Alperovitz is the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland and a Founding Principal of the Democracy Collaborative. His previous Books include The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and America Beyond Capitalism. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Lew Daly is senior fellow at Demos, the New York City progressive think tank, and the author of God and the Welfare State. He lives in New York City.

UNJUST DESERTS How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back By Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly Publication Date: November 17. 2008 ISBN: 978-1-59558-402-1 230 pages Price: $24.95 hardcover

?A fresh and original analysis of how a modern economy progresses through the cumulative results of invention, discovery, communication and learning... A genuine work of scholarship.?

      — Thomas Schelling, Nobel Laureate

?This is one of the most original and most intelligent works on economic justice I have read in many years. In clear and compelling prose, the authors update a truth that progressives should take for granted and all Americans should embrace: we are interdependent beings whose well-being depends on pursuing the common good.?

      — Michael Kazin, Georgetown U.

?Alperovitz and Daly make a very strong argument, in very succinct and readable terms, about the moral limits of inequality in an age when we owe far more to society than we ourselves create individually. While those toward the bottom (Jesus called them ?the least of these my brethren?) are not getting what they humanly deserve, far too many are getting more than they deserve.?

      — Harvey Cox, Harvard Divinity School

?Unjust Deserts trenchantly challenges not only the current distribution of wealth and income, but also the moral theory of individual, contribution-based desert so often used to justify it. Agree or disagree, you will see the world differently after you have read this book.?

      — William A. Galston, Brookings

?Apologists for inequality assert that the rich are entitled to their property or deserve extravagant rewards because of their contributions to the general welfare. Egalitarians have challenged such claims, but with Unjust Deserts they finally have the ammunition to prove just how specious these assumptions really are... the extreme inequality we find in the United States and in the world today lacks any moral justification.?

      — Judith Lichtenberg, Georgetown U.

?A fascinating and erudite treatment of a central question of our time: if much of our economy?s wealth is the result of ever-increasing accumulated knowledge, why is the distribution of income becoming more unequal and by what right are our billionaires ?entitled? to their fabulous wealth? A liberal manifesto for the 21st century, written with verve and compassion.?

      — Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University

?Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly are opening important new ground in the struggle to re-imagine America and redeem our deepest values. The inherited wealth created by our forebears in their efforts to develop our country is the "great gift" and it ultimately belongs to all of us and to the future. By reviving this insight, Alperovitz and Daly give modern Americans a key to understanding how we can create the society of justice and equality that earlier generations sought.?

      — William Greider, The Nation

?Gar Alperovitz joins his considerable knowledge of economics and his admirable moral sensibility to ask a troubling but profound question: do the super-rich and the rest of us ?deserve? our wildly different economic situations because of our different contributions to the wealth of society? His research points to the falsity of this assumption. He finds instead that the wealth of society is created not by individual entrepreneurs but by the historical accumulation of knowledge. The moral conclusion is provocative but unmistakable: society itself is the source of wealth, and all of us deserve an equal share.?

      — Howard Zinn

?The authors' many interesting and important insights and observations make this a work that deserves to be widely read.?

      — Robert A. Dahl, Yale University