(CNN) -- Earlier this week, I asked readers of this column to
submit ideas for a list of "99
must-reads on income inequality." When I put out that call, I hedged a
bit, saying 99 was my goal, for symbolic, we-are-the-99% type reasons, but that
a smaller number would be just fine, too. Well, I underestimated you. Within 24
hours of the query, I'd collected more than 100 distinct books, films, YouTube
clips, websites and documentaries on this topic.
As of writing, I have more than 150 unique suggestions in my
inbox, via Twitter/FB/Google -- and on my desk in Atlanta, since a few
colleagues dropped off or mailed me books. I'm so grateful for these
submissions. And I know readers are, too. One professor wrote to me saying she
plans to use it as part of a course. Others said they're eager to see what
their peers think are the most valuable and insightful works on this topic.
I can't take credit for any of this. It's all you. You're actually
the reason I'm reporting on income inequality in the first place, since many of
you voted for it to be part of the Change the List project, which focuses on
social justice for bottom-of-the-list places.
Ninety-nine of your suggestions are below. Don't read too much
into the order. It has more to do with when the works were suggested than how
significant they are.
Happy reading, and please let me know what you think.
1. "The Price of
Inequality," by Joseph Stiglitz
2. "Confessions of an
Economic Hit Man," by John Perkins
3. "Player Piano," by
Kurt Vonnegut (Vonnegut's first novel; according to the back cover, it's a
"chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a
world dominated by a super computer and run completely by machines.")
4. "Economic Growth and Income Inequality",
by Simon Kuznets
5. "Plutocrats: The Rise of
the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else," by
Chrystia Freeland
6. "The Unwinding,"
by George Packer
7. "A Tale of Two Cities,"
by Charles Dickens (Heard of him?)
8. "Atlas Shrugged,"
Ayn Rand ("I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for
the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.")
9. "How Class Works,"
animation, by Richard Wolff
10. "Random Family,"
by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
11. "Behind Beautiful
Forevers," by Katherine Boo (The Pulitzer-winner explores
inequality in Mumbai's "undercity.")
13. "In Climbing Income
Ladder, Location Matters," NYTimes.com map (National map shows
a poor kid's odds of climbing to the top of the income ladder, by location.)
14. "A Framework for
Understanding Poverty," by Ruby Payne
15. "The Big Sort,"
by Bill Bishop
16. The Bible (James, Chapters 2 and 5, and the books of Job and John were
recommended. From James: "Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a
gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in.
If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, 'Here's
a good seat for you,' but say to the poor man, 'You stand there' or 'Sit on the
floor by my feet,' have you not discriminated among yourselves and become
judges with evil thoughts?")
17. "The Other America,"
by Michael Harrington
18. "The One Percent,"
documentary by Jamie Johnson (The Johnson & Johnson heir is pretty good at
biting the hand that feeds him.)
19. "Progress and Poverty,"
by Henry George
20. "Winner Take All
Politics," by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson
21. "The Haves and the
Have-Nots," by Branko Milanovic
22. "A Theory of Justice,"
by John Rawls
23. "Park Avenue"
documentary, by Alex Gibney (New York's Park Avenue is home to enormous wealth
and excruciating poverty.)
24. "Wealth Inequality in
America," YouTube video
25. "Inequality and New
York's Subway," by The New Yorker (This is fascinating in its
minimalism. See median household incomes mapped by subway stop.)
26. "Nickel and Dimed," by
Barbara Ehrenreich (Just read it. The author tries to live on low-wage jobs and
finds it's nearly impossible. Heartfelt and so well-written.)
27. "The Spirit Level: Why
Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger," by Richard
Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
28. "Wealth of Nations,"
by Adam Smith
29. "The Intelligent Woman's
Guide to Socialism and Capitalism," by George Bernard Shaw
30. "740 Park,"
by Michael Gross (Gross examines one of the richest buildings in the world.)
31. "Savage Inequalities,"
by Jonathan Kozol
32. "The Jungle,"
by Upton Sinclair
33. Podcast on the "Economics of Enough"
34. "America the Beautiful,"
by Ben Carson
36. "The Case for
Happiness-Based Economics," by Kentaro Toyama
37. "Superclass," by David
Rothkopf
38. "Love and Capital,"
by Mary Gabriel
39. "Why the rich don't give
to charity," by Ken Stern, The Atlantic ("One of the most
surprising, and perhaps confounding, facts of charity in America is that the
people who can least afford to give are the ones who donate the greatest
percentage of their income. In 2011, the wealthiest Americans -- those with
earnings in the top 20% -- contributed on average 1.3% of their income to
charity. By comparison, Americans at the base of the income pyramid -- those in
the bottom 20 percent -- donated 3.2% of their income.")
41. "The House I Live In,"
documentary by Eugene Jarecki
42. "Screwed,"
by Thom Hartmann
43. "Richistan,"
by Robert Frank
44. "You Call This
Democracy?" by Paul Kivel
45. "The Conscience of a
Liberal," by Paul Krugman
46. "The Wretched of the
Earth," by Frantz Fanon
47. "Reckless Endangerment,"
by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner
48. "Ill Fares the Land,"
by Tony Judt
49. "The FairTax Book,"
by Neal Boortz (Wanna get rid of the IRS? Here's your book.)
50. "Taxes and the Economy:
An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945" by Thomas
Hungerford, for the Congressional Research Service
51. "Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts," by Karl Marx
52. "The Grapes of Wrath,"
by John Steinbeck
53. "The American Way of
Eating," by Tracie McMillan
54. "Animal Farm," by George Orwell ("All animals
are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.")
55. "How much inequality is
necessary for growth," by Fuad Hasanov and Oded Izraeli,
Harvard Business Review ("Although our findings suggest that modest
increases can generate growth, other data indicate that heightened inequality
shortens growth spells and may halt growth. Reducing inequality, though, has
clear benefits over time: It strengthens people's sense that society is fair,
improves social cohesion and mobility, and broadens support for growth
initiatives. Policies that aim for growth but ignore inequality may ultimately
be self-defeating, then, whereas policies that decrease inequality by, say, boosting
employment and education have beneficial effects on the human capital that
modern economies increasingly need.")
56. "The Theory of the
Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions," by Thorstein
Veblen
57. "Orange is the New Black,"
Netflix series
58. "Wage Inequality and the
Rise in Returns to Skill," by Chinhui Juhn et al
59. "Rules for Radicals,"
by Saul Alinsky
60. "Mayday for America's
Middle Class," by Hedrick Smith ("If America is going to
get beyond paralyzing gridlock and dangerous brinkmanship in the budget battles
this fall, what's needed is a shift in the economic mind-set that has dominated
Washington for three decades. To paraphrase what Albert Einstein reportedly
said at the dawn of the Atomic Age in 1945: You cannot solve a problem with the
same thinking that created it.")
61. "Why Nations Fail," by
Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
62. "Income Inequality in the United
States, 1913-2002," by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez
63. "Unequal Democracy,"
by Larry Bartels
64. "Wealth and Poverty,"
George Gilder
65. "Rich Schools, Poor
Schools," by Arthur Wise
66. The Catechism of the
Catholic Church - Social Justice (A
reader suggested Chapter 2, Article 3. One excerpt: "Socio-economic
problems can be resolved only with the help of all the forms of solidarity:
solidarity of the poor among themselves, between rich and poor, of workers
among themselves, between employers and employees in a business, solidarity
among nations and peoples. International solidarity is a requirement of the
moral order; world peace depends in part upon this.")
68. "The Working Poor:
Invisible in America," by David Shipler
69. "All You Can Eat: How Hungry is
America," by Joel Berg
70. "Targeting the Wealthy
Kills Jobs," by T.J. Rodgers, Wall Street Journal
71. "If You're an
Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?" by G.A. Cohen
73. "The Capitalist
Revolution," by Peter L. Berger
74. "Getting Rich: America's
New Rich and How They Got That Way," by Lisa A. Keister
75. "13 Bankers," by Simon
Johnson and James Kwak
76. "The Status Syndrome: How Social
Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity," by Michael Marmot
77. "Worlds Apart: Why
Poverty Persists in Rural America," by Cynthia Duncan
78. "America: What Went
Wrong," by the Philadelphia Inquirer (This 1990s newspaper
series really stuck one reader, who wrote in an e-mail to me that "it took
my breath away when I read it as a young man in my late 20's; and it continues
to have a profound impact on my thinking today - particularly about concerns
over the American middle class.")
79. "Out of this furnace,"
by Thomas Bell
80. "Equality and
Efficiency: The Big Trade Off" by Arthur Okun
81. "The New Good Life,"
by John Robbins
82. "Workonomics"
section of Upworthy.com (Engineered for clickability, with headlines like,
"Hey Broke People: This Statistic Will Piss You Off.")
83. "The United States of
Inequality" video, BillMoyers.com
84. Monty Python clip on "Constitutional Peasants"
("Oh, there you go, bringing class into it again ...")
85. "The Other Wes Moore,"
by Wes Moore (From an online book description: "Two kids named Wes Moore
were born blocks apart within a year of each other. Both grew up fatherless in
similar Baltimore neighborhoods and had difficult childhoods; both hung out on
street corners with their crews; both ran into trouble with the police. How,
then, did one grow up to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated veteran, White House
Fellow, and business leader, while the other ended up a convicted murderer
serving a life sentence? Wes Moore, the author of this fascinating book, sets
out to answer this profound question.")
86. "Moral Man and Immoral
Society," by Reinhold Niebuhr
87. "The Politics of Rich
and Poor," by Kevin Phillips
88. "A Modest Proposal,"
by Jonathan Swift
89. "Class War? What
Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality," by Benjamin
I. Page and Lawrence R. Jacobs
90. "Five American Authors
on Wealth Poverty and Inequality," by Ichiro Kawachi and
Philippa Howden Chapman
91. "Caesar's Column,"
by Ignatius Donnelly
92. "The Time Machine,"
by H.G. Wells
93. "Debt: The First 5,000
Years," by David Graeber
94. "The Great Gatsby,"
by F. Scott Fitzgerald ("The loneliest moment in someone's life is when
they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare
blankly.")
95. "How Unequal Can America
Get," YouTube of Robert Reich
96. "Twilight of the Elites,"
by Christopher Hayes
97. "Third World America,"
by Arianna Huffington
98. "It's the inequality,
stupid," by Dave Gilson and Carolyn Perot, Mother Jones
("A huge share of the nation's economic growth over the past 30 years has
gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27
million per household. The average income for the bottom 90% of us?
$31,244.")
99. "The Maximum Wage,"
by Sam Pizzigati
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