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Lädt ... As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West (2023. Auflage)von Guido Alfani (Autor)
Werk-InformationenAs Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West von Guido Alfani
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"All human societies, from prehistory through to today, have been characterized by some degree of economic inequality. Arguably, complex societies would not have thrived if they had been unable to concentrate and redistribute resources effectively. We frequently talk about the top 5% or 1% today but, as Guido Alfani explains in this book, concerns about the rich and super-rich and their potential to influence contemporary politics and society are nothing new - just take the Medici family and Renaissance Tuscany as one example. The medieval theologian Nicole Oresme's fear of the super-rich individual acting "as God among men" resonates with much of what present-day economist Thomas Piketty cautioned against in his landmark Capital in the Twentieth Century. As Gods Among Men represents the first scholarly attempt to provide a general overview of role and significance of the rich and the super-rich in the long run of history. With a focus on the West, particularly Europe and North America, Alfani's research spans a thousand years of history. He draws from a wealth of comparative data, as well as insights gleaned from the latest research in economic history, sociology, and anthropology, to show how society's problematic relationship with the super-rich cannot be fully understood without a careful analysis of the ways in which they have built their enormous wealth, and how they have used that wealth to gain influence. Alfani highlights important aspects of their behavior, such as their attitudes toward saving and consumption, or their propensity to act as patrons of the arts and of the sciences or as benefactors of the weakest part of society, to build up a profile of the richest members of our society and to trace patterns throughout history, underlining elements of both continuity and change over the period"--
"How the rich and the super-rich throughout Western history accumulated their wealth, behaved (or misbehaved) and helped (or didn't help) their communities in times of crisis The rich have always fascinated, sometimes in problematic ways. Medieval thinkers feared that the super-rich would act "as gods among men"; much more recently Thomas Piketty made wealth central to discussions of inequality. In this book, Guido Alfani offers a history of the rich and super-rich in the West, examining who they were, how they accumulated their wealth and what role they played in society. Covering the last thousand years, with frequent incursions into antiquity, and integrating recent research on economic inequality, Alfani finds-despite the different paths to wealth in different eras-fundamental continuities in the behaviour of the rich and public attitudes towards wealth across Western history. His account offers a novel perspective on current debates about wealth and income disparity.Alfani argues that the position of the rich and super-rich in Western society has always been intrinsically fragile; their very presence has inspired social unease. In the Middle Ages, an excessive accumulation of wealth was considered sinful; the rich were expected not to appear to be wealthy. Eventually, the rich were deemed useful when they used their wealth to help their communities in times of crisis. Yet in the twenty-first century, Alfani points out, the rich and the super-rich-their wealth largely preserved through the Great Recession and COVID-19-have been exceptionally reluctant to contribute to the common good in times of crisis, rejecting even such stopgap measures as temporary tax increases. History suggests that this is a troubling development-for the rich, and for everyone else"-- Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Guido Alfani, an economic and social historian at Bocconi University in Milan, deftly interweaves stories of individual and family wealth into his narrative. There is Alan Rufus, a companion of William the Conqueror, who controlled the staggering amount of more than seven per cent of the national income of England and was perhaps the richest man – other than monarchs – who ever lived in Britain; Elon Musk could not aspire to such wealth. Then there are the Medici of Florence, the Fuggers of Augsburg, together with the wealthy of the Netherlands, France and, overwhelmingly in recent decades, Americans: Andrew Carnegie, the Rockefellers, John Pierpont Morgan (who in 1907 single-handedly stopped the collapse of the American financial system) and most recently the tech billionaires.
The core of the book, however, is an analysis of how these men (and they were almost all men) built and maintained their fortunes, why they did so and what their societies thought of their achievements. Throughout two millennia most of the rich have been rich because of inheritance. They had rich fathers or uncles; the prime examples are nobles, closely associated with royal dynasties. There have been periods when great fortunes have been made, such as the opening up of Atlantic trade in early modern times and the second industrial revolution of the late 19th century, but those who made their wealth then are small in number compared to the recipients of inheritances. In such periods, predictably, merchants, entrepreneurs and financiers typically sought to use their new-found riches to try to insert themselves into the older elites – and to pass on their wealth to their children and grandchildren.
Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.
Roderick Floud is the author of An Economic History of the English Garden (Allen Lane, 2019).