Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West

As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West

Alfani, Guido
Noble, Peter

Audio Book

EconomicsGeneral Political SciencePoverty & Social Work

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN13: 9798874642822
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: Jan 16 2024
Language: English
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 fundamental continuities in the behavior of the rich and public attitudes towards wealth across Western history.

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, the rich and the super-rich 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.

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