“However one approaches the problem of income distribution, one is confronted with substantially the same conclusion: fewer than twenty per cent of the people possess nearly everything while eighty per cent own practically nothing except chattels. Wealth itself has become monopolized.” AmericaPovertyCapitalismWealth Inequality Book:America's 60 Families Source: America's 60 Families
“Persons of limited means who scrimp to save from fifty to seventy-five per cent of income are properly termed misers, and are regarded with pitying scorn; but the rich of today enjoy the doubly paradoxical distinction of being spendthrifts, misers, and philanthropists simultaneously.” WealthCapitalismClass StruggleWealth Inequality Book:America's 60 Families Source: America's 60 Families
“JOURNALISM, which shapes, modifies, or subtly suggests public attitudes and states of mind, morbidly attracts the owners of the great fortunes, for whose protection against popular disapproval and action there must be a constantly running defense, direct or implied, specific or general. The protective maneuvers often take the form, in this plutocratic press, of eloquent editorial assaults upon popular yearnings and ideas. The journalism of the United States, from top to bottom, is the personal affair bought and paid for by the wealthy families. There is little in American journalism today, good or bad, which does not emanate from the family dynasties. The press lords of America are actually to be found among the multimillionaire families.” WealthJournalismClass StruggleClass WarfarePlutocracyJournalist Capitalism Book:America's 60 Families Source: America's 60 Families
“It is true that Harvard and Yale, as well as other upper-class institutions, offer free tuition, some cash scholarships, and nominal paid employment to the highest-ranking graduates of accredited secondary schools, without regard for the social class origins of these students. One can, it is true, meet a coal miner's or a farmer's son at Harvard, although it is a rare experience. The task of Yale and Harvard, however, is to mold these bright youngsters into unconscious servitors of the ruling class—as lawyers, as corporate scientists, as civil servants, as brokers, bankers, and clergymen. The enforced "democratic" mingling effected by the new house plans assures this result more positively now than ever, for in the past, many students were made to feel like pariahs by their exclusion from the quasi-aristocratic clubs.” ClassCapitalismHarvardAristocracyYaleClass StruggleRuling ClassYale UniversityHarvard University Book:America's 60 Families Source: America's 60 Families
“All these wasteful expenditures of the rich, only a few of which have been briefly enumerated, are extenuated by hired apologists on the ground that they give many people work in the luxury trades, in domestic service, in the garages, stables, and gardens, and on board the yachts. It is not realized, it seems, that if the money wasted by the rich in personal indulgence were taken in taxes and put into the building of needed hospitals, schools, playgrounds, clinics, low-rent apartment buildings, farm homes, sanatoria, rest homes, and recreation clubs for the mass of Americans, the persons now given employment by the wealthy would obtain work of a more constructive character in these other fields.” PoorRichEconomicsFinanceWealth Inequality Book:America's 60 Families Source: America's 60 Families
“Crime, carefully planned and executed, is demonstrably the royal high road to pecuniary success in the United States.” StatesUnitedUnited StatesCrimeRoyalHigh Road Author:Ferdinand Lundberg
“Apologists for the profession contend that lawyers are as honest as other men, but this is not very encouraging.” MenHonestProfessionLawyer Author:Ferdinand Lundberg
“If the new military elite is anything like the old one, it would, in any great crisis, tend to side with the Old Order and defend the status quo, if necessary, by force. In the words of the standard police bulletin known to all radio listeners, These men are armed -and they may be dangerous.” IfsMenMayOrderForceSidesKnownMilitaryDangerousStandardsPoliceCrisisRadioElitesListenersStatus Quo Author:Ferdinand Lundberg