Preface

This book is born of nearly 15 years of organizing and working with business leaders and other high-income and high-wealth individuals as part of the Responsible Wealth project. Responsible Wealth is a network of 700 business leaders and high-wealth individuals who speak out in favor of progressive tax policies, corporate accountability, and fair wages. They do so because they have a deeper and more honest understanding of their own wealth and financial success, an understanding we call the built-together reality, which we lift up in this book.

Responsible Wealth is a project of United for a Fair Economy (UFE), a national organization working across class lines to raise awareness of the dangers of extreme inequality and to promote a more broadly shared prosperity. The authors of this book, Brian Miller and Mike Lapham, are the executive director of UFE and the project director of Responsible Wealth, respectively. For additional information about Miller, Lapham, UFE, and Responsible Wealth, see “About the Authors” at the back of this book.

When doing radio and TV interviews and speaking around the nation, we have seen debates about tax policy and other issues break down over different views of what’s fair and what can be morally justified. We argue in this book that those differing views of fairness are rooted in starkly differing understandings of the origins of wealth and financial success. So instead of arguing about policies, this book is devoted to reaching a deeper understanding of the origins of individual and business success. Is wealth creation and business success the result of the hard work, creativity, and sacrifice of a small number of self-made men and women? Or is wealth the result of a broad array of actors and forces, hard work being only one of them?

The book is organized as follows:

The introduction offers an overview of the self-made myth and its consequences, as well as a preview of the built-together reality and the paradigm shift it brings about in the way we view the public policy questions of our day.

Chapter 1 examines the roots of the self-made myth, its more recent adaptations and examples, as well as additional implications of that myth on the debates of our times.

Chapter 2 makes visible the often-invisible contributions that government and society have made to the success of prominent business leaders. In doing so it busts the myth of self-made wealth and clears the way for a new understanding of success.

Chapter 3 lays the foundation of the built-together reality of individual and business success, including an examination of the myriad factors that contribute to the success of individuals and businesses.

Chapter 4 comprises the bulk of the book, featuring profiles based on interviews with business leaders whose first-person accounts paint a very different and more holistic picture of wealth creation—the built-together reality. Chapters 2 and 4 are supplemented with informational “reality checks” that offer historical perspective and analysis of particular ways that government investment supports individual and business success.

Chapter 5 provides an examination of how the built-together reality dramatically changes the way we view the role of government and points to a number of public policy choices that flow from this new view, from taxes to workers’ rights.

The conclusion presents a number of ways that readers can get involved in their own communities and social circles to help change the dialogue about individual and business success and foster a more honest debate about the important policy choices we face.

The self-made myth is a story that is told and retold at every level of society and infused into our language and thinking. As such we’ve written this book with the broad public in mind because we believe that all Americans must engage in this dialogue. We thank you for joining us in this conversation and invite you to share this book far and wide with book clubs, colleagues, friends, and family, including that uncle you always argue about taxes with at holidays, your high school classmate who doesn’t understand your politics, and the woman who owns the local shop who’s always complaining about taxes and government.