Status Updates From Goliath: The 100-Year War B...

The bankers and utility men who funded the party wanted Democrats to continue this strategy [of cooperating with Hoover] in 1932. They encouraged leading candidates to run on social issues, specifically whether to repeal the unpopular ban on liquor, or Prohibition. The liquor question split the country along ethnic lines, but didn’t offend business interests.

“By 1928, the top one percent of the population received nearly a quarter of all income. This excess income flooded into the stock market, and into speculation.”

“The result, in coming years, would be fascism if private actors took over the state, or communism, when groups used the state to take over the private sector.“ 2/2

“The telegraph and railroad broadened knowledge and spread people and goods across the land at breakneck speeds. But they also extended the reach of any financial or political leader, in ways that posed entirely new challenges to existing political institutions. Many countries failed to control this power. 1/2

From the last page of the preface: “Popular debates are stuck in the 1970’s. We attack or praise capitalism, socialism, or the free market. All of this misses the point. The fight has always been about whether monopolists run our world, or whether we the people do.”