Hello again, friends. Thank you for joining me for the second week of my Wealth and Poverty class. In today’s class, we begin to explore why such inequalities have soared since the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The questions we’ll focus on today are:

— How did the market for financial capital contribute to inequalities of income and wealth?

— Did the accepted purpose of the American corporation change over the last 50 years, and, if so, when and how?

— More generally, for whom should the corporation exist? Is there such a thing as “corporate social responsibility?”

You’ll find recommended readings linked below the video.

Ready? Here we go. Just double-click the video box below.

Thanks again for joining me! (And as always, let me know what you think in the comments below.)

Select Readings:

• Bethany McLean, “Too Big to Fail, COVID-19 Edition: How Private Equity Is Winning the Coronavirus Crisis,” Vanity Fair, April 9, 2020

• Andrew Winston, “Is the Business Roundtable Statement Just Empty Rhetoric?” Harvard Business Review, August 30, 2019

• Neil Irwin, “To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider the Janitors at Two Top Companies, Then and Now,” The New York Times, Sept. 3, 2017