Steve Lamar
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
We're talking live on stage at the Center for Brooklyn History.
But once upon a time, it used to be extremely clear who was rich.
In the turn of the last century, in the 1890s, 1910s, robber barons and industry tycoons announced their wealth proudly.
They wore top hats and fancy things, tons of jewels.
The daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt wore tiaras.
You're like, uh, tax season just ended.
I don't want to think about taxes.
No one likes to think about taxes.
Because they are so icky to confront, they really haven't been examined very closely.
And as Professor Madoff proposes in her excellent book, The Second Estate, How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy, taxes are part of why rich people dress so boring now.
And they are alien in that they are separate from us because these ultra rich people.