The Banking Executive Magazine - October Issue 2022

Why Can’t We All Be Rich? Despite unprecedented and extraor- dinary economic progress over the past 150 years, we have been unable to use our technological prowess to construct an equitable and happy world. While we have expanded the economic pie, we still have not fig- ured out how to slice and taste it. On September 6, Basic Books is pub- lishing Slouching Towards Utopia, my economic history of the “long twentieth century” from 1870 to 2010. It is past time, I argue, that we shift our understanding of where the hinge of global economic history lies. Some might put it in 1076, when the European Investiture Controversy ce- mented the idea that law should con- strain even the most powerful, rather than being merely a tool at their dis- posal. Another big year is 1450, when the arrival of the Gutenberg moveable-type printing press and the the BANKING EXECUTIVE 48 ISSUE 166 OCTOBER 2022