Reinventing “the gospel of wealth”

✍ Scribed by Patricia O'Toole

• Book ID: 102473117
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Weight: 495 KB
• Volume: 1998
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1087-8149
• DOI: 10.1002/ltl.40619980911

✦ Synopsis

~~

~ ~ ~~~~ ~ hen Wall Street turned off the lights and went home last New Year's Eve, everyone agreed that the bull had been having a remarkable run. The cen-W tury-old Dow Jones Industrial Average had set not one but three impressive records: largest 10-year advance (more than 300 percent), longest winning streak (seven consecutive years), and an unprecedented three-year string of gains topping 20 percent.

The Wall Streetjournal's last 1997 emtion reported more good news: consumer confidence had reached a 28-year high, and the Internal Revenue Service had just revealed that between 1994 and 1995, the number of taxpayers confessing to annual incomes of $1 d o n or more shot up 24 percent, to 87,000. Given the bull's friskiness in 1996 and 1997, the million-dollar-a-year cohort probably grew apace, which would have put it at 133,000 when 1998 began. Critics of capitahsm could carp all they wanted, but the numbers showed-once again-that when it comes to generating wealth, capitalism has no equal.