“Between 1980 and 2019, the billionaires gained $25 trillion. By today it’s probably $35 trillion. The question is who will pay for reform? You go where the money is.” — Mordecai Kurz

Keynes observed that in the long run, we are all dead. The nonagenarian Stanford economist Mordecai Kurz agrees. Which is why he has no patience for the tech utopians’ promise of abundance for all of us in the long run. And his new book, Private Power and Democracy’s Decline: How to Make Capitalism Support Democracy, is amongst the most urgent cases yet made for a fundamental reform of American capitalism.

Kurz compares our billionaire-infested times with the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, which eventually ended with sharp progressive reform. We are now in a second Gilded Age, he argues. Between 1980 and 2019, the top billionaires gained $25 trillion. By today, he estimates it’s $35 trillion. Meanwhile, workers without college education gained essentially nothing in income between 1980 and 2010. The result is both Trumpism and the world’s first trillionaire.

Kurz lays out a three-fronted reform strategy. First, reduce market power through patent and antitrust reform. Second, redistribute the gains from technology through a 65% top marginal income tax rate and a 45% corporate rate. Third, guarantee the livelihood of every worker displaced by policy-supported technological change with retraining, full wage support, tuition, healthcare, and even relocation.

Wouldn’t the billionaires simply leave? The spirited Kurz, who has taught economics at Stanford for sixty years, isn’t worried. “Others will come instead of them,” he says. And in response to Sam Altman’s argument that AI will free humanity from labour, Mordecai Kurz retorts with Keynes’s remark about death in the long run. And this particular long run, he says, could be many millennia.

Five Takeaways

• The Second Gilded Age. First Gilded Age 1864–1914: extreme inequality, monopolists as political power, democratic decline, progressive reform. Second Gilded Age from 1980: same logic, different technology. $25 trillion gained by top billionaires 1980–2019. By 2026: $35 trillion.

• Three-Pronged Reform. Reduce market power: patent and antitrust reform. Redistribute gains: 65% top marginal rate, 45% corporate rate. Guarantee livelihoods: retraining, full wage support, tuition, healthcare, relocation.

• The 1980 Mistake. Unregulated free-market capitalism plus the IT revolution created a techno-winner-takes-all economy. Workers without college education gained nothing in income 1980–2010. Millions lost jobs with no support. Trumpism fed on their despair.

• Would the Billionaires Leave? Let Them. The system called America made their billions possible. If they leave, others will come. Prefers coordinated taxation across all Western advanced economies.

• In the Long Run, We Are All Dead. On Musk’s claim that money will disappear and technology will free us from labour. Kurz paraphrases Keynes: in the long run, we are all dead. And the long run could be a very long time. He is ninety. He is not prepared to wait.

About the Guest

Mordecai Kurz is the Joan Kenney Professor of Economics Emeritus at Stanford University, teaching there since 1961. He is the author of Private Power and Democracy’s Decline (MIT Press, May 19, 2026).

References

Private Power and Democracy’s Decline by Mordecai Kurz (MIT Press, May 19, 2026): mitpress.mit.edu/9780262053525/private-power-and-democracys-decline
Thomas Piketty blurb: “A great book, a must-read.”

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Chapters:

00:00:31 The second Gilded Age
00:02:19 Teaching at Stanford since 1961
00:02:58 Same dynamic as the first Gilded Age
00:04:17 The three-pronged reform
00:11:01 You go where the money is
00:12:09 Would the billionaires leave?
00:13:38 Marc Andreessen: won’t this kill innovation?
00:20:00 Trumpism as the product of abandoned workers
00:30:00 From Stanford’s window
00:37:20 Is democracy still the best model?
00:40:32 In the long run, we are all dead
00:41:32 The defence of ninety years of wisdom
00:42:54 We will reform again