“Add up all of their wealth — it’s more than ten times the Forbes 400 combined.” — Eric Zwick
Yesterday, the democratic socialist Susan Neiman blamed free market economics for all the evils of our age. But the market gives and the market takes. And in America it has minted three million millionaires whose collective wealth radically outstrips Silicon Valley’s billionaires. This human backbone of American capitalism is described in Eric Zwick’s and Owen Zidar’s The Everywhere Millionaire, a book about who is really rich in America and how they got there.
Forget Musk and Bezos, Zwick says. The real money is a hot dog man from suburban Chicago with a superyacht called Top Dog. Three million Americans own private businesses worth $5 million or more — dentists, beer distributors, HVAC contractors, Wendy’s franchisees — averaging $25 million each. Their combined wealth, Zwick says, is more than ten times the Forbes 400. And they are everywhere in America, from Walker County, Alabama to the Lake of the Ozarks.
Are these millionaires evil? They are certainly obsessed, relentless, bad at hobbies and mostly Republican. But evil? Only perhaps to ideologues resentful of other people’s success. In The Everywhere Millionaire, Zwick and Zidar show — in spite of growing inequality and shrinking opportunity — that the American Dream is still alive. Democrats might take note. Especially if they want to win back power in an America still dependent on Main Street for its prosperity.
Five Takeaways
• Three Million of Them. Private business owners worth $5m+, averaging $25m — and together more than ten times the Forbes 400 combined. The map lights up everywhere, starting with Walker County, Alabama.
• Top Dog. A hot dog stand started with $1,100 became a superyacht. Plus the auto dealer who bought the Utah Jazz and the Buck who got rich on Wendy’s franchises.
• The Accident of 1986. Reagan and Bill Bradley tried to clean up the tax code and accidentally created the pass-through boom — sweetened by every reform since.
• Bad at Hobbies. Test scores are a weak predictor; ordeal isn’t. And tax? “Not the first thing or even the fourth thing” driving them.
• The Power They Don’t Advertise. There’s an everywhere millionaire in every congressional district — funding candidates in both parties, and shaping local policy where nobody’s watching.
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
Buy The Everywhere Millionaire: everywheremillionaire.substack.com
Chapters:
00:00:31 Introduction: after Susan Neiman’s evil, a different kind of book
00:02:21 Not a moral philosopher: what the book says about human nature
00:04:54 Dick Portillo: $1,100, a hot dog stand, and a yacht called Top Dog
00:06:34 Crushing Ditka Dogs — was that moral?
00:07:58 Forget Musk and Bezos: who the everywhere millionaires are
00:08:42 Three million of them, averaging $25 million
00:08:54 Walker County, Alabama — and the map that lights up
00:10:26 Larry Miller, Karl Malone and the Utah Jazz
00:11:45 Is the American dream alive? The Journal vs the New Yorker
00:13:27 The credentialed path — and the top 1% advantage
00:14:56 Three unpaid PhDs in a windowless Treasury office
00:17:14 The Tax Reform Act of 1986: Reagan, Bradley and the repair job
00:18:28 The pass-through revolution — an unintended consequence
00:20:10 Success or failure? Both, says Zwick
00:22:30 Would they have built the businesses anyway?
00:24:26 Gender, race and who becomes a star founder
00:26:12 Divorce as a naturally occurring wealth tax
00:29:11 How they explain themselves: ordeal, luck, and not IQ
00:31:50 Are they happy? The cost of obsession
00:33:32 The elite disconnect — and why the media misses them
00:35:44 Against the zeitgeist of misery
00:36:23 Provocative by being optimistic
00:37:23 Is Trump an everywhere millionaire?
00:39:38 Libertarians, Republicans — and the surprising Democrats
00:41:54 After Jentleson: how Democrats could win this class
00:44:27 A Madisonian faction? Lobbying and local power
00:45:43 Making the glass more than half full
00:48:29 Look down Main Street and ask who owns what