�Rarely do the facts of the matter so illuminate a moral truth as they do in Unjust Deserts. Quite simply, this book changes the fundamental terms of reference for future debates about inequality. It convincingly demonstrates that knowledge is the primary source of our national wealth, with or without the elites at the top who claim the lion's share. In a surprising yet persuasive way, Alperovitz and Daly help us understand what this reality means, and the values at stake, in a nation growing more unequal with each passing day. This book opens an extraordinary new vista on the moral bankruptcy of our second Gilded Age.�

� Bill Moyers

�Unjust Deserts reveals the untold story of wealth creation in our time. Our celebrated entrepreneurs and money men are hoisting a cherry to the top of an already existing sundae-and then laying claim to the entire ice cream parlor. There may be individual effort and even genius involved with the cherry placement, but their individual rewards fail to recognize the contributions of other actors�workers, nature, taxpayers, community infrastructure, and our technological inheritance�as the real stars of the show.�

� Barbara Ehrenreich, Author of Nickel and Dimed


From the publisher, the New Press:

The inherited wealth created by our forebears ultimately belongs to all of us and to the future. Alperovitz and Daly give modern Americans a key to understanding how we can create the society of justice and equality that earlier generations sought.
�WILLIAM GREIDER, AUTHOR OF THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM: OPENING PATHS TO A MORAL ECONOMY


Warren Buffett is worth nearly $50 billion. Does he �deserve� all this money? Buffett himself will tell you that �society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I�ve earned.�

Unjust Deserts offers an entirely new approach to the wealth question. In a lively synthesis of modern economic, technological, and cultural research, Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly demonstrate that up to 90 percent (and perhaps more) of current economic output derives not from individual ingenuity, effort, or investment but from our collective inheritance of scientific and technological knowledge: an inheritance we all receive as a �free lunch.�

Alperovitz and Daly then pursue the implications of this research, persuasively arguing that there is no reason any one person should be entitled to that inheritance. Recognizing the true dimensions of our unearned inheritance leads inevitably to a new and powerful moral case for wealth redistribution�and to a series of practical policies to achieve it in an era when the disparities have become untenable.

Gar Alperovitz is the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland. His previous books include The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and America Beyond Capitalism. He lives in Washington, D.C. Lew Daly is a senior fellow at Demos and the author of God and the Welfare State. He lives in New York City.

From the website of Gal Alperovitz, one of the authors:

The authors demonstrate that if the market rewarded people according to their contributions it would make up only 10-20% of their income. The rich don�t work harder and are not morally justified in deservingness, or �deserts� as philosophers describe it than the rest of us. We get the commonly held viewpoint that we are entitled to own whatever wealth we create from philosopher John Locke. In his agrarian society and that of our Founding Fathers, wealth was mostly based on physical labor. In our knowledge-based society, Locke�s argument doesn�t work, since all knowledge that we receive from previous generations is a social contribution.