acclaimed newly released book twilight of the elites america after meritocracy let's get back to it chris huey long back in one thousand thirty four said rather famously this was his is you know every man a king who spread the wealth of speech he said it is not the difficulty of the problem which we have it is the fact that the rich people of this country and by rich i mean the super rich will not allow us to solve the problems or rather the one little problem that is afflicting this country is refer to the depression because in order to cure all of our woes it is necessary to scale down the big fortunes that we may scatter to the wealth to be shared by all the people now if you go back just sixty years in time harry truman when he retired from the presidency went back to missouri and lived a very modest life you know he has net worth was never even close to being a millionaire walter cronkite was making sixty thousand dollars a year doing the c.b.s. evening news. since reagan dropped that top tax rate down below seventy four percent there's been this explosion in the nature of elites in the united