Читать книгу Wealth - Yuval Elmelech - Страница 33

Aesop’s fable “The Tortoise and the Hare” is a tale about a contest between unequal partners. A hare brags about his speed and challenges a tortoise to a race. Noticing that he is well ahead of the tortoise halfway through the race, the confident hare decides to take a nap at the side of the road. When he wakes up, the hare continues the race and arrives at the finish line; but the tortoise, who has continued to plod along all the while, is already waiting for him there. The tortoise is declared the winner (visit http://read.gov/aesop/025.html for a digital version).

The wealth version of the tale has a different ending. Not only does the hare start the race from an advanced position, ahead of the tortoise, but it is impossible for the tortoise to arrive at the finish line on its own. Furthermore, even when the wealthy hare stops to take a nap—or, as sociologist C. Wright Mills (1956: 111) said of the conditions governing wealth mobility among members of the elite, “even for a man in a coma”—he will continue to be ahead of the asset-poor tortoise on the wealth ladder.