Βιβλία σαν το «Ποιος σε προσέχει»

I was furious the situation had reached this point. A relatively small group of people—many on Wall Street, some not—had gambled that the housing market would keep booming forever. It didn’t. In a normal environment, the free market would render its judgment and they could fail.

Στην Αμερική σήμερα επικρατεί η μεγαλύτερη ανισότητα εισοδήματος και πλούτου που είχαμε ποτέ στη χώρα μας. τα πράγματα για τους ανθρώπους που βρίσκονται στην κορυϕή δεν ήταν ποτέ καλύτερα από τώρα. την ίδια στιγμή, όσο οι πλούσιοι γίνονται πλουσιότεροι, η μεσαία τάξη πασχίζει να πληρώσει το νοίκι, να αγοράσει τρόϕιμα και να έχει υγειονομική περίθαλψη. Οι ϕτωχοί ζούνε μέσα στην απελπισία. Σήμερα ένας μόνο άντρας –ο Έλον Μασκ– κατέχει περισσότερο πλούτο από το κατώτατο 52 τοις εκατό των αμερικανικών νοικοκυριών. Ας το επαναλάβω. Ένας άνθρωπος, με περιουσία σχεδόν τετρακοσίων δισεκατομμυρίων δολαρίων, κατέχει σήμερα πιο πολύ πλούτο από το κατώτατο 52 τοις εκατό των αμερικανικών νοικοκυριών. το 1 τοις εκατό της κορυϕής έχει περισσότερο πλούτο από το κατώτατο 93 τοις εκατό. Και οι διευθύνοντες σύμβουλοι των μεγάλων επιχειρήσεων βγάζουν 350 ϕορές περισσότερα χρήματα από τον μέσο υπάλληλό τους.

“Marty came to my father’s house, and he was shaking,” she said. “He walked real slow and quiet, like he was a beaten man. Dolly made that man so low. He said, ‘Frank should respect his mother but when he doesn’t, she takes it out on me.’ You never embarrass an Italian man and make him low like that. As soon as I saw him I felt bad. He looked like a hobo at the door begging for something to eat. He didn’t even ask for help right away, but his face said it all. He was stunned when I let him in. He thought I was going to swear at him. My father came out and said, ‘You look bad. You want a shot of liquor?”

Your income has always been ample, and you never ought to have borrowed any money, and Mary Towle did a great wrong in lending you any money. My opinion of you is the same as it always has been—that you are an extravagant, deceitful, dishonest, worthless person. You have squandered thousands of dollars and left your honest debts unpaid. But I do not think you are capable of comprehending the mistakes that you have made. Now that you are paying up Mary Towle, how would it do to pay the various other accounts that you owe?

I’ve spent years staring at that photo, wondering what kind of life she led, what happened to her children, and what she’d think about cells from her cervix living on forever—bought, sold, packaged, and shipped by the trillions to laboratories around the world. I’ve tried to imagine how she’d feel knowing that her cells went up in the first space missions to see what would happen to human cells in zero gravity, or that they helped with some of the most important advances in medicine: the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization. I’m pretty sure that she—like most of us—would be shocked to hear that there are trillions more of her cells growing in laboratories now than there ever were in her body.

I loved my mother because I didn’t know I had a choice. I had to love her.