Author: Owen Zidar in Conversation with Alan Blinder

Labyrinth and Library Collaboration

Owen Zidar and Alan Blinder discuss "The Everywhere Millionaire," Zidar’s new book, co-authored with Eric Zwick, exploring the hidden fortunes of Main Street business owners.

About the Book (from the publisher):

From two leading economists comes a groundbreaking new portrait of the hidden fortunes of Main Street business owners—ordinary Americans who built extraordinary wealth and are quietly rewriting the rules of money and power. Most people think the path to great wealth runs through Wall Street or Silicon Valley. We’re told you must be a Zuckerberg, a Musk, or a Jamie Dimon to get rich. But this story is wrong.

Drawing on unprecedented data from a decade of research and vivid real-life stories of entrepreneurs—from a self-made hot-dog stand billionaire to the heirs of an auto dealer—Zidar and Zwick reveal a surprising truth: prosperity is more attainable, more widely distributed, and closer to home than we imagine. A multitude of Americans have built staggering fortunes by running often unglamorous businesses far from the spotlight. A quiet revolution in the business world—the rise of “pass-through” firms like S-corporations and partnerships—supercharged this wealth, channeling vast income directly to business owners rather than traditional corporations.

"The Everywhere Millionaire" celebrates the stories of entrepreneurs who seized opportunities while asking hard questions about how concentrated wealth and power shape society. It is an essential guide to seeing the economy as it really is and recognizing the surprising paths to prosperity—and influence—everywhere.

About the Speakers:

Owen Zidar is a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. Zidar earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. from Dartmouth College. He lives in Princeton with his wife and three children.

Alan S. Blinder has been on the Princeton faculty since 1971, taking time off from January 1993 through January 1996 for service in the U.S. government, first as a member of President Clinton’s original Council of Economic Advisers, and then as vice chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In addition to his academic writings, and his best-selling introductory textbook, he has written many newspaper and magazine columns and op-eds and, in recent years, has been a regular columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He also appears frequently on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and elsewhere. Dr. Blinder was previously president of the Eastern Economic Association and vice president of the American Economic Association. He has been elected a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS). In October, 2023, he was awarded the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize by the AAPSS.

Presented in partnership with Princeton University’s Department of Economics, and Labyrinth Books.

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