Economics Professor Owen Zidar Shows How Wealth Shapes Policy

Photo courtesy of Owen Zidar

By Hannah Floyd '27

Published Sept. 24, 2026

1 min read

The conversation about wealth in America is monopolized by billionaires. But economics professors Owen Zidar of Princeton and Eric Zwick of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business argue that a hidden class of ordinary Americans who got extraordinarily wealthy running private businesses is the larger story, for both the American Dream and American inequality.

In their new book The Everywhere Millionaire: Who is Really Rich in America And How They Got There, they combine data from over a decade of research with real-life stories, from a self-made hot dog maker to the family of an auto dealer. Wealth, and the influence it brings, they show, is more abundant and closer to home than most people think.

PAW asked Zidar to suggest three more books for readers who want to understand how wealth shapes policy and passes to the next generation, and he suggested these.

A book cover illustrated with a photo of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., cut into five slices.

Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth

By Michael J. Graetz and Ian Shapiro (Princeton University Press, 2005)

Hiding behind small business has been a repeated and effective strategy for the very wealthy to cut their tax bills, and no case shows it better than the campaign to repeal the estate tax. Graetz and Shapiro interviewed the members, staffers, and lobbyists who nearly pulled it off in 2001. The tax survived, but the exemption has gone from $1.2 million per couple to $30 million.

The cover of "The Second Estate," with green and blue writing on a black background..

The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy

By Ray D. Madoff (University of Chicago Press, 2025)

“Salaries are for suckers,” Madoff told New York Times columnist Ezra Klein this spring, and her book explains why: Wages are withheld at the source, while income from a private business or real estate is taxed on the owner’s own schedule, if at all. Madoff teaches trusts and estates at Boston College, and this is a short read and a good one if you haven’t followed how the code stopped keeping up with the loopholes.

The cover of "Citizen Coors" featuring an old black and white family photo.

Citizen Coors: A Grand Family Saga of Business, Politics, and Beer

By Dan Baum (William Morrow, 2000)

Beer is an industry we cover in the book, and it has minted a lot of multimillionaires. Baum follows one family brewery in Golden, Colorado, into national politics — Joseph Coors seeded the Heritage Foundation and backed Reagan before most donors would — by way of a long strike and a national boycott. It is colorful, and it is the clearest picture I know of how a private fortune becomes political influence.