Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity

by Scott Galloway

Study after study has found that in today’s America, the biggest determinant of an individual’s economic success is not talent, it’s not hard work, and it’s not even luck. It’s how much money their parents have. The expected family income of children raised in families at the 90th income percentile is three times that of children raised at the 10th.18 Economic mobility in the United States, on a range of measures, is worse, in many cases much worse, than in Europe and elsewhere.19 Want to live the American dream? Move to Denmark.20 This isn’t just a story about the poor or billionaires. At every level, it’s getting harder and harder to move up. My first house in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco was $280,000. Divide that by the $100,000 average starting salary out of business school in 1992 and you end up with a ratio of 2.8 for the price of housing compared to average salary. Now the average salary is $140,000. That’s a lot of money. But the average home in the Bay Area now costs $1.4 million. So, we’ve gone from a ratio of 2.8 to a ratio of 10. This is for the nominal winners, the people who thought they were joining the elite. It’s harder now. The result is a society in which there is tremendous prosperity, but little progress. The Declaration of Independence promises us “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Yet study after study finds that Americans live shorter lives,21 are less free,22 and less successful in our pursuit of happiness23 than our E...