The Self-Made Myth

The Self-Made Myth aims to challenge the by-bootstraps-alone narrative and offer a more holistic view of the success of America’s business leaders and entrepreneurs. While the authors acknowledge the importance of hard work, creativity, and leadership, but also highlight the role public investments play in the creation of wealth; the role of government regulation and rules that provide a stable framework for business to operate; the contributions of associates and front-line workers in their employ; and additional factors such as inheritance, privilege, and plain old luck.

While this book will explore a multitude of factors that contribute to individual success, the primary emphasis will be on the role of public investments. It will look at the way public investments have supported the development of individual entrepreneurs, including public education, research and development grants, community art programs, the GI Bill, and other benefits the entrepreneurs may have received. The work will also examine the way public investments contributed to the vitality of their business enterprises, including government-subsidized small business loans, highways and transportation systems that move goods and bring shoppers to their stores, public research that created the internet through which their business operates, the public education that their employees received, and in at least one case, the national parks that supported their tourism business. The book will cite a combination of hard data and economic theory in making the case, but it will rely primarily on the personal stories of high-wealth individuals and business leaders, often in their own words, supplemented with broad historical narratives.

While the immediate goal of this book is to impact the 2012 tax debate in the country leading up to the 2012 elections, by shifting the broader narrative, the book will have a wide range of secondary impacts. The new, more complete narrative will help build support for progressive and adequate tax systems at all levels of government over the long term. This new frame may also temper the anti-regulatory rhetoric that views government as the enemy of business, rather than the framer of the environment business operates within. By offering a more complete view of wealth creation, we can lessen the tendency to worship the “job creators” and strike a healthier balance between public and private roles, as well as that of the common good