Wealth and power are old friends, often working together but sometimes in opposition. To explore how these interlinking concepts influence modern society, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School Professor Mario Macis convened a panel of experts to share insights on changing perceptions of wealth and power over time, and how these forces shaped human history.
When in Rome
Renowned classicist Mary Beard provides insight into wealth and power during the Roman Republic and its transition to the Roman Empire.
"If you are rich, you have more political points. If you are rich, you are in control of the decisions of the state,” Beard said. “There is no distinction in Republican Rome between an industrial and mercantile class and a political aristocratic class. The top class in Rome is the wealthiest class, and they're the members of the Senate.”
According to Beard, the wealthy spent their money on behalf of the state during the Republic era by constructing buildings, infrastructure, and institutions. The wealthy senators also supported the lower classes in return for their political support. The eventual transition from republic to empire saw the concentration of wealth and power.
“Although we don't often think of him like this, the emperor is basically the richest guy in town, yet he's also a dictator, and he's backed up by hundreds and thousands of soldiers,” Beard explained. “Basically, what the emperor does is he follows through on the sense that the rich are becoming richer and richer out of the profits of the empire.”
Beard notes that modern perceptions of Roman wealth and political power are skewed, in that the views of average citizens, or those without wealth, were never recorded or preserved.
“Sadly, they're hidden from history,” she said.
The rule of kings and queens
Guido Alfani, a professor of economic history at Bocconi University in Milan, shared his insights on the changing perceptions of wealth and political power in the Middle Ages and during the rise of Western civilization.
“If you look at this historically again from the Middle Ages until today, there are three main paths to affluence which have to be identified... the path of nobility and aristocracy... entrepreneurship and innovation... and of course finance," Alfani explained.
In addition to the divinely inspired inherited wealth of nobles, the era brings new paths to earned wealth and the expansion of the mercantile class. But Alfani notes that society does not value all paths to wealth creation equally, including objections from religious leaders to finance and money lending.
“We today have in the West a cultural preference for wealth, which has been made... we tend to think that the wealth made in this way is the most legitimate," Alfani said. “Making money out of money has always been seen in the history of the West, I would say from classical antiquity, as somehow suspicious.”
By the 15th century, Alfani says wealthy commoners began playing a greater role in government by sharing their resources during times of famine, war, or epidemic, which remained the underpinning of progressive taxation in the 20th century.
Rise of the robber barons and beyond
Louis Hyman, the Dorothy Ross Professor of Political Economy in History and at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins, discussed the mingling of wealth and politics in the American age. He noted the United States is neither a plutocracy nor truly egalitarian, and that wealth creation greatly expanded with the industrial revolution and rise of capitalism.
"For most of human history, if you had money, the best way to maintain your power was to give it away. Give it to your strong friends, patronage networks, buy an army, conquer someone else, conquer land,” Hyman said. “But for the very first time, this dispossession could be invested in new forms of productivity. This wealth of the plunder became the engine of capital accumulation.”
Hyman argues that the American perspective values self-sufficiency as a virtue over wealth, even as wealth is a path to self-sufficiency. In this regard, he says American society tolerates inequality partly because it values self-sufficiency over redistribution, rejecting both aristocratic privilege and peasant dependence.
Today’s tech-bros
Catherine Rampell, economics editor for The Bulwark, explored the changing perceptions of wealth in the modern political climate—including what “wealthy” really means today.
"In 2008, Obama promised higher taxes only on those making over $250,000... Then the threshold got moved upward in 2020 to those making $400,000,” Rampell explained. “And today, if you listen to a lot of rhetoric, particularly from the Democratic Party, it's really only the billionaires that we're talking about raising taxes on."
She also noted that tech giants like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk went from being hailed by the public as self-made entrepreneurs to all-controlling oligarchs within a few election cycles. Rampell further explained that politicians, particularly on the left, increasingly stress that substantial wealth is only created with the help or at the expense of the larger society. To that end, the wealthiest owe some debt to the masses.
"When Americans with different income levels differ in their policy preferences, actual policy outcomes strongly reflect the preferences of the most affluent but bear virtually no relationship to the preferences of poor or middle-income Americans.
Reflecting on the discussion, Macis noted that a common thread across the historical examples was the need for wealth to be socially justified. “One theme that emerged from the discussion is that great wealth has rarely been self-legitimating,” Macis said. “Across eras, the ultra-rich have had to justify their role in society through some broader claim to public value, whether public service, patronage, innovation, philanthropy, paying their fair share in taxes, or other forms of social contribution. When that legitimacy erodes, tensions over wealth and power tend to intensify.”
