Snapshot · Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Monica gifted Dax a signed first edition of Raymond Carver's 'The Stories of Raymond Carver' with the original cover price of $8.95 — equivalent to about $89 today.
Where this was said
At 1:11:07 · chapter starts 1:10:40
The birthday gift section begins when Monica produces a beautifully wrapped signed first edition of Raymond Carver's story collection, priced at $8.95 on the original 1963 cover. The inflation calculation reveals it would cost about $89 today — and Dax notes that even $89 feels underpriced given the extraordinary labor involved in bookbinding before industrialization, citing the scene in Greta Gerwig's Little Women that shows the week-long process of producing a single handmade volume. He posits that early books probably cost the equivalent of hundreds of modern dollars in labor, which is why Andrew Carnegie effectively invented the public library — a democratizing institution. This leads to a brief detour on historical wealth inequality: Rockefeller at his peak controlled approximately 15 cents of every dollar in the US economy, a concentration that makes Elon Musk's $400 billion net worth look relatively modest.
Dax notes that when Rockefeller became a billionaire, he reportedly controlled 15 cents of every dollar in the US economy — far greater wealth concentration than today's billionaires.
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