The Sun Interview
An Embarrassment Of Riches
Les Leopold On Forty Years Of Runaway Inequality
Our economy does not work for all of us. It works for a small handful of elites who are extracting as much wealth from it as they can.

Les Leopold On Forty Years Of Runaway Inequality
Our economy does not work for all of us. It works for a small handful of elites who are extracting as much wealth from it as they can.
In the fall of 1991 I was the lowest-ranking waiter at a steakhouse in Hampton, Virginia. My sole transportation was a Honda 350 motorcycle — halfway between a street bike and a moped — whose chain slipped at the most inopportune times.
We didn’t know what it was to be desired. We didn’t know what girls’ bodies were supposed to look like. We just knew it was better for us if nothing stuck out too far.
Just one time I had done something nice. Just one time I had left some forlorn teenage girls an offering of chocolate and words, and suddenly I was the local pedophile. I hadn’t left them Fifty Shades of Grey.
The last time I was in London, I kept passing store windows full of tea towels and souvenir mugs with the motto Keep Calm and Carry On. I once read that when the British government dreamed up the slogan at the onset of World War II, the populace was insulted at being given advice that went without saying.