Nov
2
“Fitzgerald did not agree with Chicago School market theory, which is to say, he did not believe that more sellers means more competition, which means lower prices. Fitzgerald thought that if you had more sellers they simply raised prices to whatever they needed to survive. He wrote that Great Neck “became the most expensive [town] in the world” because the gold rush had lured “too many food purveyors for the population.” The purveyors all had loans to pay off, and could only survive “by selling things at two or three times the prices in the city 15 miles away.” Great Neck was so close to New York City that visitors were both an expense and an interruption. He noted that many “weary New Yorkers” made a habit of spending their weekends “at the Fitzgerald house in the country.”
The American Scholar » Living on $500,000 a Year » Print
