Lester Thurow, the author of 'The Zero-Sum Society,' dies at 77

Lester Thurow, an MIT economics professor who warned the expanding economic inequality in his books “The Zero-Sum Society” and “Fortune Favors the Bold,” died on last Friday (local time), the Washington Post said on Wednesday. He was 77. MIT announced his death on Wednesday and did not release the cause of his death.

He attracted attention with many books pointing to income inequality. In “The Zero-Sum Society,” his book published in 1980, he defined the U.S. as a zero sum society and urged for a tax reform to correct income inequality caused by the winner-takes-it-all structure. However, in his book “Fortune Favors the Bold (2003),” he said that globalization partly improved the lives of emerging markets and one should refrain from simply blaming it. “The Future of Capitalism (1997)” and “Building Wealth (1999)” are also his famous books.

He was born in Livingston, Montana in 1938. He received a bachelor’s degree in political economy from Williams College, and then won a Rhodes Scholarship and received a master’s degree in philosophy, politics and economics from the University of Oxford. His doctorate degree in economics came from Harvard University in 1964. After teaching at Harvard, he moved to MIT in 1968 and spent almost his entire career there. He served as dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management from 1987 to 1993.

Mr. Thurow was a prolific author and gave many lectures to the general public to share his knowledge about the economy, but his real hope was real politics, the New York Times said. The newspaper said, “Mr. Thurow said that he decided to devote himself to communicating about economics after he was not offered a job in President Jimmy Carter’s administration, although he had been an economic adviser to Mr. Carter’s campaign (1977-1981).”

“I decided that if I could not have the king’s ear, I would talk to the public,” he said in a 1997 interview. “That’s the other way to have an impact on the economic system.”

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