Julia Ott, New Arizona Fellow, is a scholar, teacher, and public intellectual. She investigates how financial institutions, practices, and theories influence American political culture and how, in turn, policies and political beliefs shape economic behavior and outcomes. Her current book project, Wealth Over Work: The Origins of Venture Capital, The Return of Inequality, and the Decline of Innovation, examines the history of venture capital as a concept, as an industry, and as a form of political mobilization. At present, she is collaborating with FICTILIS (artist-curators Andrea Steves and Tim Furstnau) to install the Museum of Capitalism in Kellen Gallery at The New School, to open October 2019. Ott is an associate professor in the history of capitalism at The New School, co-founder of the Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies, and a member of the editorial board of Dissent.
Select Work:
- It’s Not Wall Street that Needs to Be Unleashed – It’s Government: A piece on the misconception that the finance sector drives economic growth. (Washington Post, 2017)
- Choosing Growth: A review of economist Robert Gordon’s book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The US Standard of Living Since the Civil War. (Public Books, 2017)
- How Tax Policy Created the 1%: A history of American tax policy, and how it has always had disastrous implications for nearly everyone but the ultra-rich. (Dissent, 2017)