Why are Jews so rich?

• Author: Levine, Art
• Position: Satiric book review

THE JEW CURVE

Greed and Income in American Life. By Charles Murray. Illustrated 837pp. New York. The Free Press. $35.

A scant two years after Charles Murray's incendiary The Bell Curve provoked a furor among liberal opinion-makers with its views on race and intelligence, Mr. Murray has returned with an even more controversial work on yet another taboo subject: Jewish wealth. As he did in the earlier work, Mr. Murray marshals an impressive body of evidence that will surely send liberals into paroxysms of outrage. But whether one agrees or disagrees with the findings in Mr. Murray's book, the government or society that persists in ignoring the vital issues raised by his research does so at its peril.

"At a time of widening class divisions and shrinking opportunities for well-paying jobs," he argues, "a hidden source of resentment--the role of Jews in the economy--lurks beneath the surface of American life and clouds our ability to solve our economic dilemmas. It is vital that people begin to talk about this publicly. Failure to do so could only heighten the anti-semitism that arises during periods of economic dislocation." In Mr. Murray's grim view, the lingering resentment towards Jews--as many as a fifth of Americans hold some anti-Semitic views, surveys show--could lead to an upsurge in discrimination and even hate crimes. The author posits a disturbing future in which Jews, increasingly isolated from other Americans, wall themselves off in high-priced ghettos and find themselves attacked by an impoverished Gentile underclass. Only by exploring in an honest, tough-minded way Jewish economic power--and the significant role of what he argues is the largely inherited trait of greed--can we hope to avoid such a tragic fate, he says.

Jews are the most economically successful group in American society, or, as Mr. Murray dubs them, "the overclass." Jewish family income is 72 percent more than the national average and even when minority groups are removed from the analysis, Jewish income is 34 percent more than that of Gentile white ethnic groups. (The author notes that Jewish families earn 50 percent more than "God-fearing, hard-working Irish-Americans.") Although Jews make up only three percent of the population, they account for approximately a fifth of the very rich, i.e. millionaires and above.

The book effectively uses graphics and charts to underscore these points. In one striking chart, the income curve for "Jews" and "Regular Americans"...