We shall have an ideal state ... [if] the surplus wealth of the few will become, in the best sense the property of the many, because administered for the common good, and this wealth, passing through the hands of the few, can
be made a much more potent force for the elevation of our race than if it had been distributed in small sums to
the people themselves. Even the poorest can be made to see this, and to agree that great sums gathered by some
of their fellow-citizens and spent for public purposes, from which the masses reap the principal benefit, are more
valuable to them than if scattered among them through the course of many years in trifling amounts.
-- Andrew Carnegie, 1889
This excerpt from Andrew Carnegie's book, The Gospel of Wealth, demonstrates his views