Plutocrats: the rise of the new global super-rich and the fall of everyone else
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9781452690421
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Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Even Alan Greenspan is worried about the troubling trend of income inequality. International financial reporter Freeland looks beyond worries about the 1 percent to the even more troubling trend of the 0.1 percent of the world's most wealthy having more in common with each other than their countrymen and acting on those interests, guaranteeing even more inequality. Is the gap between the superrich and everybody else the product of impersonal market forces or political machinations? Freeland offers an engaging and deeply analytical look at the history, politics, and economics behind the rise of the plutocrats. She draws parallels between current inequality and the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, when the top 1 percent of the U.S. population held one-third of the national income. Globalization and the technology revolution are the major factors behind what she sees as new and overlapping gilded ages: the second for the U.S., the first for developing nations. Drawing on interviews with economists and the elite themselves, Freeland chronicles lavish parties, hubris, and hand-wringing over the direction of the global economy. As she laments, The feedback loop between money, politics, and ideas is both cause and consequence of the rise of the super-elite. Readers will appreciate the broader political and economic implications of Freeland's penetrating examination of growing global income inequality.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Without ever specifically defining the term plutocrat, financial journalist Freeland (editor, Thomson Reuters Digital; Sale of a Century: The Inside Story of the Second Russian Revolution) wastes no time in making clear that she refers to people who represent the top one percent of the economy. This book uses the super-rich as a way to understand the world economy, and Freeland condemns neither plutocrats nor the capitalist system that created them. Instead, she seeks to place them within a global context. Using numerous interviews and meetings with, as well as numerous journalistic sources about, the super-elite, she shows how this group has changed over time, how the gap between the one and the 99 percent has grown wider, and how plutocrats often use their political muscle to enlarge their share of the pie and close off opportunities for average Americans to reach the same level of wealth. Freeland explores the concepts of rent seeking, cognitive capture, and philanthro-capitalism, all the while sounding a warning about the difference between earned and inherited wealth. VERDICT Recommended for those who want a readable explanation of the economic and political differences between the super-rich and the rest of us.-Bonnie Tollefson, Cleveland Bradley Cty. P.L., Cleveland, TN (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Book Review
Exploration of the increase in global economic inequality. You don't need a CPA to know which way the wind blows. Unless you're one of the rich or superrich, the 1 percent or the 1 percent of the 1 percent, then you won't be comforted to know that it blows against you: The rich are getting richer, and the rest of uswell, not so much. Thus the overarching theme of Thomson Reuters digital editor Freeland's (Sale of the Century: The Inside Story of the Second Russian Revolution, 2000) latest book, much of which, at least superficially, isn't really news. Dig deeper, though, and the author offers fresh takes on many key points. Are the rich happy? You'd think that all that money would take some of the burden off, but income inequality is an uncomfortable subject even for them. "That's because even--or perhaps particularly--in the view of its most ardent supporters," she writes, "global capitalism wasn't supposed to work quite this way." Level playing field? No way: The playing field is landscaped so that money rolls toward those who already have it. Equal opportunity? See the preceding point. Yet, Freeland continues, the switcheroo that robbed the middle class of its gains in the transition to "the America of the 1 Percent" is so new that our ways of talking and thinking about capitalism haven't caught up to reality, so that "when it comes to income inequality, Americans think they live in Sweden--or in the late 1950s." Smart, talking-point-friendly and full of magazine-style human-interest anecdotes, Freeland's account serves up other news, including the grim thought that recovery may never come for those outside the favored zone, as well as some provocative insights on how the superaffluent (don't say rich, say affluent--it avoids making the rich feel uncomfortable) view the rest of us. Not exactly the Communist Manifesto, but Freeland's book ought to make news of its own as she makes the rounds--well worth reading.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Even Alan Greenspan is worried about the troubling trend of income inequality. International financial reporter Freeland looks beyond worries about the 1 percent to the even more troubling trend of the 0.1 percent of the world's most wealthy having more in common with each other than their countrymen and acting on those interests, guaranteeing even more inequality. Is the gap between the superrich and everybody else the product of impersonal market forces or political machinations? Freeland offers an engaging and deeply analytical look at the history, politics, and economics behind the rise of the plutocrats. She draws parallels between current inequality and the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, when the top 1 percent of the U.S. population held one-third of the national income. Globalization and the technology revolution are the major factors behind what she sees as new and overlapping gilded ages: the second for the U.S., the first for developing nations. Drawing on interviews with economists and the elite themselves, Freeland chronicles lavish parties, hubris, and hand-wringing over the direction of the global economy. As she laments, The feedback loop between money, politics, and ideas is both cause and consequence of the rise of the super-elite. Readers will appreciate the broader political and economic implications of Freeland's penetrating examination of growing global income inequality. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
Library Journal Reviews
Formerly with the Financial Times and now global editor at large at Reuters, Freeland here leaps past the one percent to the stratospheric wealth that lies beyond, amassed by a tiny minority of aggressively successful businesspeople on the international scene. Mostly self-made, these folks identify more with one another than with the folks back home. Sobering, if we can grasp the implications.
[Page 54]. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Library Journal Reviews
Without ever specifically defining the term plutocrat, financial journalist Freeland (editor, Thomson Reuters Digital; Sale of a Century: The Inside Story of the Second Russian Revolution) wastes no time in making clear that she refers to people who represent the top one percent of the economy. This book uses the super-rich as a way to understand the world economy, and Freeland condemns neither plutocrats nor the capitalist system that created them. Instead, she seeks to place them within a global context. Using numerous interviews and meetings with, as well as numerous journalistic sources about, the super-elite, she shows how this group has changed over time, how the gap between the one and the 99 percent has grown wider, and how plutocrats often use their political muscle to enlarge their share of the pie and close off opportunities for average Americans to reach the same level of wealth. Freeland explores the concepts of rent seeking, cognitive capture, and philanthro-capitalism, all the while sounding a warning about the difference between earned and inherited wealth. VERDICT Recommended for those who want a readable explanation of the economic and political differences between the super-rich and the rest of us.—Bonnie Tollefson, Cleveland Bradley Cty. P.L., Cleveland, TN
[Page 91]. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.