Plutocrats: the rise of the new global super-rich and the fall of everyone else

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Publisher
Varies, see individual formats and editions
Publication Date
2012.
Language
English

Description

A Financial Times Best Book of the YearWinner of the 2013 Lionel Gelber PrizeThere has always been some gap between rich and poor in this country, but in the last few decades what it means to be rich has changed dramatically. Alarmingly, the greatest income gap is not between the 1 percent and the 99 percent, but within the wealthiest 1 percent of our nation--as the merely wealthy are left behind by the rapidly expanding fortunes of the new global super-rich. Forget the 1 percent;Plutocrats proves that it is the wealthiest 0.1 percent who are outpacing the rest of us at break-neck speed.What’s changed is more than numbers. Today, most colossal fortunes are new, not inherited--amassed by perceptive businessmen who see themselves as deserving victors in a cut-throat international competition. As a transglobal class of successful professionals, today’s self-made oligarchs often feel they have more in common with one another than with their countrymen back home. Bringing together the economics and psychology of these new super-rich,Plutocrats puts us inside a league very much of its own, with its own rules.The closest mirror to our own time is the late nineteenth century Gilded Age--the era of powerful robber barons’ like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. Then as now, emerging markets and innovative technologies collided to produce unprecedented wealth for more people than ever in human history. Yet those at the very top benefited far more than others--and from this pinnacle they exercised immense and unchecked power in their countries. Today’s closest analogue to these robber barons can be found in the turbulent economies of India, Brazil, and China, all home to ferocious market competition and political turmoil. But wealth, corruption, and populism are no longer constrained by national borders, so this new Gilded Age is already transforming the economics of the West as well. Plutocrats demonstrates how social upheavals generated by the first Gilded Age may pale in comparison to what is in store for us, as the wealth of the entire globalized world is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.Cracking open the tight-knit world of the new global super-rich is Chrystia Freeland, an acclaimed business journalist who has spent nearly two decades reporting on the new transglobal elite. She parses an internal Citigroup memo that urges clients to design portfolios around the international Plutonomy” and not the national rest”; follows Russian, Mexican, and Indian oligarchs during the privatization boom as they manipulate the levers of power to commandeer their local economies; breaks down the gender divide between the vast female-managed middle class’ and the world’s one thousand billionaires; shows how, by controlling both the economic and political institutions of their nation, the richest members of China’s National People’s Congress have amassed more wealth than every branch of American government combined--the president, his cabinet, the justices of the Supreme Court, and both houses of Congress.Though the results can be shocking, Freeland dissects the lives of the world’s wealthiest individuals with empathy, intelligence, and deep insight. Brightly written, powerfully researched, and propelled by fascinating original interviews with the plutocrats themselves, Plutocrats is a tour-de-force of social and economic history, and the definitive examination of inequality in our time.

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Contributors
ISBN
9781594204098
9781452690421

Table of Contents

From the Book

Introduction
History and why it matters
Culture of the plutocrats
Superstars
Responding to revolution
Rent-seeking
How the plutocrats relate to the rest of us
Conclusion.

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These books have the appeal factors irreverent and persuasive, and they have the genres "society and culture -- wealth and class" and "impartial writing"; and the subjects "rich people," "social classes," and "income inequality."
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Both vividly illustrate the yawning economic and cultural gap between America's uber-wealthy, and... well, everyone else. Plutocrats employs anecdotes as a means of enlivening and illustrating more serious socioeconomic concerns, while Richistan is amusing and gossipy in tone. -- Kim Burton
These books have the appeal factors persuasive and thought-provoking, and they have the genres "business and economics -- economics -- world economy" and "society and culture -- wealth and class"; and the subjects "poverty" and "poor people."
These books have the appeal factors persuasive, and they have the genre "society and culture -- wealth and class"; and the subjects "rich people," "social classes," and "income inequality."
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These books have the appeal factors persuasive and scholarly, and they have the genres "business and economics -- economics -- world economy" and "society and culture -- wealth and class"; and the subjects "poverty," "social classes," and "income inequality."
Plutocrats offers insightful, conversational insights in to wealth inequality while the Price of Inequality takes a more purely journalistic approach. Both are well-argued, well-thought-out studies of America's socioeconomic divisions that general readers will find accessible and fascinating. -- Kim Burton
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Placing the issue of wealth inequality in a global context, these thought-provoking reads are both engaging and well-researched. While both include entertaining anecdotes about the world's wealthiest 1%, Have and Have-Nots also delivers complex and compelling data analysis. -- Kim Burton

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The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer according to Matt Taibbi and Chrystia Freeland. Offering impassioned, articulate analyses of current and future economic conditions -- Taibbi concentrates on America and Freeland takes the global view -- their work is both bleakly amusing and sobering. -- Mike Nilsson
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Published Reviews

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

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
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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.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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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.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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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.

Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
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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.

Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Powered by Content Cafe

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.

Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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