Customer Reviews

The Trouble With Billionaires

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The back of this book lists an interesting fact. If you made a dollar per second, every second, you'd be a millionaire in 11.5 days. At that same rate ($3600 per hour) it would take you 32 YEARS to become a billionaire! If Bill Gates had made his fortune at that rate, he would have had to start 1,600 years ago! What this means in practice is that billionaires represent a form of wealth beyond the experience, or even comprehension, of most people. McQuaig and Brooks argue in this book that these extreme cases of wealth are harmful in a variety of ways.

Their first argument is that billionaires contributed to both the Great Depression as well as the recent depression. In a nutshell, when money leaves the hands of the middle class for the extreme rich, there is less money for general spending (run the example in reverse- you'd have to spend $3600 per hour for 32 years to run out of $1,000,000,000!!!) and more for investing (they can't spend it, so they invest it). That money led to inflated bubbles and riskier investments, leading ultimately to market crashes. Trickle down economics doesn't work (91% of the wealth created in the last two decades in the US went to the top 10%).

Their second argument is that huge disparities in wealth lead to health problems. This is becoming a well-established fact in social studies. Income disparity appears to be the best predictor of violent homicides. It also predicts general health. In a fascinating (and I think very intuitively powerful) example, the average height of Americans (who have the greatest inequality of any "modern" country by a long-shot) is growing slower than the height of Europeans, even controlling for immigrants. The inequality gap caused by ultra-billionaires is making Americans relatively shorter than Europeans!

Their third argument is perhaps their most damning, and one that I found most compelling. It should come to no surprise that the rich use their wealth to help themselves politically. Buying politicians is nothing new, it's just a lot easier when you are mega-rich. It's a vicious cycle in that the ultra-rich push for new laws and loopholes that allow them to become even more rich, allowing them to push harder, making them richer, etc. Ultra-rich billionaires represent a very real threat to democracy as their voices are heard much louder and more clearly than the average citizen's. Personally, and I suspect like many readers, I think that's natural (if not deserved). What's troubling is that the process reinforces itself. So it's not like politicians listen more to billionaires than Joe the Plumber. It's that they listen more, and more, and MORE to the billionaires and less, and less, and LESS to Joe the Plumber. I for one am shocked at how lightly the banks got off in the US after triggering a global financial crisis, and the anger in the recent US elections suggest I'm not the only one who thinks that. For another example, I first noticed when I started investing myself, advanced lucrative investments that were limited (by law in Canada and the US) to "accredited" investors. Initially, I thought that meant educated or some kind of certification. It doesn't. It means wealthy. The rich have created investments that only they can invest in.

The authors' solution is fairly simple- restore higher levels of income tax for the ultra-rich. This is the easiest way to redistribute wealth. The authors argue that much of a billionaire's wealth is due to luck and society, so why shouldn't some of it come back? If billionaires threaten to leave, up the threat by threatening to remove their foreign tax havens.

The bottom line is why this very interesting book only gets four stars. The authors' solution to raise income taxes is an obvious and strong choice, but the problem is how do you implement it? Just ask your local politician? What's needed is for some kind of a movement to begin, and the authors offer no advice to this regard. What's also needed are mountains of cold, hard facts and figures that are easy to understand and powerful motivators (like the initial math at the start of this review). I'd like to see more data- especially more Canadian data. We know that special interest groups are great at twisting facts and figures to suit their needs, so a book like this, an argument like this, a cause like this, needs serious factual support to motivate the public to motivate the politicians to make the right changes because you can bet that (some of) the billionaires are going to fight back, and they've got a lot of resources to bring to that fight. I have no problems with people honestly and legally earning large sums of money, but the "game" shouldn't be rigged so that the rich can unfairly keep getting richer at the expense of everyone else.

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"As a result of the increasing concentration of income and wealth at the top during the last few decades, the United States, Britain, and Canada have become extremely unequal societies...What exists today in the Anglo-American countries is an excessive level of inequality that has rarely been seen in modern history...

In the past few decades the middle and lower classes have experienced almost no growth in income. Virtually all the income growth has been at the top, particularly at the very top. The top-earning 1 percent of Americans now enjoy a whopping 24 percent of the national income. These high rollers make up an enormously rich and powerful class that can be described as a plutocracy."

The above is found in this fascinating and tremendously informative book by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks. McQuaig is a columnist for the Toronto Star newspaper and author while Brooks is a professor of tax law at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto.

Contrary to the title of this book and as can be garnered from the quotation that begins this review, this book is about income inequality with billionaires being at the extreme of this inequality.

When I first picked up this book, I thought it was going to be one long diatribe against billionaires, a diatribe driven by jealousy and envy. Nothing could be further from the truth. This book delves into history and critically analyses recent events. It looks into the myths, misconceptions, and realities that inundate the capitalistic economic system. Above all, it makes reasoned, rational arguments.

Finally, here are some of the provocative chapter titles found in this revealing book:

(1) Return of the plutocrats (A plutocrat is a person whose wealth is a source of control or great influence)
(2) Why pornography is the only true free market
(3) Billionaires and the (financial) crash of 2008
(4) Why Bill Gates doesn't deserve his fortune
(5) Why other billionaires are even less deserving
(6) Hank Aaron and the myths about motivation
(7) Why billionaires are bad for your health
(8) Why billionaires are bad for democracy

In conclusion, this is truly a riveting book. It raises questions about who gets rich and why, and in the process raises profound questions about what kind of society we ultimately want. I leave you with this book's last paragraph:

"The American Dream...has always been more myth than reality. As it sadly fades further into mythology...Canada could emerge with an exciting new version--one that puts real heft behind the notion that society is a community and the everyone in the community should have a chance to live their dreams."

(first published 2010; 12 chapters; main narrative 245 pages; notes; acknowledgements; index)

<<Stephen Pletko, London, Ontario, Canada>>

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Clearly and convincingly makes the case for the problems with the growing inequality in the world but particularly in the US, Canada and UK. The very rich have as much to fear from this issue as the poor in the long run but their short term vision may make them not take any steps to help correct things.
I recommend this book to anyone with an open mind.

I always look forward to reading Linda Mcquaig's latest book and she always delivers.Should be read by everyone who is struggling to make ends meet and those who think we live in the best country in the world. It may not last, especially with a conservative government at the helm.

McQuaig has written a timely call to arms about the manipulation of the general population by the super rich. What The Occupy movement failed to do was read this book before they marched. They needed McQuaig's expert analysis and attainable recommendations to give momentum to their diffuse frustrations about the leap frogging of powerful elites over the backs of the middle class.

McQuaig lays bare the insidious progression of power from the majority to the very few and describes how those few have held fast the reins of wealth and power in the US and Canada since the early 1900s. The book is not just bitter cynicism or resentment of the 'haves' by the 'have nots' instead it offers concrete recommendations for reform that would rebalance the distribution of wealth and give opportunities to our young people. I will definitely be using this in classes and urging my university students to read and discuss this book with their peer groups. The current model of obtaining an undergraduate degree in order to join the ranks of those serving non-fat lattes at Starbucks surely holds less appeal to these bright young people than finding new ways forward to create a society that actually gives a damn. Please read this book.

That all the qualitative views presented in The Trouble With Billionaires are accurate does not compensate for the fact that the book only contains enough content to fill a few pages (i.e., a pamphlet). In other words, the exposition is excruciatingly slow. Most of McQuaig's books could be edited down to half their actual length if the redundant exposition were removed, but here the exposition barely keeps pace with a snail. On social issues, Wilkinson and Pickett's The Spirit Level is a great source for studying the effects of neoliberal policy. On economics, Joseph Stiglitz or Naomi Klein provide a good starting point.

The other review is a little too harsh (the long one). Implementing changes in society that will eliminate the existence of billionaires requires a book in itself. First, the US (and the world) needs to realize the perniciousness of extreme income inequality. Otherwise, the other user's review does the book justice.

I read this book in a single session, which I rarely do with any book.
It is an easy read, with many illuminating analogies to help bring attention to some important facts. Too many of us do not understand the current threat to democracy with the enormous powers of subversion which any billionaire has. It's too easy, even for those of us who are familiar with numbers, just what difference there is between a million (a comfortable retirement) and a billion, a thousand times more, which brings power equivalent to even large governments.

The authors not only reminded of the facts, but bring them brilliantly into focus by imaginative devices such as seeing each person's height in proportion to their wealth. If average wealth is compared with average height, then many of us are under a foot in height while the richest billionaires' heads are up there with the space shuttle.

The books shows how no one has earned this kind of power and that it is dangerous to the rest of us for them to have it.

All the arguments as why they deserve or have earned this wealth are skillfully demolished, particularly by showing how even those with the strongest claims have in fact managed merely to been better at collecting the "rewards" of not only their own work, but that of countless others.

We are also shown why there are many with far weaker claims - those who not only precipitated but profited enormously from the recent economic crises - who have not only contributed nothing in return for their wealth but have caused misery for millions.

Like another reviewer of this book, I was disappointed only by the suggestions as to what we do about the situation. Sure some of the measures are good ideas. Get them to give back some of that money through taxation, and prevent them from hiding by implementing more international controls over the movement of capital. Unfortunately, the rest of the book was all too successful in showing why this is too simplistic: the influence over politics which comes with the wealth has been increasingly effective in recent years in allowing them to get richer and pay less tax than in almost all other periods of history (and how one of the few exceptions immediately preceded the crash of 1929). So "tax them" is a bit pointless without some suggestion as to how to do that.

Well, one way is to read this book and encourage all your friends to do so. We can tax them IF we elect politicians overwhelmingly on a mandate to do so. That will only happen if we don't let people be fooled into thinking the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a minute few is harmless or even beneficial. The book removes any excuse to do so.

Highly recommended. This book focusses on whether rich people deserve their riches or are just entitled to them, and whether they owe society more for their riches, and whether society is better off as a whole with the redistribution of wealth from the rich.

This book is amazing. It takes the mythology of neo-conservatism and blows it apart with the hard truth about the wealthy and their quest to hoard it for themselves like greedy pigs.