Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of those books that really changed my perspective-- which is such a gift. I was certainly open to what he had to say, but there were many concepts in here that I hadn't considered in the way that Giridharadas analyzes it. Part of my preparation for this book includes having already read 56 "popular nonfiction" economics books and some additional behavioral economics books. I'm not sure if someone who doesn't otherwise read economics books would be open to the concepts in here.

The basic premise is that the richest 1% claim to be trying to help with social problems but what they should actually do is pay their employees living wages so that they don't need charity, stop polluting the environment so that the subsequent disaster areas don't need charity money, stop lobbying against things that help the 99% of citizens like regulations, stop creating tax shelters so that government can't function properly, stop impeding government in general. In other words, instead of being bad guys and covering up their sins with philanthropy, they should stop being bad guys. In addition, actual income equality creates a huge power inequality. Democracy cannot work when a small percent of the population wields such disproportionate power. Part of that is the money itself, part of that is the disaster of current day finance regulations. The central thesis is that the rich can't even fix problems with philanthropy because their solutions involve mostly self-interested band-aids that don't address the underlying causes: them.

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