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  • Plutocrats

  • The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else
  • Written by: Chrystia Freeland
  • Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
  • Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (65 ratings)

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Plutocrats

Written by: Chrystia Freeland
Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
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Publisher's Summary

There 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 19th 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. Intelligently 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.

©2012 Chrystia Freeland (P)2012 Tantor

What the critics say

"Sobering, if we can grasp the implications." ( Library Journal)

What listeners say about Plutocrats

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Fascinating study of the modern super-rich

How the modern super-rich got that way and what it means to governments and everyday people. It is a few years old and a little bit dated but still well worth the listen.

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smart and very entertaining

loved it. expansive in scope and extremely well researched. thoroughly entertaining study broken into interesting themes

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant even for 2023!

I have read this book shortly after it was published, then lent it to someone and never got it back. Listening to it now, in 2023, when the author is our Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister adds another step in understanding of her brilliance and political policies. Bravo!

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

An Endless List of the World’s Wealthy

There does not seem to be an original thought in this whole book. It is a listing of who the plutocrats are and how they got there with an underlying insinuation that most of their earnings were ill gotten. I kept looking for a great insight or some original thought but found none. Don’t waste your time.

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Not only a good read but a good lesson

Filled with interesting stats to back up the premises and also interesting quotes and anecdotes but ultimately the conclusions are what count
Good general overview for those of you who aren't economists...

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Stories of the Rich (and sometimes famous)

The book Plutocrats reads like a thesis. The book tells the story of the Incredibly wealthy and how they have created their own culture, far from that of fellow countrymen and common folk. Chrystia Feeland builds a running narrative that really gets more pointed (with more opinions) during the last third of the book.

The narrator wasn't awful, but far from being entertaining. If the story was a thesis, it felt like it was read by an intern.

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