The Rich Don't Always Win


Book Description

The Occupy Wall Street protests have captured America's political imagination. Polls show that two-thirds of the nation now believe that America's enormous wealth ought to be "distributed more evenly." However, almost as many Americans--well over half--feel the protests will ultimately have "little impact" on inequality in America. What explains this disconnect? Most Americans have resigned themselves to believing that the rich simply always get their way. Except they don't. A century ago, the United States hosted a super-rich even more domineering than ours today. Yet fifty years later, that super-rich had almost entirely disappeared. Their majestic mansions and estates had become museums and college campuses, and America had become a vibrant, mass middle class nation, the first and finest the world had ever seen. Americans today ought to be taking no small inspiration from this stunning change. After all, if our forbears successfully beat back grand fortune, why can't we? But this transformation is inspiring virtually no one. Why? Because the story behind it has remained almost totally unknown, until now. This lively popular history will speak directly to the political hopelessness so many Americans feel. By tracing how average Americans took down plutocracy over the first half of the 20th Century--and how plutocracy came back-- The Rich Don't Always Win will outfit Occupy Wall Street America with a deeper understanding of what we need to do to get the United States back on track to the American dream.




The Case for a Maximum Wage


Book Description

Modern societies set limits, on everything from how fast motorists can drive to how much waste factory owners can dump in our rivers. But incomes in our deeply unequal world have no limits. Could capping top incomes tackle rising inequality more effectively than conventional approaches? In this engaging book, leading analyst Sam Pizzigati details how egalitarians worldwide are demonstrating that a “maximum wage” could be both economically viable and politically practical. He shows how, building on local initiatives, governments could use their tax systems to enforce fair income ratios across the board. The ultimate goal? That ought to be, Pizzigati argues, a world without a super rich. He explains why we need to create that world — and how we could speed its creation.




Baby Steps Millionaires


Book Description

You Can Baby Step Your Way to Becoming a Millionaire Most people know Dave Ramsey as the guy who did stupid with a lot of zeros on the end. He made his first million in his twenties—the wrong way—and then went bankrupt. That’s when he set out to learn God’s ways of managing money and developed the Ramsey Baby Steps. Following these steps, Dave became a millionaire again—this time the right way. After three decades of guiding millions of others through the plan, the evidence is undeniable: if you follow the Baby Steps, you will become a millionaire and get to live and give like no one else. In Baby Steps Millionaires, you will . . . *Take a deeper look at Baby Step 4 to learn how Dave invests and builds wealth *Learn how to bust through the barriers preventing them from becoming a millionaire *Hear true stories from ordinary people who dug themselves out of debt and built wealth *Discover how anyone can become a millionaire, especially you Baby Steps Millionaires isn’t a book that tells the secrets of the rich. It doesn't teach complicated financial concepts reserved only for the elite. As a matter of fact, this information is straightforward, practical, and maybe even a little boring. But the life you'll lead if you follow the Baby Steps is anything but boring! You don’t need a large inheritance or the winning lottery number to become a millionaire. Anyone can do it—even today. For those who are ready, it’s game on!




Why the Rich Are Getting Richer


Book Description

It's Robert Kiyosaki's position that "It is our educational system that causes the gap between the rich and everyone else." He laid the foundation for many of his messages in the international best-seller Rich Dad Poor Dad -- the #1 Personal Finance book of all time -- and in Why the Rich Are Getting Richer, he makes his case... In this book, the reader will learn why the gap between the rich and everyone else grows wider. In this book, the reader will get an explanation of why savers are losers. In this book, the reader will find out why debt and taxes make the rich richer. In this book, the reader will learn why traditional education actually causes many highly educated people, such as Robert's poor dad, to live poorly. In this book, the reader will find out why going to school, working hard, saving money, buying a house, getting out of debt, and investing for the long term in the stock market is the worst financial advice for most people. In this book, the reader will learn the answers Robert found on his life-long search, after repeatedly asking the question, "When will we learn about money?" In this book, the reader will find out why real financial education may never be taught in schools. In this book, the reader will find out "What financially education is... really."




Uneasy Street


Book Description

A surprising and revealing look at how today’s elite view their wealth and place in society From TV’s “real housewives” to The Wolf of Wall Street, our popular culture portrays the wealthy as materialistic and entitled. But what do we really know about those who live on “easy street”? In this penetrating book, Rachel Sherman draws on rare in-depth interviews that she conducted with fifty affluent New Yorkers—from hedge fund financiers and artists to stay-at-home mothers—to examine their lifestyle choices and understanding of privilege. Sherman upends images of wealthy people as invested only in accruing social advantages for themselves and their children. Instead, these liberal elites, who believe in diversity and meritocracy, feel conflicted about their position in a highly unequal society. As the distance between rich and poor widens, Uneasy Street not only explores the lives of those at the top but also sheds light on how extreme inequality comes to seem ordinary and acceptable to the rest of us.




The 9.9 Percent


Book Description

A “brilliant” (The Washington Post), “clear-eyed and incisive” (The New Republic) analysis of how the wealthiest group in American society is making life miserable for everyone—including themselves. In 21st-century America, the top 0.1% of the wealth distribution have walked away with the big prizes even while the bottom 90% have lost ground. What’s left of the American Dream has taken refuge in the 9.9% that lies just below the tip of extreme wealth. Collectively, the members of this group control more than half of the wealth in the country—and they are doing whatever it takes to hang on to their piece of the action in an increasingly unjust system. They log insane hours at the office and then turn their leisure time into an excuse for more career-building, even as they rely on an underpaid servant class to power their economic success and satisfy their personal needs. They have segregated themselves into zip codes designed to exclude as many people as possible. They have made fitness a national obsession even as swaths of the population lose healthcare and grow sicker. They have created an unprecedented demand for admission to elite schools and helped to fuel the dramatic cost of higher education. They channel their political energy into symbolic conflicts over identity in order to avoid acknowledging the economic roots of their privilege. And they have created an ethos of “merit” to justify their advantages. They are all around us. In fact, they are us—or what we are supposed to want to be. In this “captivating account” (Robert D. Putnam, author of Bowling Alone), Matthew Stewart argues that a new aristocracy is emerging in American society and it is repeating the mistakes of history. It is entrenching inequality, warping our culture, eroding democracy, and transforming an abundant economy into a source of misery. He calls for a regrounding of American culture and politics on a foundation closer to the original promise of America.




How to Get Rich


Book Description

Uncover the secret to financial success with advice from self-made millionaire Felix Dennis. Felix Dennis is an expert at proving people wrong. Starting as a college dropout with no family money, he created a publishing empire, founded Maxim magazine, made himself one of the richest people in the UK, and had a blast in the process. How to Get Rich is different from any other book on the subject because Dennis isn’t selling snake oil, investment tips, or motivational claptrap. He merely wants to help people embrace entrepreneurship, and to share lessons he learned the hard way. He reveals, for example, why a regular paycheck is like crack cocaine; why great ideas are vastly overrated; and why “ownership isn't the important thing, it’s the only thing.”




How to Win Friends and Influence People


Book Description

You can go after the job you want…and get it! You can take the job you have…and improve it! You can take any situation you’re in…and make it work for you! Since its release in 1936, How to Win Friends and Influence People has sold more than 30 million copies. Dale Carnegie’s first book is a timeless bestseller, packed with rock-solid advice that has carried thousands of now famous people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives. As relevant as ever before, Dale Carnegie’s principles endure, and will help you achieve your maximum potential in the complex and competitive modern age. Learn the six ways to make people like you, the twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking, and the nine ways to change people without arousing resentment.




How Rich Countries Got Rich ... and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor


Book Description

A maverick economist explains how protectionism makes nations rich, free trade keeps them poor---and how rich countries make sure to keep it that way. Throughout history, some combination of government intervention, protectionism, and strategic investment has driven successful development everywhere from Renaissance Italy to the modern Far East. Yet despite the demonstrable success of this approach, development economists largely ignore it and insist instead on the importance of free trade. Somehow, the thing that made rich nations rich supposedly won't work on poor countries anymore. Leading heterodox economist Erik Reinert's invigorating history of economic development shows how Western economies were founded on protectionism and state activism and only later promoted free trade, when it worked to their advantage. In the tug-of-war between the gospel of government intervention and free-market purists, the issue is not that one is more correct, but that the winning nation tends to favor whatever benefits them most. As Western countries begin to sense that the rules of the game they set were rigged, Reinert's classic book gains new urgency. His unique and edifying approach to the history of economic development is critical reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got here and what to do next, especially now that we aren't so sure we'll be the winners anymore.




Nice Girls Just Don't Get It


Book Description

Offering the same brand of practical, no-holds-barred, expert advice that made Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office an international million-copy bestseller, Nice Girls Just Don't Get It teaches us the skills we need to turn from a nice girl into a winning woman, not just in our careers but in our relationships, families, and everyday lives. Have you ever felt invisible? Taken advantage of? Reluctant (or unable) to articulate what you really want? If so, join the club. The nice girls club. Nice girls—that's right, girls—are those more concerned with pleasing others than with addressing their own needs and haven't yet learned how to overcome the childhood messages cultural stereotypes keeping them from getting their voices heard, their needs met, and the lives they want. This book will turn those nice girls into winning women. That is, women who factor their own needs in with those of others, confront those who treat them disrespectfully, maintain healthy and mutually beneficial relationships with appropriate boundaries— and as a result, are happier and more successful in every area of their life. In 2004, Lois Frankel blew the lid off so many of our long-held ideas about gender and success with her bestselling Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office, which went on to become such a huge phenomenon, the term "nice girls" has secured a place in our cultural lexicon. Here, Frankel teams up with negotiation expert Carol Frohlinger to bring this bestselling advice out of the workplace and provide a broader set of skills that any woman—whether a CEO or stay-at-home mom—can use to win anywhere, with anyone. Presented in the straightforward, digestible format that helped make Nice Girl's Don't Get the Corner Office an instant hit, Frankel and Frohlinger outline seven practical strategies and 99 supporting tactics that every winning woman should know. By the time you've finished reading this book, you'll be able to: • Get your husband to do his half of the household chores—without being made to feel like a nag. • Stop overextending yourself by taking on all the unpleasant tasks no one on your volunteer board, or your team at work will go near. • Win an argument with your mother in law about who will be hosting Christmas dinner. • Have the courage to send back a meal that isn’t prepared the way you’d ordered it. • Confront a colleague who is shirking responsibility or taking credit for your work. • Convince a sales person to reduce a fee, waive a surcharge, or honor a store credit. • Question a doctor’s course or treatment or request a second opinion, instead of simply going along in order to be a “good” patient. • Firmly but politely bow out of an extravagant vacation to celebrate a friend’s birthday that you simply can’t afford–without feeling guilty about it. And so much more. A must-read for anyone who's ever felt taken advantage of by a friend or family member, unappreciated by a spouse or partner, or exploited by a vindictive neighbor or co-worker, Nice Girls Just Don't Get It offers women the indispensable knowledge and skills to get the things they want, the respect they've earned, and the success they deserve. From the Hardcover edition.