Title: Winners Take All Pdf The Elite Charade of Changing the World
Author: Anand Giridharadas
Published Date: 2019-05-07
Page: 304
A New York Times bestseller | Named one of The New York Times "100 Notable Books of 2018" | Named one of NPR's "Best Books of 2018" | Named one of the Financial Times "Books of the Year" | Named one of The Washington Post's "50 Notable Works of Nonfiction" | One of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Best International Nonfiction” books of 2018 | One of the GreenBiz “10 Best Climate and Business Books of 2018”“Entertaining and gripping . . . For those at the helm, the philanthropic plutocrats and aspiring 'change agents' who believe they are helping but are actually making things worse, it’s time for a reckoning with their role in this spiraling dilemma. I suggest they might want to read a copy of this book while in the Hamptons this summer.” —Joseph E. Stiglitz, The New York Times Book Review “Anand Giridharadas takes a swipe at the global elite in a trenchant, provocative and well-researched book about the people who are notionally generating social change . . . Read it and beware.” —Martha Lane Fox, Financial Times, “Books of the Year 2018”“Impassioned . . . That Giridharadas questions an idea that has become part of the air we breathe is alone worth the price of the book, and his delicious skewering of the many who exalt their own goodness while making money from dubious business practices makes for entertaining reading.” —Bethany McLean, The Washington Post“One of the most insightful and provocative books about what’s going on in America that I’ve read in years.” —Senator Brian Schatz (Hawaii)“The past years have seen some outstanding books on how philanthropists and their dollars have shaped public policy . . . [Anand Giridharadas] zeros in on what he sees as a glaring hypocrisy among affluent elites: that while many well-meaning (and well-off) Americans claim to want to improve society's inequalities, they don't challenge the structures that preserve that inequality, not wanting to jeopardize their own privileged positions.” —Jessica Smith, NPR, “Best Books of 2018” “Important . . . [An] empathic tone gives the book its persuasive power to touch the hearts of even those readers, like myself, who are the targets of its criticism.” —Mark Kramer, Stanford Social Innovation Review“An extraordinarily important book.” —Lydia Polgreen, editor-in-chief, Huffington Post“Important . . . [Winners Take All] levels a devastating attack on philanthrocapitalism.” —Benjamin Soskis, The Chronicle of Philanthropy“Indispensable . . . A lacerating critique.” —Chris Lehmann, In These Times“Provocative and passionate . . . This damning portrait of contemporary American philanthropy is a must-read for anyone interested in ‘changing the world.’” —Publishers Weekly (boxed and starred review)“A challenging, provocative & bold book. I don’t agree with all of Anand’s critiques . . . but I encourage everyone to read the book & think hard about his take on the social sector.” —Mark Tercek, CEO, The Nature Conservancy“Giridharadas makes a compelling case . . . [He] ultimately succeeds with Winners Take All by adopting a temperate approach that creates space for a conversation.” —David Talbot, Los Angeles Review of Books“Anyone following the debate about the role of philanthrocapitalists, corporate foundations or tech billionaires in solving the world's problems will want to watch for this new book.” —Jena McGregor, The Washington Post“[A] landmark new book.” —Darren Walker, president, The Ford Foundation “[Giridharadas] has delivered a clarion call that will be a fixture on my syllabus and bookshelf.” —Megan Tompkins-Stange, assistant professor, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan“This is a very difficult subject to tackle, but Giridharadas executes it brilliantly . . . This must-have title will be of great interest to readers, from students to professionals and everyone in-between, interested in solutions to today’s complex problems . . . Winners Take All will be the starting point of conversations private and in groups on alternatives to the status quo and calls to action. An excellent book for troubled times.” —Booklist“In Anand’s thought-provoking book his fresh perspective on solving complex societal problems is admirable. I appreciate his commitment and dedication to spreading social justice.” —Bill Gates“An insightful and refreshing perspective on some of the most vexing issues this nation confronts. This is an important book from a gifted writer whose honest exploration of complex problems provides urgently needed clarity in an increasingly confusing era.” —Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy“A trenchant, humane, and often revelatory investigation by one of the wisest nonfiction writers going.” —Katherine Boo, author of Behind the Beautiful Forevers“Winners Take All is the book I have been waiting for—the most important intervention yet regarding elite-driven solutions, a vitally important problem to expose. The book courageously answers so many of the critical questions about how, despite much good will and many good people, we struggle to achieve progress in twenty-first-century America. If you want to be part of the solution, you should read this book.” —Ai-jen Poo, director, National Domestic Workers Alliance “A brilliant, rising voice of our era takes us on a journey among the global elite in his search for understanding of our tragic disconnect. Thought-provoking, expansive, and timely.” —Isabel Wilkerson, author, The Warmth of Other Suns“Winners Take All boldly exposes one of the great if little-reported scandals of the age of globalization: the domestication of the life of the mind by political and financial power and the substitution of ‘thought leaders’ for critical thinkers. It not only reorients us as we lurch out of a long ideological intoxication; it also embodies the values—intellectual autonomy and dissent—that we need to build a just society.” —Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger“In this trenchant and timely book, Anand Giridharadas shows how the winners of global capitalism seek to help the losers, but without disturbing the market-friendly arrangements that keep the winners on top. He gives us an incisive critique of corporate-sponsored charities that promote frictionless ‘win-win’ solutions to the world’s problems but disdain the hard, contentious work of democratic politics. An indispensable guide for those perplexed by the rising public anger toward ‘change-making’ elites.” —Michael J. Sandel, author of What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets ANAND GIRIDHARADAS is the author of The True American and India Calling. He was a foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times from 2005 to 2016, and has also written for The Atlantic, The New Republic, and The New Yorker. He is an Aspen Institute fellow, an on-air political analyst for MSNBC, and a former McKinsey analyst. He teaches journalism at New York University and has spoken on the main stage of TED. His writing has been honored by the Society of Publishers in Asia, the Poynter Fellowship at Yale, and the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Award. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Former New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for equality and justice any way they can--except ways that threaten the social order and their position atop it. We see how they rebrand themselves as saviors of the poor; how they lavishly reward "thought leaders" who redefine "change" in winner-friendly ways; and how they constantly seek to do more good but never less harm. We hear the limousine confessions of a celebrated foundation boss; witness an American president hem and haw about his plutocratic benefactors; and attend a cruise-ship conference where entrepreneurs celebrate their own self-interested magnanimity.
Giridharadas asks hard questions: Why, for example, should our gravest problems be solved by the unelected upper crust instead of the public institutions it erodes by lobbying and dodging taxes? He also points toward an answer: Rather than rely on scraps from the winners, we must take on the grueling democratic work of building more robust, egalitarian institutions and truly changing the world--a call to action for elites and everyday citizens alike.
Do the Davos and Aspen set really call the shots in America? I picked up this book thinking it was about me and my friends. It's not, though. Despite the subtitle, Winners Take All is not about the entrepreneurs and investors who are involved in socially responsible businesses whose mission is to change the world. The sole exception is the author's brief excursion in the epilogue into the B Corporation movement, in which I've been involved since the beginning. And he appears not to understand what B Corps are about."Elite-led, market-friendly, winner-safe social change"In Winners Take All, author Anand Giridharadas zeroes in on growing economic inequality in America. As he notes at the outset, "When the fruits of change have fallen on the United States in recent decades, the very fortunate have basketed almost all of them." His culprit? "Elite-led, market-friendly, winner-safe social change." This is the set of beliefs held by the people who attend the World Economic Forum at Davos and gather at such other places as Aspen and the Clinton Global Initiative. In reviewing this book for the New York Times, Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stieglitz described them as "an elite that, rather than pushing for systemic change, only reinforces our lopsided economic reality—all while hobnobbing on the conference circuit and trafficking in platitudes." Giridharadas calls their mindset MarketWorld."An ascendant power elite" that seeks to do good by doing well"MarketWorld," he explains, "is an ascendant power elite that is defined by the concurrent drives to do well and do good, to change the world while also profiting from the status quo. It consists of enlightened businesspeople and their collaborators in the worlds of charity, academia, media government, and think tanks."Giridharadas takes on the elite consulting firms as well, citing McKinsey and its peers in the industry as among the culprits. The values they all promote are those of the marketplace; its proponents always talk about opportunities to solve problems, never about those who are responsible for creating the problems in the first place. The author distinguishes between public intellectuals (good) and thought leaders (bad). In his view, the former are primarily academics free of commercial influences. The latter have fallen for MarketWorld values, hook, line, and sinker. And that strikes me as simplistic. It would be naive to imply that major corporations haven't made inroads into academia.The eight billionaires who own half the world's wealth are an easy targetAuthor Anand Giridharadas aims his most powerful broadsides at easy targets such as the multimillionaire and billionaire leaders of the tech and financial industries. Can anyone seriously argue that Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Goldman Sachs are addressing the economic inequality that Giridharadas identifies as the central issue? No matter what their leaders say, they're clearly part of the problem, not the solution.As I write today, Jeff Bezos of Amazon can claim a net worth of $162.9 billion. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is "worth" $60.4 billion. The Google guys, Larry Page and Sergei Brin, weigh in at $54.1 billion and $52.7 billion, respectively. These four men are among the eight billionaires whose collective net worth is equal to all the wealth of half of the world's population. Yes, just eight billionaires. And Goldman Sachs possesses assets of nearly $1 trillion. How could anyone suggest that these people would even consider lobbying the federal government to adopt policies that would lessen economic inequality in America? Yet Giridharadas complains that they don't.Winners Take All is based on the premise that these would-be do-gooders call the shots in the American economy and dominate the political debate. The author implies that economic inequality would quickly shrink if these folks were to work for genuine social change. However, this is far from the truth. Most wealthy people in the United States are conservative Republicans who do not pretend to be change agents. And they exert far greater power and influence in American society than the Davos and Aspen set. In today's political discourse, the Heritage Foundation and its peers among Right-Wing think tanks and the institutions of the Christian Right wield far more power in setting government policy at both the federal and state levels than the "enlightened elite" Giridharadas writes about.Bill Clinton's central role in making the problem immeasurably worseIn the author's view, it's not just clueless businessmen or Republicans who are at fault. Bill Clinton also comes in for justifiable criticism. His "Third Way" between left and right effectively reversed the Democratic Party's commitment to helping the less fortunate in our society. Remember mass incarceration? Financial deregulation? So-called welfare "reform?" Bill Clinton institutionalized the neoliberal consensus that Ronald Reagan had brought to the White House a decade previously—and the consequences were devastating, years before Donald Trump entered the political scene. On this point, Giridharadas is right on the money. (Pun intended.)Just for example, deregulation, including the repeal of Glass-Steagall, was among the root causes of the Great Recession that struck in 2008. Don't forget that millions lost their homes, and millions more lost their jobs, in that calamitous economic downturn. Democrat or Republican—it doesn't seem to matter. Not a single US President over the past half century has taken any significant step to address America’s growing inequality in wealth and income. Barack Obama was by far the best of them, but he also:** named as his top economic advisers many of the same people whose policies in the 90s brought down the economy in the 2000s;** prevented the prosecution of the bankers who caused the crash; and**failed to question the prevailing bipartisan love affair with Corporate America.Who will lead society toward viable solutions?Here's the crux of the matter, as Giridharadas sees it: "What is at stake is whether the reform of our common life is led by governments elected by and accountable to the people, or rather by wealthy elites claiming to know our best interests." It doesn't matter how well-intentioned they might make themselves out to be. If they don't actively work to raise estate and income taxes, drive private money out of politics, provide universal free healthcare, and work to elect people committed to serving the majority of America's people, they're part of the problem. Nothing else they do can be a solution. And to that I say amen.What other reviewers say about the book** In his review of the book, Joseph Stieglitz notes that "Giridharadas is careful not to offend. He writes on two levels—seemingly tactful and subtle—but ultimately he presents a devastating portrait of a whole class, one easier to satirize than to reform."** Kirkus Reviews leads its commentary with this: "Give a hungry man a fish, and you get to pat yourself on the back—and take a tax deduction." The review concludes that Winners Take All is "A provocative critique of the kind of modern, feel-good giving that addresses symptoms and not causes."** Writing in Forbes, B Lab co-founder and managing partner Jay Coen Gilbert terms Winners Take All a "new and important book." Before launching into a defense of Certified B Corporations, Gilbert notes that "In provocative style and with compelling substance, Giridharadas speaks truth to power, calling elites to account for giving so much lip service to 'changing the world,' while mostly upholding an unacceptable status quo."A self-help book for the uber wealthy and all who profess to be change agents Winners Take All is a self-help book for the uber wealthy. I say this somewhat in jest, but, as Anand Giridharadas writes in his acknowledgements, his purpose for writing this book was as an “inquiry into the apparatus of justification” that permits the wealthy to win at all costs, including extractive business practices that result in growing inequality and environmental damage, only to position themselves as having the answers to the problems that they have contributed to creating and accelerating. While his focus is on the uber wealthy, Giridharadas tenaciously exposes a universal human deficit: We all struggle to recognize our two selves—the person we aspire to be and the person we are. What continuously came up for me as I read Winners Take All is the need people have to be seen as good, but not being able to make the personal sacrifices (i.e. not winning) that real goodness demands.This is, by far, one of the most important books published in the 21st century. Giridharadas articulates, with great storytelling, the illusion that has gripped us—particularly Americans,—allowing, if not engineering, injustice and inequality into our way of life: There are several ways to define it, including market mindset or really materialism where money elevates the monied by virtue of their market acumen to rule. He calls them MarketWorlders—people who apply a market perspective to solving social issues. Winners Take All offers all of us who have ever dreamt of changing the world to interrogate our motives, to think about who we are inviting to the table, and to understand that who we are, the experiences we’ve had, and the questions we ask or don’t ask determine the who, what, when, where and how of change. And if the only change we can imagine insists on us not losing comfort, reputation, influence, power, and so on, then we’ve already limited the change that is possible.Philanthropy Helps You Stand on Your Own Two Knees As someone who has spent many years seeking/securing grants from foundations, and almost 12 years working as a senior program officer at a large community and large private foundation, I believe my "headline," while humorous, sums up my understanding of philanthropy and one of the major themes of Winners Take All. I share another concern well described by Anand, namely, the extremely serious abdication of public responsibility for basic human needs. In large part, this is because the very rich, the gatekeepers they employ, and their political allies have intentionally worked to limit the viability of our public sector since the Reagan presidency. In fact, as Anand also notes, this has been done in various ways since the early part of the 20th century when the first large foundations were created by Rockefeller and Carnegie. I believe Anand would agree with my view that the rich use philanthropy and the entire nonprofit sector as a diversion from a strong public sector which, in these times, would be at least some form of American social democracy. If I could afford it, I would buy copies of Winners Take All for anyone who wants to understand the role of charity and philanthropy in maintaining existing power relations by limiting the power and effectiveness of a viable, democratic public sector. We must address the dominance of unaccountable, self-serving elites with democratic, public alternatives as Anand so brilliantly, courageously, and elegantly elucidates in Winners Take All.
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