Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right
Thomas Frank
Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right
Economic meltdown usually brings calls for change - or it's supposed to. But when Thomas Frank set out to find these, all he heard were loud demands that the losers be hit harder and that the winners get more. We were told for decades that the market knows best, then had a once-in-a-lifetime crash. And now we see a popular uprising supporting free-market principles. As Frank explains, until 2009 the man on the dole did not weep for the man lounging on his yacht. Pity The Billionaire takes us on a wild road-trip through the strange landscape of the American Right, the Tea Party and Glenn Beck, makes sense of a topsy-turvy world and shows how instead of complying with the new speed limit, conservative America has stamped hard on the accelerator.
2.9 out of 5 based on 7 reviews
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Omniscore:
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| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
Business, Finance & Law |
| Format |
Paperback |
| Pages |
224 |
| RRP |
£14.99 |
| Date of Publication |
January 2012 |
| ISBN |
978-1846556029 |
| Publisher |
Harvill Secker |
| |
Economic meltdown usually brings calls for change - or it's supposed to. But when Thomas Frank set out to find these, all he heard were loud demands that the losers be hit harder and that the winners get more. We were told for decades that the market knows best, then had a once-in-a-lifetime crash. And now we see a popular uprising supporting free-market principles. As Frank explains, until 2009 the man on the dole did not weep for the man lounging on his yacht. Pity The Billionaire takes us on a wild road-trip through the strange landscape of the American Right, the Tea Party and Glenn Beck, makes sense of a topsy-turvy world and shows how instead of complying with the new speed limit, conservative America has stamped hard on the accelerator.
The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule by Thomas Frank
Reviews
The Observer
Nick Cohen
"... Frank is one of the best leftwing writers America has produced ... Before I read this book, I assumed that the extremism of the Tea Party would guarantee Obama a second term, however dismal his performance in office had been. Now I am not so sure."
08/01/2012
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The Financial Times
Gillian Tett
"… one shortcoming of Frank’s book is that it was written before the Occupy Wall Street movement gathered momentum; if this has staying power – and that remains a big “if” – it could provide a second focus for protest that echoes, if not rivals, that of the Tea Party. That notwithstanding, Pity the Billionaire deserves to be read by right and left alike. It certainly does not pretend to be neutral or scientific; Frank is an avowed liberal and fierce critic of the Republicans. But the thesis is provocative, and the book is witty and highly readable."
07/01/2012
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The Guardian
David Bromwich
"Thomas Frank writes English and not the chat of the pundits and mainstream columnists. He has learned things from Twain and Mencken, but the cartooning in this book is if anything restrained ... He gives too much time to another right-wing talker, Glenn Beck, who lags a distant third behind Limbaugh and Sean Hannity in radio-listener ratings. On the other hand, he has read all 1,200 pages of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, the allegory of purified capitalism that is easily the most influential book in American politics. Frank makes out a plausible case for the charm of the book as an inverted proletarian novel, with techniques that Rand picked up from her reading of Stalinist fiction."
14/01/2012
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The Washington Post
Dante Chinni
"Frank’s wit is as sharp as ever, and his eye for detail and his ability to capture a scene reminded me of reading zoologist Dian Fossey on a group of strange political primates … But on the whole, Pity the Billionaire feels like a document from a time already gone — from before the appearance of the Occupy movement in the fall. And the book’s big premise — that the conservative right and the tea party are an ascendant force pushed forward by a marching legion of supporters — simply seems less true."
13/01/2012
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The New York Times
Michael Kingsley
"Thomas Frank is the thinking person’s Michael Moore … This is not a book about policy, and Frank shouldn’t be expected to have a 10-point program for reforming the Federal Reserve Board before he allows himself a sarcastic reference to Ben Bernanke. But when he casually uses phrases like “deregulators and free marketeers” to define the bad guys, it does give one pause. For Frank, are government regulations ever excessive? Does he see no merit at all in free trade? Frank surely doesn’t oppose free-market capitalism as a general principle, however much he may dislike Glenn Beck. Or does he? It would have been nice to know a bit more about where Thomas Frank is coming from. Otherwise, he starts to sound like those Tea Party people whom he rightly mocks for being very, very angry with no idea why or what to do about it."
06/01/2012
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The New Statesman
Mark Greif
"Frank insists that the fakery he identifies in the Tea Party's origins and representative, quasi-official writings then provided the vehicle for real hard-times emotion … The difficulty is that Frank never convinces the reader of the meanings and motives of the "genuine" part of the movement. Consequently, his repeated assertion that the Tea Party animus does affect the "masses" or the "millions" ends up reproducing exactly the kind of publicity-seeking rhetoric he says is fake."
09/01/2012
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The New York Times
Michiko Kakutani
"… even Mr. Frank’s more credible arguments here are undermined by his ideological certainty, his reductive logic and his hectoring tone: some of the very qualities he so detests in the conservatives he tries to eviscerate in these pages."
02/01/2012
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