Monopoly restored : how the super-rich robbed Main Street / Jack Lawrence Luzkow.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Luzkow, Jack Lawrence, 1941- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Liberalism--United States.

Liberalism.

Liberalism--Great Britain.

Capitalism.

History.

Politics and government.

United States--Politics and government--21st century.

United States.

Great Britain--Politics and government--21st century.

Great Britain.

Capitalism--United States--History.

Capitalism--Great Britain--History.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 384 pages)

Place of Publication:

Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

This book is a work of contemporary economic history focusing primarily on the US and the UK. It shows that, historically, much of the wealth of the ultra-wealthy has been based on inheritance, tax evasion, political influence, or wage theft. Today, much of the wealth of the rentier class--the super-rich--is based on income from ownership or control of scarce assets, or assets artificially made scarce. As a result, the super-rich reap much of their wealth from patents, monopolies, and subsidies. Their banks retain the right to speculate on risky derivatives, and their credit-card companies are not limited by usury laws that reduce interest rates. The super-rich have lowered (or escaped) inheritance taxes, shifted much of their income to lower taxed capital gains, practiced wage theft, fought minimum wage laws, outsourced jobs, and resorted to temps and contract labor to avoid unions and decent wages. They use tax havens where trillions of dollars remain untaxed, transfer profits of their intellectual and financial property to subsidiaries in low-tax regimes, and defend for-profit health insurance that is unaffordable and inequitable for millions. This book states in qualitative and quantitative terms how expensive the super-rich have become, why they are unsustainable for the rest of us, and what the way forward to greater economic equality may be. In sum, the super-rich are unaffordable.

Contents:

Intro; Contents; Chapter 1 Introduction; Bibliography; Chapter 2 Democracy Corrupted; Introduction; Super-Rich Rentiers and Inequality; From the Great Transformation to Neoliberalism and the Rentier Economy; Oligarchy and the Commodification of Everything; Plutocrats: Unleashing Capital, Regulating Labor, Capturing the State; Oligarchs: The Party Is Over; How Wall Street Crushed Main Street and Corrupted Democracy; The New Oligarchs and the Dismantling of Democracy; New Monopoly Rent Seekers; Conclusion; Bibliography; Chapter 3 The Rise and Rise of Wall Street and the City of London

IntroductionDeregulating Banks; The Repeal of Glass-Steagall; Bank Deregulation Continues: Derivatives and Beyond; "The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One"; Monopoly Restored: How Big Banks Became Bigger; Reduced Anti-trust Enforcement; The Great Bank Robbery in the UK: The City of London; Cost of the Great Recession and the Super-Rich in the UK; Conclusion; Bibliography; Chapter 4 The Ascendancy of the Corporate Elite; Introduction; Executives Wanted: No Experience Necessary, Past Non-performance a Plus; CEOs, Boards of Directors and Their Incestuous Relationships

The Rise and Rise of Corporate Executive PayPrivate Equity: Stealing Wealth by Firing Workers-The New "Flexible Labor Force"; Conclusion; Bibliography; Chapter 5 The Decline of Main Street and the Middle Class; Introduction; Neoliberalism, Reaganism, Thatcherism and the Decline of Workers and Wages; Rentier Capitalism: How the Corporate Super-Rich Plundered Everybody Else; Class Struggle: How Income Gushes Up and Trickles Down; The Case of Apple: Jobs Creation?; Unequal Work, Unequal Lives: Why the Middle Class Got Poor and Poorer; Goodbye to the "Middle Class?"

The Vanished Working Class and the Decline of UnionsThe Growth of the Precarious Classes (Precariat); Broken Britain and Broken America; Wage Theft; The Age of Permanent Temps and Permanent Risk; Conclusion; Bibliography; Chapter 6 The Politics of Taxes; Introduction; Taxes: Subsidizing the Super-Rich; Big Business: How It Evades Taxes; Tax Havens: How Taxpayers Unwittingly Subsidize Big Business; Tax Havens, Offshore Subsidiaries, and Lobbyists; Apple Incorporated: The High Art Tax Avoidance; The Great Tax Shift from the Rich to the Rest: Individual Income Taxes

How the UK Super-Rich Evade TaxesThe Super-Rich Should Not Pay Taxes on Their Money!; Tax Relief for the Super-Rich? Raise Taxes on Everybody Else; Inheritance and Wealth Taxes: How the Super-Rich Became Shirkers; Conclusion; Bibliography; Chapter 7 The Business of Healthcare; Introduction; How Healthcare Became a Business Instead of a Right; How the Super-Rich Extort Wealth from Health and Create Inequality; How the British Super-Rich Corrupt Healthcare; Privatized Healthcare Is Unhealthy, Expensive, Inefficient, and Unfair; Big Pharma: Getting Drugged by the Super-Rich

Notes:

Includes index.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (Ebsco, viewed July 24, 2018).

ISBN:

9783319939940

3319939947

OCLC:

1045426301

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.