Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World by Peter S. Goodman
“Davos Man” is a relentless examination of how billionaires maintain income inequality while pretending that they share the same interests as everyone else. Global economic correspondent for the New York Times Peter S. Goodman examines how Davos Men write the rules for the rest of the world in the service of their own interests. This infuriating 472-page book includes twenty chapters broken out by the following three parts: I. Global Pillage, II. Profiteering Off a Pandemic, and III. Resetting History.
Positives:
1. A well written, exhaustively researched book. Goodman writes with conviction and clarity.
2. Excellent topic, how billionaires rule the economic world.
3. An excellent Prologue that sets the tone for the rest of the book. “My mission is to help you understand Davos Man as a species. He is a rare and remarkable creature—a predator who attacks without restraint, perpetually intent on expanding his territory and seizing the nourishment of others, while protecting himself from reprisal by posing as a symbiotic friend to all.”
4. Describes clearly the most important term of the book, Davos Man. “The term Davos Man was coined in 2004 by the political scientist Samuel Huntington. He used it to describe those so enriched by globalization and so native to its workings that they were effectively stateless, their interests and wealth flowing across borders, their estates and yachts sprinkled across continents, their arsenal of lobbyists and accountants straddling jurisdictions, eliminating loyalty to any particular nation.”
5. The author focuses on five Davos Men: Bezos, Dimon, Benioff, Schwarzman, and Fink. This helps the reader understand how they operate and how they use their influence and power to rig the system in their favor.
6. Income inequality is a recurring theme throughout the book. “Over the last four decades, the wealthiest 1 percent3 of all Americans has gained a collective $21 trillion in wealth. Over the same period, households in the bottom half have seen their fortunes diminish by $900 billion.”
7. Interesting look at how language is used to hide ulterior motive. “The word stakeholder is a talisman for Davos Man, its usage evidencing high-minded principles. It is a demonstration that the speaker cares about loftier matters than the crude enrichment of shareholders.”
8. Describes how Davos Man poisoned globalization by making shareholders the center of the economic universe. “The new investors installed their own managers, employing a playbook engineered to lift stock prices: shrink the workforce and shutter less profitable operations. Given that executive compensation was increasingly tied to share prices, managers had a powerful incentive to strip out costs like paychecks, knowing that their own pay would rise in response.”
9. Examines the impetus behind Brexit. “Moreover, his tribe, the Davos Men who ran global finance, were responsible for the anger that had set Brexit in motion: publicly financed bailouts that spared bankers from the consequences of their disastrous speculation, followed by budget austerity for all.”
10. The Cosmic Lie defined. “Davos Man’s monopolization of the fruits of global capitalism is no accident. He has insinuated into our politics and culture what we may call the Cosmic Lie: the alluring yet demonstrably bogus idea that cutting taxes and deregulating markets will not only produce extra riches for the most affluent, but trickle the benefits down to the lucky masses—something that has, in real life, happened zero times.”
11. Immigration, a common global right wing attack. “Like nearly everywhere else, Davos Man had captured the upper hand in Sweden, persuading the government to slash taxes for the wealthy. Economic inequality was widening. Public services were stretched, sowing popular unhappiness. This had created an opportunity for a right-wing party with roots in the neo-Nazi movement, the Sweden Democrats. The movement was gaining support by blaming Sweden’s problems on immigrants. Much like in France, Italy, and the United States, this formulation proved highly effective in capturing votes, but its explanatory power was misdirected.”
12. Trump, white supremacy and Davos Man protecting their interests. “The panel of CEOs Trump had convened to advise him at the beginning of his term, headed by Schwarzman, had been abruptly disbanded, after the president expressed sympathy for white supremacists and neo-Nazis who had marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. The business leaders could not countenance the optics of counseling a president who had described as “very fine people” the participants in a violent parade that had featured displays of swastikas and chants of “Jews will not replace us.”
13. Describes how Davos Man decimates health care. “Private equity players purchased entire medical practices (while establishing sham structures that kept doctors legally in control to avoid tripping state prohibitions). The industry focused on expensive specialties like plastic surgery, dermatology, and cardiac surgery. It captured ambulance services.” “They introduced metrics that encouraged doctors to operate like units of business, focusing on enhancing revenue rather than prioritizing health.”
14. How Davos Man takes advantage of crisis for profit. “The $2.2 trillion measure Trump signed into law in late March 2020 was titled the CARES Act, for Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. It was an appropriately slippery acronym for a piece of legislation that would go down in history as a prime example of monied interests exploiting a catastrophe for elaborate gain at public expense.”
15. Exposes the hypocrisy of the Davos Man. “They had benefited from public goods financed by taxpayers—the schools that educated their employees; the internet, developed by publicly funded research; the roads, the bridges, and the rest of modern infrastructure, which enabled commerce—and then deployed their lobbyists, accountants, and lawyers to master legal forms of tax evasion that starved the system.”
16. Provocative questions that resonate. “Here is the central problem as the world contemplates life after a public health disaster made more lethal by the predation of Davos Man: how can democratic societies attack inequality when democracy itself is under the control of the people who possess most of the money?
17. Discusses potential solutions to income inequality. “Mondragon was governed by an agreement that the top management salary was limited to six times the wages of the lowest paid worker, as compared to a ratio of more than 300 to 12 among publicly traded companies in the United States. The laborers owned the company as partners, receiving annual shares of profit. If one business hit hard times, partners could find work at the other cooperatives.”
18. Discusses the merits of universal basic income. “Basic income would serve as a broad form of social insurance.”
19. Breaking up monopolies for the greater good of society. “As president, Roosevelt sicced his Justice Department on the Robber Barons, prosecuting them for corruption and tax evasion. He reinvigorated the Federal Trade Commission, which sued to break up monopolies. He helped farmers keep their land by establishing a government system that offered cut-rate mortgages. These policies prepared the ground for a sustained period of economic growth whose benefits were widely shared.”
20. Holding billionaires accountable by making sure they pay their fair share of taxes. “We have allowed Davos Man to dominate, and the results are in: Cutting taxes on the wealthy has proved disastrous for the vast majority of ordinary people. It has not promoted growth. It has not yielded increased wages for rank-and-file workers. It has largely produced more wealth for the people who already had most of it.”
Negatives:
1. At over 400 pages it will require an investment of your time.
2. Lack of visual supplementary materials.
3. Some redundancy.
In summary, an excellent book that accurately describes how billionaires set the rules in their best interest while presenting themselves as caring about the planet and the average person. Goodman tracks five key specimens: Bezos, Dimon, Benioff, Schwarzman, and Fink while playing special attention to the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, and Sweden. The book goes beyond the most privileged in our society by providing specific representation of those victimized by their exploits. If you care about economic inequality this is a terrific contribution to the topic. I highly recommend it!
Further recommendations: “People, Power, and Profits”, “The Price of Inequality” and “The Great Divide” by Joseph E. Stiglitz, “Aftershock” and “Saving Capitalism” by Robert B. Reich, “Winner-Take All Politics” by Jacob S. Hacker, “Screwed the Undeclared War Against the Middle Class” by Thom Hartmann, “Perfectly Legal…” by David Cay Johnston, “The Six Facts that Matter” by Geoffrey Sanzenbacher, “The Looting of America” by Les Leopold and “The Great American Stickup” by Robert Scheer.
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So good.. so far
Only a quarter of the way through the book but it's great so far. I'll update once I finish.Wish I would have bought the book from a store though! There are pages not cut properly in my copy :(
