Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You...

Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) | David Cay Johnston | A must read for every citizen, regardless of political affiliation!

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Free Lunch: How th...

	Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) David Cay Johnston Portfolio Hardcover, 2007 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 91 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Depressing Stuff - But stuff we need to know

David Cay Johnston has written a book that is as informative as can be, on how big corporations and prominent people, make their living off the taxpayers of the United States. Want to know why you pay more now for electricity? Johnston explains it all. Want to know how you get hoodwinked into giving sports playpens to wealthy team owners? Johnston explains that also. Want to know why the U.S. Taxpayers pick up the tab when Amtrak wrecks on poorly maintained, privately owned rail tracks? Johnston's book tells us why.

David Cay Johnston tells all, on how the U.S. taxpayers pick up the tab for people who make it their life's work --- to live off the U.S. Taxpayer. He also tells, in conclusion, what to do to stop it.

This is a must read, if you are of a mind not to take your tax money and go out in your front yard, and just let it blow away in the wind.

First, the problems, then the solutions. We can, and must change the way we do business in our country.

This book is a start on giving us a roadmap to do that.

Once we accept the fact "The founders did not create America to make us rich." We're on our way.

"Free Lunch" is a great expose on corporate welfare.

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A must read for every citizen, regardless of political affiliation!

My husband and I both read the book with heavy hearts at the information, but the book is very readable. It is an eye-opener and I don't want to vote for anyone at any level of government who has not read this book. We have sent it to our children and in-laws for must reading.

Muckraking in the Twenty-First Century

David C. Johnston is a Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter who hunted a killer the police failed to catch, exposed LAPD abuses, and exposed manipulation of the news at two TV stations. He has become an expert on exposing tax dodges by the wealthy (your taxes go up because of this). Chapter 2 explains why most Americans are worse off than in 1980 (p.10). The average income has fallen since 1973, most Americans are poorer while the wealthiest are richer. Taxes increased for most Americans while taxes decreased for the wealthiest. You can compare this to the rise of an aristocracy (p.11) that rules without competition from a populist party. The role of politics and government is the control of the economy. Its obvious with a king or aristocracy in control, less so when the corporate media shields the ruling class (p.13).

[Johnston doesn't mention the political oppression against third parties over the last century. Only a state-wide political party can challenge the corporate twin-party system. But which one?] The decadence of the media is the result of their monopolies of concentrated ownership (p.15). The swindling of assets by executives (p.16) echoes the Robber Barons of the late 19th century. Are robbers guarding the bank vaults (p.17)? The increase in poverty is bad in itself, and results in more crime and higher taxes. One form of oppression is the lack of historic usury laws. This has caused a skyrocketing rate of bankruptcy (p.19), and an increase in gambling casinos! There is the corruption of contract government workers (p.20). Government subsidies enrich big corporations (Wal-Mart, Target) while they attack local owner-operated businesses (p.21).

The gifts and benefits to the super-rich impoverish the rest of us. It leads to lower wages, lost jobs, higher taxes, disease, bankruptcy, and crime. America has one of the largest prison populations in the world. Compare that to the democracy of the 19th century (p.23). Page 24 has a short list of swindlers. Your higher taxes and lower wages made them rich! It is ironic that those who argue for government subsidies to corporations and monopolies invoke the name of Adam Smith, who was opposed to subsidies and monopolies (p.24)!

Chapter 3 tells how free market ideology injures and kills people (p.28). Does this explain decaying bridges and highways? Railroads are the most deadly form of commercial transportation (p.33). CSX passed it bills to the government (p.35)! Should the US sell important technology to a foreign power (Chapter 4)? Foreign corporate taxes are paid by US citizens (p.41). Johnston is very wrong quoting Karl Polanyi's mis-diagnosis of history (p.52). Chapter 5 explains how public property was seized to enrich a multi-millionaire (p.55)! Tax money paid for this. Johnston is wrong to blame lower property taxes (p.57) for the deliberate ruin of public parks in Los Angeles. Johnston can't connect crime (p.59) to increasing poverty due to political decisions. Chapter 6 explains how commercial sports profit from taxpayers (p.62). Is show business the anodyne of the masses (p.65)? Sports-team subsidies are an attack on the education of children when it leads to closing libraries (p.67). The exemptions to sport leagues are a subsidy to organized crime and gambling syndicates (p.69). Its all perfectly legal because the US Supreme Court said so. [What was their cut?] George Steinbrenner made millions by not building ships (p.74). Chapter 7 explains the swindle that made George W. Bush a millionaire.

The 'Conclusion' lists his suggested cures. He points out the increasing debt load, which is a scam to give your tax money to the rich (p.284). One cure is to tax income from Federal, state, and municipal bonds (the 16th Amendment). The rich won't order new debts once they pay their fair share. Johnston's remarks about the founders (p.285) is laughably ignorant about political history; political repression and revolts are due to economics. Johnston is wrong to claim "finance reform" (p.292) will solve a political problem. The only cure is for citizens to organize a state-wide to provide votes and affect the primary and general elections.

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Sleepless near Seattle

Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill)Please do yourself a favor and don't read this wonderful book. It will make you so angry that you won't be able to sleep at night.

You need to read this book

The most important book I've read since I started reviewing books on Library Thing is The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein. Free Lunch may be the second most important book, and both of these are my top picks for books the next President should take to the White House (a concept stolen from the blog for the PBS show Bill Moyers' Journal).

Free Lunch is an expose by a reporter with over 30 years experience, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist named David Cay Johnston. He details many of the ways the government has, since 1980, given advantages to the wealthy, especially the super wealthy, at the expense of the rest of us. From the sports team investors and other businesses that get subsidies and tax breaks that destroy the ability of local governments to provide services, to the illegality of the government negotiating for the best drug prices, to the deregulation of electric power generation in a way that caused prices to soar while services grew worse, to the horrors of non-profit health care becoming profit-making centers, those with the power to regulate and appropriate have contributed to income inequality as great as it was before the Great Depression.

This book complements well Paul Krugman's Conscience of a Liberal, although that book was a history of the political economy of the U.S. since the Great Depression while this one is on abuses since 1980... yet they overlap in places. In particular, they both tell the same story of the health care industry. Johnston says, "Another study estimated that two-thirds of the administrative costs of for-profit insurers are spent on care denial...Americans spend nearly 6 times the average of what 13 other countries do on health care..." We spend so much on health care so that insurers can REFUSE to pay for health care for those they insure.

If you only read two books this year, my suggestion would be The Shock Doctrine and Free Lunch.

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