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    Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right
    Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right
    Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right
    Audiobook5 hours

    Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right

    Written by Thomas Frank

    Narrated by Thomas Frank

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    From the bestselling author of What's the Matter with Kansas?, a wonderfully insightful and sardonic look at how the worst economy since the 1930s has brought about the revival of conservatism

    Economic catastrophe usually brings social protest and demands for change—or at least it's supposed to. But when Thomas Frank set out in 2009 to look for expressions of American discontent, all he could find were loud demands that the economic system be made even harsher on the recession's victims and that society's traditional winners receive even grander prizes. The American right, which had seemed moribund after the election of 2008, was strangely reinvigorated by the arrival of hard times. The Tea Party movement demanded not that we question the failed system but that we reaffirm our commitment to it. Republicans in Congress embarked on a bold strategy of total opposition to the liberal state. And TV phenom Glenn Beck demonstrated the commercial potential of heroic paranoia and the purest libertarian economics.

    In Pity the Billionaire, Frank, the great chronicler of American paradox, examines the peculiar mechanism by which dire economic circumstances have delivered wildly unexpected political results. Using firsthand reporting, a deep knowledge of the American right, and a wicked sense of humor, he gives us the first full diagnosis of the cultural malady that has transformed collapse into profit, reconceived the Founding Fathers as heroes from an Ayn Rand novel, and enlisted the powerless in a fan club for the prosperous. What it portends is ominous for both our economic health and our democracy.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateJan 3, 2012
    ISBN9781427214768
    Author

    Thomas Frank

    Thomas Frank is a student success author, YouTuber, and speaker who has been helping college students achieve their goals since 2010. He is the founder of College Info Geek, a blog, YouTube channel, and podcast that reaches over 600,000 students each month, and has been featured on U.S. News, FOX Business’ The Willis Report, Business Insider, and more. Thomas graduated from Iowa State University with a degree in MIS. He spends his days making videos, skateboarding, and resisting the temptation to buy a trampoline.

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    Reviews for Pity the Billionaire

    3.5/5

    76 ratings11 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I don't often read current-affairs books, even when I already know I'll agree with them, because what I see in the daily headlines makes me mad enough. I picked up this one because an article in our local paper pointed out that Thomas Frank wrote much of it in the very Port Townsend Public Library where I checked it out. Now, I've followed Frank since Baffler #6 way back in '95 (and by the way, it's pretty amazing that they kept my subscription live through fires, multi-year hiatuses in publishing, changes of editors, and changes of publishers), so it was a surprise to learn he'd been doing his thing right down the street. We do get a couple name-checks, but that's about it; he doesn't weigh in on our local controversies about parks and paper mills.

      It's a short book and it covers a pretty specific territory: how in 2008-2011 the GOP and the Tea Party, having learned from the Great Depression, hijacked the left's appeal to the "common man" and redirected it to support their own obscenely rich funders, the very financiers and corporations who caused the financial crisis in the first place. The book's not going to convince anyone new that this happened, not least because if they don't believe it already they won't touch this book with a ten-foot pole, let alone read it and change their minds. But it does show, step by step, the strategic and rhetorical moves that the right-wing ravers used to turn things their way, and at least a few of the myriad opportunities that progressives missed to stop them.

      It's far from over, but the worst of the damage is already done: the Tea Party took over the House in 2010, even Obama's watered-down health-insurance reform is on the ropes, and financial-industry regulation is off the table. Obama will be re-elected this year only because the Republicans are so fractured and pathetic, but four more years will not be enough for him to claw actual progressive policies back from the libertarian capitalist ideologies which have taken over American politics. Assuming he would want to, anyway.

      It's a good book; Frank displays his usual wit and thorough research. But the kind of people likely to read it are liable to end up depressed and apprehensive about the future.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Thomas Frank brings the absurdities of the Right to the fore front in his latest book. Frank shows us how despite having almost brought the the economy to a crashing halt, the revitalized Right would have thinking the people who brought us to the brink are the victims here. That the broker/trader down on Wall St. is the salt of the earth, some kind of modern day farmer or laborer.Frank brings us a lot of scary information in a humorous way. To present some of the ideas and concepts(Glen Beck, anyone?) of the right without the humor is almost to much to process.Anyone with a shred of common sense and a lack of a Fox view of the world will certainly enjoy Frank's latest offering.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Frank's newest book is a well-researched and cogently argued story of the cognitive dissonance inherent in contemporary conservativism. Frank takes on the usual cast of characters--the Tea Party, the Koch brothers, Dick Armey, Glenn Beck, etc.--and paints a vivid picture of the crass corporate-backed pseudo-populism that seeks to defend the very financial institutions that caused the economic meltdown in the first place. If there's a problem with the book, it's that Frank isn't really telling us anything new. Basically, it's no different than any of the hundreds of similar articles in The Atlantic or Salon.com, articles that make the same point in a lot less than 187 pages.
    • 3/5
      Harmless but redudant book. Many books have been written which deal with more substantive issues than how morons become fascinated with the ravings of the political right. There is no cure for stupidity - it's a life sentence, unforntunately. The dirt stupid are out there in significant numbers - they are not going away. Whenever a Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich or Glenn Beck has something absurd to say there will always be plenty of empty heads to suck up every word.
    • 3/5
      LIghtweight but probably perceptive, and sometimes entertainingly sarcastic, rant.
    • 4/5
      Thomas Frank explores the ways in which the crash of 2008 and ensuing great recession failed to lead to a populist revolt against capitalists nor for greater government intervention into the economy, as it has in past recessions. In fact, we got the Tea Party instead where the government was blamed for over-regulating business and banking instead. Frank examines the common explanations for the rise of the Tea Party, dismisses them, and proposes the long growing movement that paints capitalists as victims of government overreach drawing from the works of neoliberal economists and Ayn Rand. It's all very interesting, and well-composed, although nothing I've not read before. My favorite part of the book turned out to be the last chapter where Thomas Frank condemns the Democratic Party for failing to have any populist ideology to counter the right, nor drawing on what made them successful in past recessions, while at the same time maintaining cozy relations with Big Business. The Democrats failure to act on the historic principles of their party makes it somewhat plausible that they can be blamed for being affiliated with the banks that bankrupted the country while at the same time too strictly regulating those banks.
    • 1/5
      This book is not enjoyable. The narrative is full of gutter-level abuse flowing from Thomas Frank's rage over the bailouts. Only in Chapter 10 I think, Frank exhibits some coherence where he observes Obama no different from Wall Street. Some notes:1. No mention of how oil prices started the crisis.2. End times scenarios fair enough and seems to recognize lean years follow fat years naturally, but seems irked by how some escaped in the bailout.3. Financial derivatives are truly innovations and genuine markets for these develop, succeed, or fail like any other markets, but the book doesn't seem to appreciate this.4. Mortgage industry serves a real need in the economy and the abuses chosen are not representative of the industry, , nor does it sufficiently detail the complexity of the mortgage industry and history that justified the bailouts.5. Why bubbles are not ordinary if caused by financial innovation? They are as legitimate and ordinary as bubbles caused by industrial innovation (fibre optic for dot.com).6. The conservative response is not unique, it is a response to left wing excesses. There cannot be any innovation in the economy without private capital. The book doesn't make a distinction between agents or inside traders who were the main culprits, the innocent outsiders who get trapped, and genuine private capital who had no part in the abuse, as it would have been detrimental to their own wealth.7. The non-linear dynamics and complexity of the economy escapes the author's 'straight cause and effect' logic.8. If both republican and democrats were complacent during boom years and naturally driven to innovation, then what we can on do now is to learn from experience and bring about corrective measure to curb abuse, such as imposing automatic limits which kick in during boom times.9. 'Financial establishment' is not one big monolithic beast but and complex set of memes and heterogeneous agents whose dynamic organization as private markets is the epitome of human civilization, productivity. Correctly, I think Hayek termed it an utopia, alluding to Marx's own utopia and Darwinian evolutionary processes.10. If the bailouts had not been done, we would have slipped into a true depression.- MK.
    • 4/5
      In "Pity the Billionaire," Thomas Frank, columnist and author who began his journey on the conservative end of the spectrum then gravitated toward left-of-center, writes a scathing satirical critique of the GOP's response to the financial crisis of 2008-9. While in his earlier book "What's the Matter with Kansas" he gave an incisive, yet witty critique of the far right's moral issues crusade and it's real motivations, or the dismantling of govt in "The Wrecking Crew," in "Pity the Billionaire" he takes on the efforts of the far right to paint the debate as one of "class warfare." rather than the unprecedented greed, tax evasion and the ensuing willful misinformation campaign that is the actual reality of the situation.Frank is a clever, thoughtful, and articulate writer. He has also had some interesting guest appearances on shows like Real Time with Bill Maher and others. As a progressive-leaning moderate, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. He doesn't leave Democrats unscathed either- he critiques what he perceives to be their short-comings on healthcare reform, for instance, while also almost mocking the mediocrity and lack of a bold vision for leadership. To be fair, he does construct quite a straw man of the monied interests of the right in order to then tear it down, but, then again, that is an essential component of any satirical writing- so be forewarned, "Pity the Billionaire" is deeply satirical, but great reading! The word schadenfreude also comes to mind as he laments the "suffering" of the wealthiest...as they shed their crocodile tears all the way to the bank...or in Mitt Romney's case, his post office box in the Cayman Islands.
    • 2/5
      Pity the Billionaire: a better title would be Pity the Listener. I'm not a conservative. I'm not a liberal. And I'm definitely not a fan of the whiney, mocking delivery of conservatives like Limbaugh and Beck-- or through most of this book, of Thomas Frank, who stands politically opposite and criticizes, but also stylistically echoes, both conservative babblers. I wish I would've researched the author a little more before jumping into this five disc book, which I almost abandoned countless times. The contents of the book I don't necessarily disagree with, and had I read this in print I probably would've had a higher opinion. The best parts of this work are at the end with Frank's critiques of the Democrat's handling of the health care negotiations and Wall Street bailouts, where he offers reasoned insight. However, the whining, mocking, "can you believe these idiots?" delivery really churned my stomach throughout. This is a book definitely pointed to a specific audience with little hope of convincing anyone on the right to a more moderate, centrist view. A pity, indeed, for a country that could use more reconciliation than mockery. Not recommended.
    • 4/5
      I think what saves 'Pity the billionaire' from being just an all out rant against the conservative right is the last chapter where Frank takes on the current Obama administration for being co-opted or too weak to stand against the same policies set in place by the neo liberal/conservative free market ideologues that have run our economy right into the ground. It is easy to pick on the Glenn Beck's of the world and Frank does a lot of that and I have to say his evisceration of Ayn Rand's fictional world was very much appreciated but the real context for me came in the last chapter because if we are truly going to turn things around--we have to see how many of the representatives of the so-called left--democrats are really wolves in sheep's clothing. Frank does a lot of targeting of the tea partyistas--and I'm not a fan of theirs either (and they have almost become puppets of the Koch brothers) but giving credit where it's due they did at least originally have some worthy points to make. I do support most at least of what the Occupy protesters have voiced but those protests apparently came after this particular book went to the publishers. Anyway I liked the gist of most of it.
    • 5/5
      I am not the the one to critique this book, I already agreed with the author's ideas wholeheartedly. the author points out the absurdity of today's politics_the rich need to be allowed to accumulate wealth unfettered by concerns for the society they create or the problems facing that society.