Thread by @petersgoodman

My book, DAVOS MAN: How the Billionaires Devoured the World, is out today. It unspools story of a cosmic heist — the bottom up transfer of wealth engineered by the billionaire class, stripping governments of capacity to respond to crises like the pandemic, undermining democracy.

2/ You can order here: bookshop.org/books/davos-ma…

3/ I'll be interviewed by Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker @alexgibneyfilm at 8pm EST on Thursday in Zoom convo hosted by @PoliticsandProse. Please join! Tickets here: eventbrite.com/e/pp-live-pete…

4/ My book is aimed at rooting out commonplace assumption that economic inequality and its potent damage is unavoidable, as if globalization, tech and money are too complex for humans to govern. We are living in a world crafted by billionaires to funnel more wealth to themselves.

5/ DAVOS MAN reveals how the wealthiest people have polluted popular discourse with false choices: between big pharma monopolizing gains of Covid vaccines, or having no vaccines; between tax cuts and deregulation for billionaires or no innovation, no growth.

6/ I seek to show that, beneath outbreaks of anti-democratic tribalism -- from Trump, to Brexit, to the rise of right-wing extremists from France to Italy to Sweden -- lies a deep current of anger over scarcity: the result of pillaging by the billionaire class.

7/ My book draws on and (one hopes) advances a vast body of work produced over decades by colleagues who have explored inequality, tax avoidance, the warping of our markets, and the elaborate virtue signaling of the billionaire class.

8/ Twenty years ago in One Market Under God @thomasfrank_ revealed how tech magnates were co-opting countercultural rhetoric to protect themselves from regulation.

9/ In a shelf full of books, @JosephEStiglitz has demonstrated how the wealthy have manipulated the rules of globalization in their favor. @RBReich has made a career helping readers understand how inequality represents a hostile takeover of democracy.

10/ Way back in the dot-com era, my friend @MarkLeibovich produced enduring portraits of the greed and narcissism that rules the realm of tech billionaires.

11/ A decade ago, in her book Plutocrats, @cafreeland demonstrated how the wealthiest are monopolizing the bounty of global capitalism.

12/ A uniquely valuable landmark on this terrain is Winners Take All by @AnandWrites, an enduring and vital exploration of how the billionaire class has used philanthropy and the the forging of "win-win" constructions to protect itself from taxation and sacrifice.

13/ I count myself lucky to have worked alongside the great @gmorgenson whose dogged pursuit consistently pulls the mask on billionaire virtue signaling.

14/ My friend and colleague @davidsirota has done extraordinary work on the pillaging of public pension coffers by billionaire financiers. His website The Daily Poster, has become required reading for those watching the intersection of money and politics.

15/ Homewreckers by @Aaron_Glantz is invaluable for those seeking to understand how a handful of billionaires — among them a pair of Steves, Schwarzman and Mnuchin, both characters in my book — profited mightily on an epic foreclosure disaster.

16/ Pankaj Mishra's work -- especially Age of Anger -- provides crucial historical context to the upsurge of authoritarianism around the globe.

17/ For years, @NaomiAKlein has explored how multinational corps have exploited wars and disasters to grab resources around the world. Time and again, @nomiprins applies insider expertise to reveal how Wall Street uses crises to add to its coffers.

18/ I've drawn heavily on the invaluable work of @matthewstoller, especially his book Goliath, which provides critical historical arc on monopoly power from the Robber Barons to present day.

19/ My friends and colleagues @JesseDrucker at @nytimes and @eisingerj at @ProPublica have performed a great public service in revealing the Vegas buffet of options used by billionaires to stiff governments on their tax bills.

20/ @eisingerj's book, Chickenshit, is required reading for anyone wondering how the billionaire class managed to avoid consequences for the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

21/ Follow these writers. Read their books . Watch their films. Absorb their podcasts.

22/ My book is grounded in the pandemic, revealing how the billionaire class has feasted on calamity — at once highlighting and exacerbating the grave inequalities of our age.