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Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) | 
 enlarge | Author: David Cay Johnston
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  84 reviews
Sales Rank: 3170
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 1591841917
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.97302
EAN: 9781591841913
ASIN: 1591841917
Publication Date: December 27, 2007
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Product Description
The bestselling author of Perfectly Legal returns with a powerful new expose
How does a strong and growing economy lend itself to job uncertainty, debt, bankruptcy, and economic fear for a vast number of Americans? Free Lunch provides answers to this great economic mystery of our time, revealing how todays government policies and spending reach deep into the wallets of the many for the benefit of the wealthy few.
Johnston cuts through the official version of events and shows how, under the guise of deregulation, a whole new set of regulations quietly went into effect regulations that thwart competition, depress wages, and reward misconduct. From how George W. Bush got rich off a tax increase to a $100 million taxpayer gift to Warren Buffett, Johnston puts a face on all of the dirty little tricks that business and government pull. A lot of people appear to be getting free lunchesbut of course theres no such thing as a free lunch, and someone (you, the taxpayer) is picking up the bill.
Johnstons many revelations include:
How we ended up with the most expensive yet inefficient health-care system in the world
How homeowners title insurance became a costly, deceitful, yet almost invisible oligopoly
How our government gives hidden subsidies for posh golf courses
How Paris Hiltons grandfather schemed to retake the family fortune from a charity for poor children
How the Yankees and Mets owners will collect more than $1.3 billion in public funds
In these instances and many more, Free Lunch shows how the lobbyists and lawyers representing the most powerful 0.1 percent of Americans manipulated our government at the expense of the other 99.9 percent.
With his extraordinary reporting, vivid stories, and sharp analysis, Johnston reveals the forces that shape our everyday economic livesand shows us how we can finally make things better.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 79 more reviews...
 Read in small doses August 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is probably best read in small portions, as the average person will become incensed at the greed that takes from the less and gives to the more. Fortunately, each chapter covers a specific rip off of the taxpayer, and is not too long. It might raise the blood pressure of the average person to read too many chapters at one time.
Yes, the wealthy and connected have rigged the system to flow the riches to themselves.
If there is one theme to the book, it is the Adam Smith's advice that government should not favor one endeavor over another is deaf to the people that continually use Adam Smith as the reason for government getting out of the way. It is not free enterprise when government takes one side, which is what the wealthy and well connected have the government do.
A good companion is Hostile Takeover by David Sirota (available on Amazon Kindle).Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government--And How We Take It Back
His prior book, Perfectly Legal, is a good primer, although a bit dated as to how the wealthy avoid taxes. In Free Lunch, it is how the wealthy get subsidies. Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else
Greed Oligarchy Plutocracy August 8, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
An excellent, well-documented and readable investigation and analysis of how the whole system of American government, at Federal, State and Local levels, has been used for the past 30 years or so to tax the poor and the middle class in order to enrich the already wealthy. If you think this sounds like the system in France in 1788, you are absolutely right. If you are not angry already, you need to read this book. If you are angry already, you still need to read this book in order to confirm all your worst suspicions. There is something rotten in the States of America, and if the infection of our body politic is not dealt with soon, it will turn to gangrene and kill democracy completely.
 Free Lunch July 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A very informative and straight-ahead book revealing, anecdote by real-life anecdote, how, during the Bush/Clinton/Bush administrations, our public commons -- in other words, our tax dollars -- increasingly have been routinely commandeered by a tiny and superrich elite for their own exhorbitant profit. In the form of public subsidies for private developers and retailers, such as Cabelas and Wal-Mart, and through privatization of our utility companies starting with Enron's massive rip-off of our public commons, Johnston shows how the wolves (greedy privateers) have not only gained entrance into the henhouse of our national treasury but, through intensive lobbying efforts, are exercising too much control over our elected officials today, basically funding the rewriting of our national laws to ensure their own dominant position and ongoing aggregation of riches.
The book makes sense of a lot of things that were not adding up to me when looking around our current landscape -- like why my electric bill has skyrocketed in the last couple of years (thank you, Kenny Lay), or what kind of business "sense" was behind that monstrous box store of Cabelas on Rte. 78 in Hamburg, PA. Or even why oil and gas prices are going through the roof right now. It's not supply and demand at all, it's sleight of hand and basic greed and power-grabbing. Johnston shows how the scales of supply and demand no longer balance the markets, as the PR mavens would like us to believe. When private companies are subsidized with public funds, Adam Smith-type free market competition proves but a chimera, a smokescreen behind which privateers hide, avidly sucking our economy dry and bankrupting our society. Read the book.
Great Book July 20, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Very well written book. It's very sad, especially since you read it and don't have any power to do anything about it, but it's very well written.
Great book that consolidate alot of information July 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a very informative and enlightening look at how the weathly go to great lengths to manipulate a number of various systems to essentially steal money from the American public. Prior to reading the book I had a general ideal that alot of these things were going on but to see it all in one place makes me have a very 'upset stomach'. Our founder fathers would be ashamed at what the rich have done to the legal, tax, political systems within in this great country. It use to be that great innovation, new technlogy, solid investment strategy or great marketing were the keys to building wealth,.. wow have things deteriorated. I am not looking forward to the next 10 years. Couple of areas that the author omits are the subsidies that are provided to the oil companies, as well as the financial bailout of the airlines. Overall a great book and written with a good flow. He could have spent a little more time on some potential remedies.
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