Five Questions for Chuck Collins About His New Book

Our co-editor Chuck Collins’ new book, Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power are Ruining Our Lives and Planet, was published earlier this month. Our editorial team sat down with Chuck to discuss his latest and how readers should use the text to make change in their communities.

Q: Why did you write this book?

A: For the vast majority of us, lately it’s been feeling like life only gets harder to afford between the rising cost of housing, health care, groceries. And many of us feel that we have no voice in the political system, a system where politicians constantly prove they don’t care about our communities. And that’s before even considering our crumbling environment. Most people can clearly see these issues; their causes are harder to identify.

I wrote this book because most of these problems have been caused or worsened by an economy that funnels wealth to the billionaire class. 

Q: Why should readers care that there are over 900 billionaires in the U.S. with combined wealth over $7 trillion? What does that have to do with the average person’s financial circumstances? 

A: Here’s the nut: an economy that funnels wealth to billionaires is bad for your health, your pocketbook, your housing options, and the quality of your environment. It robs you of your political voice while dictating what’s in the news and the food on your dinner plate. It supercharges and inflames existing divides in our society, and fuels division and civil discord.

This book aims to be a popular primer on how extreme wealth inequality touches your day-to-day life, and how these extreme inequalities are harming you and undermining the health of your communities and planet.  

Q: Give me a few concrete examples of how extreme inequality – and the rise of the billionaire class – affects the average American. 

A: Ok here are a few for starters: Your taxes are higher. Your local, state and federal taxes are higher because the billionaires are opting out of the tax system — shifting obligations onto you.  We’ve lived through decades of “Shift, Shrink and Shaft.” 

Your cost of living is higher. Housing costs, groceries, health care – you pick it, and I describe how the billionaire concentrations of wealth are raising your costs and undermining your quality of life.

The public institutions and services you depend on have been weakened or trashed. You have to wait longer for the bus. The park is closed or not well-maintained. The highway rest area is gross (except where they’ve been privatized to some corporate vender). The scammers are calling you and trying to rip you off while corporate beneficiaries are weakening or shutting down consumer protection oversight.

Your health is worse. Extreme wealth inequality leads to a breakdown in the social solidarity required to maintain good public health – and profit extraction in the health care sector is picking your pocket.  

Q: Is this really about the billionaires or a larger group, like the 1 percent? Or the top 10 percent of wealthy and affluent households?

The problem is not the money, but the power. The “billionaires” or the “billionaire class” is shorthand for the top one-tenth of 1 percent — the people who drive an economy that funnels wealth upward at the expense of everyone else. This top 0.1 percent, those with more than $40 million — roughly 130,000 households — hold disproportionate power. They possess more wealth than they need for any real needs: their kids are fine, they fly private, they are buffered.  When you have wealth north of $40 million, you have the power to hire wealth managers to hide your wealth and fund politicians to rig the rules of the economy in your favor. You hire lobbyists to advocate for your favorite tax cuts and to fend off regulation of your industry. The problems get severe when the wealthy start buying lawmakers and media outlets. 

The top 1 percent and the richest 10 percent still have significant power relative to the bottom 90 percent. They have way more power and economic security than the bottom 60 to 70 percent — America’s “precariat” — who live paycheck to paycheck and have diminishing agency.  In my book, I have a chapter, Who Are the Rich?, that provides readers with a “Roadmap to Richistan,” to fully understand the segments of the wealthy and why they matter.

Q: What should readers do with the book?

Take the billionaire burn personally. Really understand the chain of consequences. Explain this to your friends.

I give several examples of the sort of “game-changing campaigns” we need to undertake at this moment. Connect your concern or cause to extreme wealth inequality — and your solutions to reducing extreme inequality. For example, if you care about affordable housing, work for a luxury real estate transfer tax that funds permanently affordable housing. Or tax private jet fuel (tax the harm) to fund green transit (invest in solutions). And bring a constituency of housing and climate activists along who have a stake in the change. 

In this moment, it’s hard to imagine positive change at the national level. But talking about ways the billionaire class has captured and hijacked our political system explains the moment. One fun thing I’m urging people to do is join the “satirical resistance” against Trump authoritarianisms. We’ve seen the power of humor — from late-night talk show hosts to playful green frogs showing up at ICE protests in Portland. Check out “Trillionaires for Trump” and form a mini-theatrical response to this moment.