Richistan

Richistan PDF Author: Robert Frank
Publisher: Currency
ISBN: 0307341453
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER RICH-I-STAN n. 1. a new country located in the heart of America, populated entirely by millionaires, most of whom acquired their wealth during the new Gilded Age of the past twenty years. 2. a country with a population larger than Belgium and Denmark; typical citizens include “spud king” J. R. Simplot; hair stylist Sydell Miller, the new star of Palm Beach; and assorted oddball entrepreneurs. 3. A country that with a little luck and pluck, you, too, could be a citizen of. The rich have always been different from you and me, but Robert Frank’s revealing and funny journey through “Richistan” entertainingly shows that they are truly another breed.

Richistan

Richistan PDF Author: Robert Frank
Publisher: Currency
ISBN: 0307341453
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book

Book Description
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER RICH-I-STAN n. 1. a new country located in the heart of America, populated entirely by millionaires, most of whom acquired their wealth during the new Gilded Age of the past twenty years. 2. a country with a population larger than Belgium and Denmark; typical citizens include “spud king” J. R. Simplot; hair stylist Sydell Miller, the new star of Palm Beach; and assorted oddball entrepreneurs. 3. A country that with a little luck and pluck, you, too, could be a citizen of. The rich have always been different from you and me, but Robert Frank’s revealing and funny journey through “Richistan” entertainingly shows that they are truly another breed.

The High-Beta Rich

The High-Beta Rich PDF Author: Robert Frank
Publisher: Crown Currency
ISBN: 0307589919
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
The rich are not only getting richer, they are becoming more dangerous. Starting in the early 1980s the top one percent (1%) broke away from the rest of us to become the most unstable force in the economy. An elite that had once been the flat line on the American income charts - models of financial propriety - suddenly set off on a wild ride of economic binges. Not only do they control more than a third of the country’s wealth, their increasing vulnerability to the booms and busts of the stock market wreak havoc on our consumer economy, financial markets, communities, employment opportunities, and government finances. Robert Frank’s insightful analysis provides the disturbing big picture of high-beta wealth. His vivid storytelling brings you inside the mortgaged mansions, blown-up balance sheets, repossessed Bentleys and Gulfstreams, and wrecked lives and relationships: • How one couple frittered away a fortune trying to build America’s biggest house —90,000 square feet with 23 full bathrooms, a 6,000 square foot master suite with a bed on a rotating platform—only to be forced to put it on the market because “we really need the money”. • Repo men who are now the scavengers of the wealthy, picking up private jets, helicopters, yachts and racehorses – the shiny remains of a decade of conspicuous consumption financed with debt, asset bubbles, “liquidity events,” and soaring stock prices. • How “big money ruins everything” for communities such as Aspen, Colorado whose over-reliance on the rich created a stratified social scene of velvet ropes and A-lists and crises in employment opportunities, housing, and tax revenues. • Why California’s worst budget crisis in history is due in large part to reliance on the volatile incomes of the state’s tech tycoons. • The bitter divorce of a couple who just a few years ago made the Forbes 400 list of the richest people, the firing of their enormous household staff of 110, and how one former spouse learned the marvels of shopping at Marshalls, filling your own gas tank, and flying commercial. Robert Frank’s stories and analysis brilliantly show that the emergence of the high-beta rich is not just a high-class problem for the rich. High-beta wealth has national consequences: America’s dependence on the rich + great volatility among the rich = a more volatile America. Cycles of wealth are now much faster and more extreme. The rich are a new “Potemkin Plutocracy” and the important lessons and consequences are brought to light of day in this engrossing book. high-beta rich (hi be’ta rich) 1. a newly discovered personality type of the America upper class prone to wild swings in wealth. 2. the winners (and occasional losers) in an economy that creates wealth from financial markets, asset bubbles and deals. 3. derived from the Wall Street term “high-beta,” meaning highly volatile or prone to booms and busts. 4. an elite that’s capable of wreaking havoc on communities, jobs, government finances, and the consumer economy. 5. a new Potemkin plutocracy that hides a mountain of debt behind the image of success, and is one crisis away from losing their mansions, private jets and yachts.

Richistan

Richistan PDF Author: Robert Frank
Publisher: Crown Currency
ISBN: 0307409260
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
The rich have always been different from you and me, but this revealing and funny journey through “Richistan” entertainingly shows that they are more different than ever. Richistanis have 400-foot-yachts, 30,000-square-foot homes, house staffs of more than 100, and their own “arborists.” They’re also different from Old Money, and have torn down blue-blood institutions to build their own shining empire. Richistan is like the best travel writing, full of colorful and interesting stories providing insights into exotic locales. Robert Frank has been loitering on the docks of yacht marinas, pestering his way into charity balls, and schmoozing with real estate agents selling mega-houses to capture the story of the twenty-first century’s nouveau riche: House-training the rich. People with new wealth have to be taught how to act like, well, proper rich people. Just in the nick of time, there’s been a boom in the number of newly trained butlers—“household managers”—who will serve just the right cabernet when a Richistani’s new buddies from Palm Beach stop by. “My boat is bigger than your boat.” Only in Richistan would a 100-foot-boat be considered a dinghy. Personal pleasure craft have started to rival navy destroyers in size and speed. Richistan is also a place where friends make fun of those misers who buy the new girlfriend a mere Mercedes SLK. “You want my money? Prove that you’re helping the needy!” Richistanis are not only consuming like crazy, they’re also shaking up the establishment’s bureaucratic, slow-moving charity network, making lean, results-oriented philanthropy an important new driving force. Move over, Christian Coalition. Richistanis are more Democratic than Republican, “fed up and not going to take it anymore,” and willing to spend millions to get progressive-oriented politicians elected. “My name is Mike and I’m rich.” Think that money is the answer? Think again as Robert Frank explores the emotional complexities of wealth. And, as Robert Frank reveals, there is not one Richistan but three: Lower, Middle, and Upper, each of which has its own levels and distinctions of wealth —the haves and the have-mores. The influence of Richistan and the Richistanis extends well beyond the almost ten million households that make up its population, as the nonstop quest for status and an insatiable demand for luxury goods reshapes the entire American economy.

Winner-Take-All Politics

Winner-Take-All Politics PDF Author: Jacob S. Hacker
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416588701
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Analyzes the growing divide between the incomes of the wealthy class and those of middle-income Americans, exonerating popular suspects to argue that the nation's political system promotes greed and under-representation.

The Influence of Affluence

The Influence of Affluence PDF Author: Russ Alan Prince
Publisher: Crown Business
ISBN: 0385519281
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
A compelling look at a new class of the affluent - the middle-class millionaires – whose attitudes and values are influencing and reshaping American life In this groundbreaking book, Russ Alan Prince and Lewis Schiff examine the far-reaching impact of the middle class millionaires–people who enjoy a net worth ranging from one million to ten million dollars and have earned rather than inherited their wealth. Comprising 8.4 million households and growing in number, the attitudes and behaviors of these working rich are exerting a powerful influence over our society. So who are these people? They believe in the benefits of hard work. They believe in investing in themselves, and in self improvement. They are more likely to focus on drawing financial gain from their work, and less inclined to be discouraged by failure. And they don’t spend money on the extravagances indulged in by the very rich; instead, they wield their affluence according to middle-class values and ideals. From home security systems to health care, technology to travel, their spending choices are affecting us all – from the products we buy, to the communities in which we live, to the aspirations and values of the broader middle class and American population as a whole. In the bestselling tradition of Bobos in Paradise and The Millionaire Next Door, THE MIDDLE-CLASS MILLIONAIRE is a captivating narrative – part sociology, and part aspirational journey into the lives, attitudes, and values of the middle-class millionaires. Based on extensive surveys and research into more than 3,600 middle-class millionaire households around the country, this book will reshape our understanding of what it takes to be successful – and how all of us can achieve similar success.

Uneasy Street

Uneasy Street PDF Author: Rachel Sherman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691195161
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
A surprising and revealing look at how today’s elite view their wealth and place in society From TV’s “real housewives” to The Wolf of Wall Street, our popular culture portrays the wealthy as materialistic and entitled. But what do we really know about those who live on “easy street”? In this penetrating book, Rachel Sherman draws on rare in-depth interviews that she conducted with fifty affluent New Yorkers—from hedge fund financiers and artists to stay-at-home mothers—to examine their lifestyle choices and understanding of privilege. Sherman upends images of wealthy people as invested only in accruing social advantages for themselves and their children. Instead, these liberal elites, who believe in diversity and meritocracy, feel conflicted about their position in a highly unequal society. As the distance between rich and poor widens, Uneasy Street not only explores the lives of those at the top but also sheds light on how extreme inequality comes to seem ordinary and acceptable to the rest of us.

Get Rich, Stay Rich, Pass It On

Get Rich, Stay Rich, Pass It On PDF Author: Catherine S. McBreen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781591841753
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Counsels everyday investors on how to acquire wealth that can be sustained throughout subsequent generations, in a guide based on research into America's millionaire families that reveals how they invest, where they work, and how they plan their estates. 30,000 first printing.

A Journey

A Journey PDF Author: Tony Blair
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0099525097
Category : Ex-prime ministers
Languages : en
Pages : 770

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Book Description
This is Tony Blair's own account of his political life, his rise to power, his life on the world stage, and the clashes, controversies and triumphs of one of the most successful political careers of modern times.

Hemp Bound

Hemp Bound PDF Author: Doug Fine
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603585435
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Looks at the economic, environmental, and practical potential that the hemp plant offers, looking at how its renewed cultivation could stand to benefit the country.

All the Money in the World

All the Money in the World PDF Author: Peter W. Bernstein
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307267709
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
From Wall Street to the West Coast, from blue-collar billionaires to blue-blood fortunes, from the Google guys to hedge-fund honchos, this compulsively readable book gives us the lowdown on today richest Americans. Veteran journalists Peter W. Bernstein and Annalyn Swan delve into who made and lost the most money in the past twenty-five years, the fields and industries that have produced the greatest wealth, the biggest risk takers, the most competitive players, the most wasteful family feuds, the trophy wives, the most conspicuous consumers, the biggest art collectors, and the most and least generous philanthropists. Incorporating exclusive, never-before-published data from Forbes magazine, All the Money in the World is a vastly entertaining, behind-the-scenes look at today's Big Rich.