What is the main message of Winners Take All?

The main message of Winners Take All is an exploration of how the elite use philanthropy to maintain their power and influence.

How long does it take to read Winners Take All?

The reading time for Winners Take All varies depending on the reader. The Blinkist summary can be read in just 15 minutes.

Is Winners Take All a good book? Is it worth reading?

Winners Take All offers a thought-provoking perspective on the impact of philanthropy. It's definitely worth reading for those interested in social change.

Who is the author of Winners Take All?

The author of Winners Take All is Anand Giridharadas.

Winners Take All Summary of Key Ideas and Review

Name: Winners Take All
Rating: 4.1 (232 reviews)
Author: Anand Giridharadas

Introduction

What’s in it for me? Learn how powerful elites run the world and keep themselves at the top.

All around us, every day, new products and technologies are popping up. Whether at home or at work, on city streets or in society at large, the march of progress seems to be unstoppable. And along with it, economic productivity in the US and much of the West has soared.

But what’s all that progress even for, if most people can’t enjoy it? Technological innovation makes us all more productive, and you might think that it would create a better life for all – but so far, only the rich are reaping the benefits. Across the world, ordinary people feel that the odds are stacked against them. And they are right – top billionaires’ fortunes are now growing twice as fast as everyone else’s meager earnings. The top 10 percent of people own 90 percent of the entire planet’s wealth.

You might be wondering what’s gone wrong. After all, we’re also surrounded by advocates of change. Businesses promote ethical trade and green investing. Thought leaders host panels on global justice. Philanthropists tout their generosity in “giving back.” Could all this talk of making the world a better place be a charade?

In these blinks, you’ll learn how the elite’s language of changing the world is a ruse to preserve the status quo. You’ll discover the ways that the ideologies they promote enable them to keep their power. You’ll see how the very denial of that power allows them to stay in control – and to continue reaping the benefits of global capitalism, while the rest of the world is left behind with scraps.

You’ll also find out

why predicting the future can be a way to trick workers out of their rights;
how a powerful painkiller came to fund the world’s cultural institutions; and
whether Wonder Woman can help society move toward gender equality.

Key idea 1 of 7

Corporate elites have redefined social progress to suit their own interests.

Like most young adults coming of age in the wake of the global financial crash, recent philosophy graduate Hilary Cohen was facing some tough decisions about her future. She knew she wanted to make a difference. She just wasn’t sure how. Should she work for a non-profit? Train as a rabbi? Or would she have to learn to think like an entrepreneur to make the world a better place for everyone? That was the way she was leaning.

And she was not alone among her generation.

The key message here is: Corporate elites have redefined social progress to suit their own interests.

No one who’s been around in the last few decades can fail to notice the rising inequality in the world at large, and particularly in the US. In fact, Google searches for “inequality” doubled among Americans in the four years between 2010 and Cohen’s graduation in 2014.

That same year, Thomas Piketty – author of surprise bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century – coauthored an article that brought the stark contrasts clearly into view. His study found that if college graduates like Hilary Cohen reached the top 10 percent of earners, she’d be making twice as much as she would’ve in 1980. For the bottom half of earners, on the other hand, the average income rise was just $200 in total.

In this atmosphere of polarizing wealth, economic and social inequalities were becoming more and more visible to young people like Cohen. The desire to do something about them was growing, and Cohen and her peers were increasingly convinced that making a difference meant joining the business world and training in its methods. She decided to join a top management consultancy. That way, she’d be able to use capitalism’s tools to solve social problems.

Without knowing it, Cohen had absorbed the prevailing ideology about how to change the world – known as neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is based on a belief in the free market. The idea is that if you leave individuals to pursue their personal goals in the free market and minimize regulation and statist intervention, people will be the happiest and most prosperous. Adherents of neoliberalism believe that it’s the big companies that change the world for the better, by applying their business knowledge to social problems like poverty.

But this belief comes with a big risk. If you put wealthy elites in charge, challenging questions about power and inequality are going to be brushed aside. After all, the powerful don’t want to give up their power. And that’s exactly what they would have to do if resources were to be shared in a fairer way.

Key idea 2 of 7

The win-win maxim of the elites allows them to seem like they’re bettering the world while actually profiting from inequality.

If you happen to be a highly effective person, you might be used to thinking in terms of win-win. It’s the simple principle that in every situation, there’s an outcome that’s beneficial for all sides. The idea came to fame from the popular book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Win-win might be a great maxim for personal effectiveness, but when elites apply it to the wider world, it becomes more problematic.

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Key idea 3 of 7

The powerful deny their power, and this helps them stay in control.

What do you believe the future holds? Many successful business founders claim that we’re heading for a future where every human being will be an entrepreneur, where technology will indefinitely prolong our lives, and where online videos will replace text communication. These may sound like plausible predictions of things to come.

But dig deeper, and you might realize why someone would choose to emphasize one future scenario over others. More often than not, the answer is that there’s something to gain.

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Key idea 4 of 7

Elites rely on thought leaders to maintain their power and to preserve the status quo.

When was the last time you read a work of political philosophy in your spare time? If you can’t say it’s been recent, you’re not alone. What about watching a TED talk on YouTube?

These days, most of us get our information from popular online sources in bite-size chunks. Thanks to digital media, all kinds of complex ideas are now more widely available than ever before.

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Key idea 5 of 7

When business approaches to problem-solving dominate, social issues are ignored.

Imagine you're in the middle of an interview for a dream job. You've spent weeks preparing, you're wearing your finest duds, and you've managed to keep your voice from quavering. Then the interviewer throws you a curveball like, "How many ping-pong balls would fit into a Boeing 747?”

McKinsey, a top management consultancy, tends to ask its interviewees these types of questions to determine if they can demonstrate a particular style of problem-solving. It involves breaking a problem down into small chunks and linking them in a logical way. Then you make an educated guess at a solution, find the data to support it, and present it persuasively. And there you have a ready-made template for tackling any challenge you might run into as a management consultant. But can this technique work for problems outside of the corporate sphere?

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Key idea 6 of 7

Wealthy people shrewdly use philanthropy to hide the injustice at the root of their wealth.

If you’ve ever visited a famous museum in a city like New York, London, or Paris, you might have found yourself in the Sackler Wing. Many institutions around the world have one, thanks to the charitable donations from one family: the Sacklers.

They’re one of the richest families in the US, well-known for their abundant giving. But is their philanthropy really all that generous?

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Key idea 7 of 7

The world is divided between elites who profit from global capitalism and those who are missing out on its rewards.

In September 2016, global movers and shakers gathered for the Clinton Global Initiative, a conference for socially conscious elites that Bill Clinton had been organizing for more than a decade. One question was on everyone’s minds: Why do they all hate us?

The “they” in question were ordinary people, and the “us” were the rich and powerful elites.

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