Winners take all: the elite charade of changing the world

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the twenty-first century (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014) was more than a bestseller. It catalysed a new debate about the issue of inequality and the gap between the rich and the poor. Anand Giridharadas, in his book Winners take all: the elite charade of changing the world, takes on the subject, but from a novel angle. His focus is the sham of benevolence perpetuated by the self-seeking global rich. Even the title of the book is pithily suggestive of what the pages inside hold. Giridharadas’s reasoning is based on insiders’ introspections and is deeply set in a deconstructivist method. The United States, the archetype of modern development, epitomizes the problem of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. For instance, the 26 richest billionaires hold as much as wealth as the 3.8 billion who account for the poorest half of world’s population. The writing on the wall is clear: ‘The system is broken and has to change’ (p. 11).