An eye-opening look at the use of tax-subsidized money by private philanthropy.
How the Gates Foundation acts “a great deal more like Microsoft than Mother Theresa” and why that matters.
As investigative journalist Schwab demonstrates in his debut book, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates has been mythologized as the ultimate good guy, albeit often by the very media and political outlets he has funded through his philanthropic ventures. However, the author argues convincingly that “the Gates Foundation is a nonprofit, tax-privileged charity that is acting like a private equity investor, venture capital fund, or a pharmaceutical company.” For example, the foundation “has positioned itself to see the confidential business information of competing companies” and asks charitable partners to give it licensing claims to their technology. Furthermore, Schwab notes, Gates poured his greatest sums into the foundation during two periods when he most needed positive publicity: during the investigations into Microsoft as a possible monopoly, and a spell when Gates’ personal life was in the spotlight. The author is most troubled by the lack of transparency in the U.S. involving not just Gates, but also the increasing number of billionaires with private foundations. These organizations are not held to the same transparency standards as public companies, government agencies, or political actors. This is true even though tax breaks mean that some 50% of every dollar spent by foundations like Gates’ is “public money.” Schwab sends a clear message to legislators that they must begin regulating the foundations they have left comparatively unexamined since the 1960s. “Our democracy is only as strong as we allow it to be and only as accountable as we force it to be,” he writes. Though the author extends his reach beyond Gates, he always returns to him, as “it would be difficult to name a more powerful, less scrutinized political actor than the Gates Foundation.”
An eye-opening look at the use of tax-subsidized money by private philanthropy.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781250850096
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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