Start building the guillotines! In this books Mr. Ross describes in detail how most (if not all) international companies hide all their income and pay almost no taxes. Also, how governments, denied of this massive wealth, continue to lose power to the rich and how poorer countries are especially hurt by this.

He talks about how "stockholder primacy" has caused corporations to do whatever it takes to make sure their stockholders make the most amount of money, regardless of how that effect their workers and the communities those workers work in.

He talks about how authoritarian countries like China have an advantage over democracies because they can move quickly to change things, without having to worry about checks and balances.

He talks about northern European countries like Finland, Scandanavia and others having huge taxes but extremely happy people because they know they will be taken care of by the system if they "fall", but also says this is made easier by the homogeneity of their culture.

It's not all gloom and doom, but oh my god it is really depressing to see how money controls everything and the rich are just getting away with so much as the poor grind themselves down. He gives hope with solutions that are being worked on to prevent corporations from hiding all their profits and rich people hiding all their assets, but it will mean many countries working together and the big ones like the US and UK have much to lose. Basically, if we don't change the way things work, disaster is ahead. ( )

Sounded interesting, but I gave it an hour-and-a-half, and it really wasn't. DNF.

I received a free copy of The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People - and the Fight for Our Future in exchange for a review. Alec Ross's background as a journalist and his role the U.S. State Department converge as he outlines his argument about the shift in the social contract over the past forty years in favor of shareholder capitalism. He illustrates the ramifications of these economic, political and social systems as companies become de facto nations. He conducts interviews with influential thinkers, compiles evidence and provides explainers about tax policy, labor law and economic theory that are attainable for general public. Ross also provides a blueprint for those who want to take a different path at this crossroads. If you ever have the feeling that something isn't right, but can't put your finger on it, then Ross has the explanations for you. ( )

The Raging 2020s by Alec Ross is not at all what I expected from the title. I thought it was going to be a litany of things that the people of the world are pissed off about and the wrongs being done to the vast majority of people. Refreshingly, it was not a list of suffering but instead a enlightening glimpse of the causes of the ever widening wealth gap in the world and a beginning of an answer to the question "where is all the money and why isn't it available to the people who need it?" The entrenched, worldwide monetary system is much too complex and beneficial to the world's powerful to be fully explained in one book much less offering comprehensive solutions, but the general ideas in the book seem irrefutable to me; namely requiring corporate charters to expressly benefit all the stakeholders of the business - stakeholder capitalism - rather than being required by law or convention to benefit shareholders exclusively - shareholder capitalism. Mr Ross is also pointing out the global nature of our financial system and shows how opaque and self serving tax laws result in huge losses for everyone except those individuals and corporations who can afford to game the global system. Transparency in global transactions is a goal which it seems to me would go a long way toward encouraging fairness and lawfulness in business and governments.
This is not a comprehensive blueprint for the future, but I think it is a very good introduction to where we are right now and some ideas about how to begin moving in a beneficial direction. ( )

Ross throws out a number of interesting ideas for a "reform" of American – and ultimately "world" capitalism – but it reached a point where I became a bit skeptical.

First, for the interesting ideas.

• "Shareholder" capitalism needs to be replaced with "stakeholder" capitalism. When the interests of the corporate shareholders reign supreme everything reduces itself to the least common denominator, no matter how well intentioned corporate management might be, because any threat to shareholder interests leads to stock-market losses which invite hostile takeovers. How to achieve a "stakeholder" capitalism? Ross suggests that ideologically advanced (my phrase, not his) corporate managers could work together but will need to enlist the support of elected politicians so that the same "stakeholder" rules will apply to at least the largest business entities.
• Eliminate stock buy-backs. They are wasteful of capital which could be better expended on R&D. (This seems to me to be the easiest to accomplish of Ross's goals, although its effects might be correspondingly more limited.)
• Change the system of corporate taxation. It's too easy for globalist corporations (especially tech and pharma, where intellectual property rights represent a large portion of assets) to create multiple affiliates (Google, for example, is actually "owned" by Alphabet Inc) whereby the locus of corporate profits can be "profit shifted" to low-tax jurisdictions, internationally and even from state to state within the U.S. Adopt a system of "unitary taxation" and "formulary apportionment" by which the super-globalist "holding company" (Alphabet Inc) will be taxed and some system of international agreements will provide just what portion of that company's profits will be taxed by each national entity. Good luck!

Much of Ross's arguments have a great deal of superficial attraction. When it suddenly clicked to me that there was a problem was at the beginning of Chapter 5, where Ross refers to Syria's Bashar al-Assad as a "genocidal dictator." And then, looking at Ross's resumé, I saw his background as "Senior Advisor for Innovation to the Secretary of State" in the Obama Administration – in other words, a Clintonite neoliberal. Until the neolibs started blowing up Syria in a self-righteous attack on Assad, Assad's dictatorship managed (however crudely) to keep a lid on ethnic and religious factionalism, protecting minorities like Christians and Assad's own fellow Alawites in a very rough part of the world.

Sorry. Ross has a lot of interesting ideas, but somehow neolib (and neocon) ideas turn too often into blowing up other peoples' countries. Ross's attitude toward Assad is just one more example of why Americans should stop trying to be the "great white hope" of the world and start a bit more minding our own business.

That said, I'm rating this book 3½***, considerably higher than the majority of the other Early Reviewers who have already posted their reviews. Ross has some very good critiques of American capitalism and some very good suggestions for reform, and I suspect that this book is going to be quite popular for review and discussion in the mainstream media book-review sections once it's released in September. I'm just a bit skeptical that Ross's fellow neolib Clintonites can implement the ideas that Ross is suggesting, and I've got a concern that his plans for implementation could rely so much on a corporate "high tech" elite as to produce a serious populist backlash in the U.S., along with serious anti-trust violations. No, children, high-tech globalism is not a healthy environment for you and other sentient creatures!

As for myself, I consider myself a "left libertarian" – a staunch Tulsicrat (as in Tulsi Gabbard) who finds Bernie Sanders acceptable if not ideal and who's skeptical of neolib programmes. But do read Ross's book, because it's stimulating and deserves to be judged for itself, not for my own political views. ( )