ABOUT THE BOOK
CHUCK COLLINS/
BURNED BY BILLIONAIRES
BURNED BY BILLIONAIRES
How Concentrated Wealth and Power Are Ruining Our Lives and Planet
Author: Chuck Collins
Publisher: The New Press
Pages: 240
Publication Date: October 7, 2025
ISBN ( Hardcover ): 9781620979099
Section: NonFiction
Even if you don’t begrudge the ultra-rich their multiple vacation homes, fancy boats, and private jets, the truth is that billionaire power touches you –where you live, what you pay for housing, what you eat, and what news you consume. In this explosive new book, Chuck Collins, a leading scholar of economic inequality, chronicles how the actions of the top .01% have severe consequences for the rest of us.
Illustrating with humorous cartoons and shocking graphics how we are all “burned by billionaires,” Collins demonstrates how the über-wealthy have rigged tax policies in their favor, shifting costs onto working people while reducing public funding for schools, roads, and other essential infrastructure. In a world of have-yachts and have-nots, billionaire travel habits are literally burning up the planet, with private jets and boats the size of apartment buildings pumping disproportionate amounts of carbon into our atmosphere. The wealthiest people’s investments in luxury skyscrapers and hoarding of residential real estate are shrinking the pool of affordable housing, pushing the American dream out of reach for many families. Acquisitions of health care by venture capitalists are causing hospitals to close and even the cost of your dog’s trip to the vet to skyrocket. Perhaps worst of all, this concentration of wealth and power is leading to oligarchic capture of our government by a few extraordinarily wealthy people -- Elon Musk being only the most flagrant example – thereby undermining the democratic principle that our votes matter equally.
Against this picture of rising inequality, Collins offers concrete prescriptions for how we can take power back from the billionaire class, creating a society of universal abundance instead of abundant inequality.
From Kirkus Reviews:
How the ultrawealthy are ruining our economy, society, and planet, and what we might be able to do about it.
Collins, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, specifically calls out billionaires in the title of his latest book, but his focus encompasses “households that are in the top one-tenth of 1 percent,” those with more than $40 million in assets, the approximate point at which “wealth translates into levels of influence and power that distort democracy.” Collins argues that, regardless of how generous or admired individuals within this class may be, the collective actions and existence of billionaires contribute to the worsening of almost every aspect of life. For the past several decades, workers have shared increasingly less in the productivity gains of their ever-wealthier employers, one of several mechanisms allowing fewer people to amass the majority of society’s wealth. Taxation reform, especially President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, have shrunk what the wealthy pay, particularly the once-robust estate tax. These and other public policies “have enriched asset owners at the expense of wage earners,” enabling family dynasties and individuals to amass eye-boggling fortunes far beyond what’s possible by mere salary alone. The enduring myth of meritocracy furthers the misperception that billionaires deserve their riches—and that the poor deserve their misfortune. Ultrawealthy donors funnel huge amounts of money into super PACs for favored candidates and then lean on elected officials to pass policies favorable to billionaires. The world’s richest people, through their polluting companies and super-yachts, also contribute an outsize amount to worsening climate change; Collins writes that “the emissions of the top 1 percent will cause 1.3 million excess deaths due to heat between 2020 and 2030.”
Numerous charts and comic illustrations pepper the text. Collins offers many straightforward, if not simple, solutions for reversing the “billionaire burn” at both personal and governmental levels. However, political developments in the United States may be pushing even the most sensible reforms further out of reach.
An informed and measured exploration of the myriad harms billionaires impose.