A review by joebuuz
The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap by Matt Taibbi
5.0
"Low-class people do low-class things."
This quote appears about a quarter into the book and sticks with you the rest of the way through. The translation being without wealth you will never receive, nor do you deserve, the benefit of the doubt.
This book felt like the journalistic sequel to Taibbi’s previous book Griftopia, which was about the financial crisis of 2008. As a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine Taibbi has been a vocal and aggressive opponent of the principal investment banks he argues were the cause of 2008. However, his style, often compared to Hunter S. Thompson, can rub people the wrong way. The same can be said of this current book which makes the case that there are two concurrent trends in our judicial system, growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration, leading to a new paradigm of justice. Here Taibbi presents a thorough argument for why $26 billion dollars in fraud equals zero felonies but we can kick in 26,000 doors a year for welfare fraud.
It is worth a read.
This quote appears about a quarter into the book and sticks with you the rest of the way through. The translation being without wealth you will never receive, nor do you deserve, the benefit of the doubt.
This book felt like the journalistic sequel to Taibbi’s previous book Griftopia, which was about the financial crisis of 2008. As a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine Taibbi has been a vocal and aggressive opponent of the principal investment banks he argues were the cause of 2008. However, his style, often compared to Hunter S. Thompson, can rub people the wrong way. The same can be said of this current book which makes the case that there are two concurrent trends in our judicial system, growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration, leading to a new paradigm of justice. Here Taibbi presents a thorough argument for why $26 billion dollars in fraud equals zero felonies but we can kick in 26,000 doors a year for welfare fraud.
It is worth a read.