Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and StickYou with the Bill) by David Cay Johnston, David C. Johnston

From Barnes & Noble

Washington budget watchdog William Proxmire died in 2005, but the creator of the Golden Fleece Awards for wasteful government expenditures would warmly endorse David Cay Johnston's book. In Free Lunch, Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist, uses his investigative skills to expose tax dodges and federal "free lunches" for the super-rich. With the determination of a single-minded sleuth, he tracks legislative and lobbyist conniving that bilks Americans of billions of dollars each year. Whether you're right, left, center, or just innately skeptical, this book will confirm your worst fears.

From the Publisher

Free Lunch answers the great mystery of our time: How did our strong and growing economy give way to job uncertainty, debt, bankruptcy, and fear for millions of Americans? Acclaimed reporter David Cay Johnston reveals how government policies and spending have reached deep into the wallets of the many to benefit the top 1% of the wealthiest.

He shows exactly who has been getting free lunches from the government—from $100 million to Warren Buffett, to $1.3 billion to the owners of the Yankees and Mets. But of course there's really no such thing as a free lunch. The taxpayer always picks up the bill. With his in depth reporting, vivid stories, and sharp analysis, Johnston reveals the forces that shape our everyday economic lives—and shows us how we can finally make things better.

Kirkus Reviews

An exhaustive litany of federal, state and even local giveaways to the very wealthy, described in agonizing and depressing detail. Beginning in the Reagan years, the U.S. government has placed a growing economic burden onto those least able to bear it, declares Johnston (Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich-and Cheat Everybody Else, 2003, etc.). It subsidizes the prosperous through tax breaks and other giveaways while stripping away protections for consumers, retirees, workers and investors. Starting with the sordid story of an exclusive Oregon golf course whose wealthy patrons enjoy recreation indirectly paid for by taxpayers, Johnston details dozens of giveaways, demonstrating beyond doubt that while government policies have made life much easier for those at the very top of the income pyramid, the great majority have it much worse than ever before. Examples range from the infamous-electricity deregulation, the collapse of Enron and the resulting astronomical spikes in the cost of power-to the obscure. In the latter category is Cabela's, a sporting-goods behemoth that convinced the citizens of tiny Hamburg, Pa., to grant it an exemption from property and sales taxes in exchange for locating a new megastore in their community. The total subsidy: some $8,000 for each man, woman and child in the community. Stories like these are no longer shocking, and Johnston fails to reach beyond sensationalism to solutions. In a final chapter, he suggests that citizens embrace democratic principles, but is disappointingly vague on how that might manifest itself in policies that would right the sinking ship he so vividly describes. Without solutions, thisremains little more than a list of grievances.

What People Are Saying

“If you’re concerned about congressional earmarks, stock options (especially backdated options), hedge fund tax breaks, abuse of eminent domain, subsidies to sports teams, K Street lobbyists, the state of our health-care system, to say nothing of the cavernous gap between rich and poor, you’ll read this fine book—as I did—with a growing sense of outrage. Free Lunch makes it clear that it’s high time for ‘We the People’ to stand up and be counted.”
—John C. Bogle, founder and former chairman, The Vanguard Group

“With clarity, conciseness, and cool, fact-saturated analysis, Mr. Johnston, the premier investigative reporter on how industry and commerce shift risks and costs to taxpayers, sends the ultimate message to all Americans—either we demand to have a say or we will continue to pay, pay, and pay.”
—Ralph Nader

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