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title: "Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few"
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# Published 2015, 1st edition #110 Income Inequality bestseller 304 pages of deep economic insight Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few

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## Summary

> 📊 Decode the rules of capitalism before they decode you!

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- **What is this?** Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few
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## Key Features

- • **Actionable Solutions:** Offers pragmatic reforms like campaign finance overhaul and anti-trust enforcement to restore fairness.
- • **Beyond Left vs Right:** Challenges the false free market vs government debate—it's about who writes the rules.
- • **Data-Driven Analysis:** 304 pages packed with nuanced, evidence-backed arguments on capitalism’s failures and fixes.
- • **Unmasking Economic Power:** Reich exposes how the new American oligarchy rigs the market for the few, not the many.
- • **Must-Read for Change-Makers:** Join 1,700+ readers who rated it 4.5 stars and are reshaping economic conversations.

## Overview

Saving Capitalism by Robert B. Reich is a 304-page hardcover bestseller that critically examines how economic power has concentrated in the hands of a few, creating unprecedented inequality. Published in 2015, this book blends rigorous data analysis with practical policy solutions, challenging conventional free market myths and calling for a rebalancing of power through reforms like campaign finance transparency and anti-trust enforcement. Essential reading for professionals eager to understand and influence the future of economic policy.

## Description

From the author of Aftershock and The Work of Nations , his most important book to date—a myth-shattering breakdown of how the economic system that helped make America so strong is now failing us, and what it will take to fix it. Perhaps no one is better acquainted with the intersection of economics and politics than Robert B. Reich, and now he reveals how power and influence have created a new American oligarchy, a shrinking middle class, and the greatest income inequality and wealth disparity in eighty years. He makes clear how centrally problematic our veneration of the “free market” is, and how it has masked the power of moneyed interests to tilt the market to their benefit. Reich exposes the falsehoods that have been bolstered by the corruption of our democracy by huge corporations and the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street: that all workers are paid what they’re “worth,” that a higher minimum wage equals fewer jobs, and that corporations must serve shareholders before employees. He shows that the critical choices ahead are not about the size of government but about who government is for: that we must choose not between a free market and “big” government but between a market organized for broadly based prosperity and one designed to deliver the most gains to the top. Ever the pragmatist, ever the optimist, Reich sees hope for reversing our slide toward inequality and diminished opportunity when we shore up the countervailing power of everyone else. Passionate yet practical, sweeping yet exactingly argued, Saving Capitalism is a revelatory indictment of our economic status quo and an empowering call to civic action.

Review: Everyone please read this book! - "Saving Capitalism" is the best explanation of the current economic situation in America that I have ever read. Reich proposes somewhat progressive solutions to the massive problems, not necessarily by expanding government, but by changing the way government sets the rules of the marketplace. Robert Reich points out that there is no such thing as a free market in nature. Every market in the history of civilization has been regulated by some authority, usually government. Whether governed by pharaohs or kings or democratically-elected congresses, some authority must set the basic rules by answering the following questions about the five building blocks of capitalism: 1. Property: What can be owned? 2. Monopolies: What degree of market power is allowed? 3. Contracts: What can be bought and sold? On what terms? 4. Bankruptcy: What happens when purchasers can't pay? 5. Enforcement: How do we assure that no one cheats on these rules? According to Reich, current arguments about the conflict between the free market and government are specious. They are designed to deflect public attention away from the real question, namely "Who is writing the rules of the marketplace?" Ever since the 1980s, when government virtually halted anti-trust enforcement, corporations have merged to become so large that one or a few corporations control each segment of the economy. With their wealth, and the wealth of a few powerful individuals, they have purchased armies of lawyers and lobbyists who incessantly walk the halls of Congress making their wishes known, suing over any government regulation that they dislike and even writing self-benefiting laws at the state and federal level which obliging legislatures enact, sometimes verbatim. During the 30-year period after WWII, corporate CEOs understood that they have many constituents in addition to shareholders. There are employees, customers, the public, and local governments which provide the infrastructure in which the corporation operates. Beginning in the 1980s, attitudes changed to regard shareholders as the only CEO constituent and share price as the only measure of CEO success. CEOs who focused on share price benefited by changes in regulations allowing them to accumulate more shares and sell them based on inside information. Any other constituencies, from employees to customers, came to be disregarded. The end result has been the massing of income and assets by a tiny minority and the fall of real wages and opportunity in the middle class and below. The economic elite has taken control; they write the rules of the marketplace for their own benefit. The solution, according to Reich, is to restore the influence of countervailing power such as labor unions, small investors, small farmers, small business people, small banks, various interest groups, and anyone else whose influence over the rules of the market has been virtually eliminated. How to achieve this? • Campaign finance reform to get big money out of politics. • Eliminate the revolving door between government and the industries it regulates. • Full disclosure of campaign contributions, funding of think tanks and studies about public policy. • Full enforcement of anti-trust laws. • Restore Glass-Steagall to separate ordinary banking from investment banking. • Set the minimum wage at half the median wage and adjust it regularly for inflation. • Reform the way we fund public education. He points out many more possible corrective measures not requiring an increase in government, but rather a change in the way government regulates the relative power of the moneyed elite and the American public. Reich presents hundreds of persuasive, detailed and nuanced arguments to make his case. Everyone should read this book.
Review: Legalized Insider Trading - Reich makes many interesting observations, including: 1. Although the free market is very efficient at rewarding people for their behavior, it's the underlying rules of the market that determine what those rewards are going to be; therefore, one should not confuse the statement "the market greatly rewarded so-and-so" with the view "so-and-so deserves their reward because the market rewarded them". For example, in the 1960s CEO pay was 20 times average worker in that CEO's Co. This ratio has steadily risen and today CEO pay is 300 times average Co. worker wages. Reich asks if CEOs are over 15 times (15,000.%) better than past CEOs. A study of 1,500 large cos. from 1994 to 2013 by economists shows that, the higher the CEO compensation, in general the worse their companies did. 2. Over the last 35 years there have been many changes to the rules of the free market, involving: property rights, monopoly rights, contracts, bankruptcy, and how the rules are enforced. These changes have resulted in wealth being transferred from the middle class to the upper class. For example, new rules regarding banking has given enormous bonuses to executives at large banks. There were 1,007,000 full-time minimum wage workers in the USA in 2013. Reich states that if those bonuses to bankers had been given, instead, to minimum wage earners, they would have doubled their minimum wages. 3. Most interesting is Reich's example of changes to the SEC that have enabled the most egregious form of insider trading to occur legally. SEC rules have changed over time to enable heads of companies to not reveal when their Company does buyback of shares, nor to reveal when they cash out their stock options in their companies. The person who would have the most insider info. about a company would be the CEO and top executives of that co. If their main source of income is stock options, then a CEO can make many millions by doing the following: a. CEO directs his co. to borrow $ in order to buy back shares (leveraged buyback). Large buybacks will cause the value of the his Co. shares to increase in value in the market (and shareholders will not know that buybacks are what is causing this rise in stock price). b. He then uses his insider info. to determine when to privately cash out his stock options. What the CEO/executives have essentially done is legally-sanctioned insider trading. Reich documents the changes in SEC rules regarding stock buybacks and execution of stock options that have resulted in enormous changes in the amount of buybacks going on in the market and the enormous amount of non-salary (i.e. stock option) compensation going to executives. Due to these changes in the rules of the game, the amount of buybacks has gone from very little to $3.6 trillion for S&P500 during 2001-2013, according to Reich. 4. Reich argues that gov. subsidies to students at private, elite universities are around $54K per student per year while only around $7K to public university students (although public universities educate many more students). The main point he makes is that the debate is usually framed as: conservatives want less regulation and more free market while liberals want more regulation and less free market; instead, the debate should be reframed as: Revealing how the wealthy have been getting enormous subsidies (involving wealth transfer to themselves from the middle and poor classes), in a manner that is largely invisible (because it happens automatically as the rules of the game have become tilted in their favor, due to their increasing political & lobbying influence). However, of all the points he made, the buyback/insider-trading scheme was most disturbing to me.

## Features

- Author: Reich, Robert B..
- Publisher: Knopf
- Pages: 304
- Publication Date: 2015
- Edition: 1st Edition
- Binding: Hardcover
- MSRP: 26.95
- ISBN13: 9780385350570
- ISBN: 0385350570
- Other ISBN: 9780385350587
- Other ISBN Binding: printisbn
- Language: en

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #907,943 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #110 in Income Inequality #159 in Economic Policy #161 in Economic Policy & Development (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,730 Reviews |

## Images

![Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51ayOZNxV6L.jpg)

## Available Options

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Everyone please read this book!
*by M***L on September 16, 2016*

"Saving Capitalism" is the best explanation of the current economic situation in America that I have ever read. Reich proposes somewhat progressive solutions to the massive problems, not necessarily by expanding government, but by changing the way government sets the rules of the marketplace. Robert Reich points out that there is no such thing as a free market in nature. Every market in the history of civilization has been regulated by some authority, usually government. Whether governed by pharaohs or kings or democratically-elected congresses, some authority must set the basic rules by answering the following questions about the five building blocks of capitalism: 1. Property: What can be owned? 2. Monopolies: What degree of market power is allowed? 3. Contracts: What can be bought and sold? On what terms? 4. Bankruptcy: What happens when purchasers can't pay? 5. Enforcement: How do we assure that no one cheats on these rules? According to Reich, current arguments about the conflict between the free market and government are specious. They are designed to deflect public attention away from the real question, namely "Who is writing the rules of the marketplace?" Ever since the 1980s, when government virtually halted anti-trust enforcement, corporations have merged to become so large that one or a few corporations control each segment of the economy. With their wealth, and the wealth of a few powerful individuals, they have purchased armies of lawyers and lobbyists who incessantly walk the halls of Congress making their wishes known, suing over any government regulation that they dislike and even writing self-benefiting laws at the state and federal level which obliging legislatures enact, sometimes verbatim. During the 30-year period after WWII, corporate CEOs understood that they have many constituents in addition to shareholders. There are employees, customers, the public, and local governments which provide the infrastructure in which the corporation operates. Beginning in the 1980s, attitudes changed to regard shareholders as the only CEO constituent and share price as the only measure of CEO success. CEOs who focused on share price benefited by changes in regulations allowing them to accumulate more shares and sell them based on inside information. Any other constituencies, from employees to customers, came to be disregarded. The end result has been the massing of income and assets by a tiny minority and the fall of real wages and opportunity in the middle class and below. The economic elite has taken control; they write the rules of the marketplace for their own benefit. The solution, according to Reich, is to restore the influence of countervailing power such as labor unions, small investors, small farmers, small business people, small banks, various interest groups, and anyone else whose influence over the rules of the market has been virtually eliminated. How to achieve this? • Campaign finance reform to get big money out of politics. • Eliminate the revolving door between government and the industries it regulates. • Full disclosure of campaign contributions, funding of think tanks and studies about public policy. • Full enforcement of anti-trust laws. • Restore Glass-Steagall to separate ordinary banking from investment banking. • Set the minimum wage at half the median wage and adjust it regularly for inflation. • Reform the way we fund public education. He points out many more possible corrective measures not requiring an increase in government, but rather a change in the way government regulates the relative power of the moneyed elite and the American public. Reich presents hundreds of persuasive, detailed and nuanced arguments to make his case. Everyone should read this book.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Legalized Insider Trading
*by M***Y on February 19, 2016*

Reich makes many interesting observations, including: 1. Although the free market is very efficient at rewarding people for their behavior, it's the underlying rules of the market that determine what those rewards are going to be; therefore, one should not confuse the statement "the market greatly rewarded so-and-so" with the view "so-and-so deserves their reward because the market rewarded them". For example, in the 1960s CEO pay was 20 times average worker in that CEO's Co. This ratio has steadily risen and today CEO pay is 300 times average Co. worker wages. Reich asks if CEOs are over 15 times (15,000.%) better than past CEOs. A study of 1,500 large cos. from 1994 to 2013 by economists shows that, the higher the CEO compensation, in general the worse their companies did. 2. Over the last 35 years there have been many changes to the rules of the free market, involving: property rights, monopoly rights, contracts, bankruptcy, and how the rules are enforced. These changes have resulted in wealth being transferred from the middle class to the upper class. For example, new rules regarding banking has given enormous bonuses to executives at large banks. There were 1,007,000 full-time minimum wage workers in the USA in 2013. Reich states that if those bonuses to bankers had been given, instead, to minimum wage earners, they would have doubled their minimum wages. 3. Most interesting is Reich's example of changes to the SEC that have enabled the most egregious form of insider trading to occur legally. SEC rules have changed over time to enable heads of companies to not reveal when their Company does buyback of shares, nor to reveal when they cash out their stock options in their companies. The person who would have the most insider info. about a company would be the CEO and top executives of that co. If their main source of income is stock options, then a CEO can make many millions by doing the following: a. CEO directs his co. to borrow $ in order to buy back shares (leveraged buyback). Large buybacks will cause the value of the his Co. shares to increase in value in the market (and shareholders will not know that buybacks are what is causing this rise in stock price). b. He then uses his insider info. to determine when to privately cash out his stock options. What the CEO/executives have essentially done is legally-sanctioned insider trading. Reich documents the changes in SEC rules regarding stock buybacks and execution of stock options that have resulted in enormous changes in the amount of buybacks going on in the market and the enormous amount of non-salary (i.e. stock option) compensation going to executives. Due to these changes in the rules of the game, the amount of buybacks has gone from very little to $3.6 trillion for S&P500 during 2001-2013, according to Reich. 4. Reich argues that gov. subsidies to students at private, elite universities are around $54K per student per year while only around $7K to public university students (although public universities educate many more students). The main point he makes is that the debate is usually framed as: conservatives want less regulation and more free market while liberals want more regulation and less free market; instead, the debate should be reframed as: Revealing how the wealthy have been getting enormous subsidies (involving wealth transfer to themselves from the middle and poor classes), in a manner that is largely invisible (because it happens automatically as the rules of the game have become tilted in their favor, due to their increasing political & lobbying influence). However, of all the points he made, the buyback/insider-trading scheme was most disturbing to me.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ One of many studies found that good teachers increase the average present value of their students’ ...
*by I***N on October 9, 2017*

As I have reaffirmed many times in this column, I hold the opinion that no economic system has grown companies and countries faster and more effectively than Capitalism. However, it hasn’t raised the quality of life for all beneficiaries equally - to say the least. It is this regrettable failing that is addressed by Robert Reich, Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and was Secretary of Labour under President Bill Clinton. Fundamental to Capitalism is the notion of a free market, where people pay for goods or services according to how they value them. What follows logically from this is that what one is paid, reflects one’s worth in the market. If you are paid too little to live on, it is because that is all you are worth, and if you are paid tens of millions you must be worth it. One of many studies found that good teachers increase the average present value of their students’ lifetime earnings by $250,000. Perhaps, if teachers were paid better the profession would attract many more such teachers. “The worth to society of many CEOs, hedge-fund managers, investment bankers, high-frequency traders, lobbyists, and high-end corporate lawyers, may be less than they command in the market. Much of what they do entails taking money out of one set of pockets and putting it into another, in escalating zero-sum activity,” Reich asserts. If Capitalism is so ‘good’, why is it so bad? That is the subject of this profound book, as well as what can reasonably be done about it. To achieve any change to the economy of a society, to make it more equitable, reasonable and humane, requires first a sound understanding of what actually makes it work. To have a ‘free market’, decisions must be made about five critical issues: property, monopoly, contract, bankruptcy, and enforcement. What can be understood as property, and therefore can be owned? Cars? Land? Slaves? A bomb? Intellectual property such as the human genome? Some have been approved and others not. What degree of market power is permissible? How big a control over the market is acceptable? Is a monopoly permissible? What can be bought and sold, and on what terms? Votes? Unsafe food? Babies? Most civilized societies do not allow or enforce contracts that are fraudulent, or that are based on coercion. But how do you understand coercion? Is insisting you buy insurance from me in order to buy something else you want, coercion? What happens when purchasers can’t pay their debts? Do they go to debtor’s prison or declare bankruptcy, and pay all debtors a only portion of what is owed equally? Are employees who have lost their bonus or the rest of their employment contract, seen as debtors? Can homeowners declare bankruptcy and so reduce their obligation on their home loan? Can students declare bankruptcy and be relieved of some of their student loan? How can we make sure no one cheats on any of these rules? We have to rely on decisions about how all these rules are enforced or they will be valueless. What are the priorities of police, inspectors, and prosecutors? Who is entitled to sue whom? Markets, whether a ‘free market’ or a ‘planned’ economy (one that is heavily regulated or controlled by the government, as in socialist or communist countries,) are made by human beings. This is no different to nations, governments, laws, corporations, and sports which are all the products of human beings. These products reflect moral values and judgments, and are not static; they change over time. The rules are made by those with the most power over rule-making, and by changing the rules, the balance can be shifted for or against certain groups. As such, the rules can be skewed to the benefit of a few, rather than the many. Whether in the USA or South Africa, decisions are too often made behind closed doors, in negotiations influenced disproportionately by those with enough resources to be heard. This creates and perpetuates a vicious cycle: economic dominance feeds political power, and political power further enlarges economic dominance. This is most evident in the USA, partly because of the country’s economic sophistication, level of transparency and freedom of expression and democracy. These decisions have real consequences for an economy and for the individual people whose livelihoods are affected by them. In 2000 in the US, for example, labour’s share of nonfarm business income was 63%. In 2013, it was 57%, representing a shift of about $750 billion annually, from those who labour to produce the capital, to those who own the capital. The reality is that government has a pivotal role in designing, organizing, and enforcing the market to begin with. The free market vs. planned market debate clouds the thousands of choices made by legislators, administrators, and judges. It clouds the ongoing task of deciding that can have huge consequences, and that will never cease, so long as there are changes in market conditions, innovations and technological advances. This is the key takeaway from this book. Changing the economic system will not help the many: vigilantly monitoring, influencing, and counterbalancing power, will. This book is a profound account of a very thoughtful and very well informed intellectual. It will shed light on some very troubling issues. Readability Light ----+ Serious Insights High +---- Low Practical High ----+ Low *Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy, and is the author of the recently released ‘Executive Update.

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