Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All?

Book excerpt: It is commonly assumed that the best way to help the poor out of their misery is to allow the rich to get richer, that if the rich pay less taxes then all the rest of us will be better off. Yet these commonly held beliefs are flatly contradicted by our daily experience, research findings, and logic. Bauman scrutinises the assumptions and convictions upon which such opinions are grounded, finding them one by one to be false, deceitful and misleading.