I know the book exists as I'm very familiar with the kinds of claims that get repeated in threads like this.
To me - these claims seem to fuel a conspiracy like mind set about why certain efforts or movements fail. "Because the billionares didn't want it to". "Or they bought the media and control the narrative". "Its all just a uniparty!".
If I were to replace the word billionare with the name of the first Abrahamic religion, you and I would both see that view point as low intellect nonsense. And it would be. But somehow, sub in the word billionare and then it becomes brilliant analysis for some.
Boiled down, all I'm really claiming is that some rich people spent a bunch of money on lobbying, largely in favor of making money better for buying influence and in favor of making it easier for the rich to get richer with some populist culture-war-stoking side-quests to drum up the necessary votes, and the effort was pretty successful. I don't think that's an out-there or "conspiracy like mind"ed take, especially given that's just... what happened.
Except it's not what just happened. More billionaires supported the Harris ticket than the Trump ticket. It's just that Trump's pet billionaires -- especially one in particular -- hustled harder for him.
Plus what I'm getting at started shortly pre-WWII and really started to see serious policy and "Overton window" effects in the 70s. There was a huge boom in organized pro-(big)-business and pro-rich lobbying starting in the late 30s and really taking off just after the war. I think it'd be pretty surprising if the following shifts in public perception and opinion, and in policy, just happened to align with what they were promoting by coincidence.
I don't think any of the folks pushing for deregulation of media ownership (to allow it to consolidate) and defanging anti-trust and cutting rich people's taxes and reducing government social spending or other spending that competed with potential "market solutions" or made the labor force less-desperate, or pushing anti-union policies, while promoting the view that "actually all of that is good for normal people, so you should vote for the party promoting it... also, the blacks and gays are out to get you, in case that other argument didn't convince you" had in mind getting someone like Trump, specifically, into power, though without their actions over several decades it surely wouldn't have been possible.
well, you're changing from "people only complain about some billionaires" to "people complain about all billionaires and it's just a conspiracy theory" so I'm not sure what point you're trying to get across.
maybe you could read the book to dispel your mistaken notion that it's just "billionaires bad", since it's stated (and successful) objective is to cover a specific group of highly-influential people that have worked on very specific projects in furtherance of a specific political/economic ideal that we're reaping the fruits of now in real time.
To me - these claims seem to fuel a conspiracy like mind set about why certain efforts or movements fail. "Because the billionares didn't want it to". "Or they bought the media and control the narrative". "Its all just a uniparty!".
If I were to replace the word billionare with the name of the first Abrahamic religion, you and I would both see that view point as low intellect nonsense. And it would be. But somehow, sub in the word billionare and then it becomes brilliant analysis for some.