Fair Shot
Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn
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Fair Shot
Buy Now for £7.99
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Narrated by:
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Chris Hughes
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By:
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Chris Hughes
About this listen
In this fascinating audiobook, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes argues that the best way to fight income inequality is with a radically simple idea: a guaranteed income for working people, paid for by the one percent.
The first half of Chris Hughes’s life played like a movie reel right out of the “American Dream.” He grew up in a small town in North Carolina. His parents were people of modest means, but he was accepted into an elite boarding school and then Harvard, both on scholarship. There, he met Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz and became one of the co-founders of Facebook.
In telling his story, Hughes demonstrates the powerful role fortune and luck play in today’s economy. Through the rocket ship rise of Facebook, Hughes came to understand how a select few can become ultra-wealthy nearly overnight. He believes the same forces that made Facebook possible have made it harder for everyone else in America to make ends meet.
To help people who are struggling, Hughes proposes a simple, bold solution: a guaranteed income for working people, including unpaid caregivers and students, paid for by the one percent. The way Hughes sees it, a guaranteed income is the most powerful tool we have to combat poverty and stabilize America’s middle class. Money—cold hard cash with no strings attached—gives people freedom, dignity, and the ability to climb the economic ladder. A guaranteed income for working people is the big idea that's missing in the national conversation.
This audiobook, grounded in Hughes’s personal experience, will start a frank conversation about how we earn in modern America, how we can combat income inequality, and ultimately, how we can give everyone a Fair Shot.
Critic reviews
"I admire Chris’s commitment to apply his talent, experience, and wealth to tackle some of our toughest problems." —Bill Gates
"The American Dream is slipping away—too many people are working too hard and they’re still sinking, not even able to cover the basic costs of living. Fair Shot offers a new tool for economic mobility: a guaranteed income to all working people—even those whose work hasn’t been recognized or compensated with income before." —Arianna Huffington
"If we are to be true to the principles of our nation’s founding, opportunity cannot be solely the province of the wealthy and well-connected. Yet the promise that if you work hard you can get ahead is broken for millions of Americans. As we strive to build a fairer, more inclusive country, Fair Shot is a very important read. These ideas must be part of the conversation as we consider how best to ensure the American Dream is available to all. This mission of securing the dream for all presents an urgency for every American; the strength and future of our nation depend on our success." —Senator Cory Booker
"America was never a meritocracy, but the belief that it was fueled the American Dream and maintained social peace. Now the gig is up. Massive wealth is in the hands of a small number of people lucky enough to have been at the right places and times to grab it, while most Americans are going nowhere and can't even rely on a steady income. What’s the answer? In this thoughtful book, Chris Hughes—one of the lucky ones—explains why we need a guaranteed income, and how his life experiences have brought him to this conclusion. He makes a powerful and compelling argument that should be at the center of the national economic debate." —Robert Reich, former US Secretary of Labor and author of the national bestseller Saving Capitalism
Chris Hughes is one of the entrepreneurs and philanthropists at the heart of the effort to raise awareness of the positive benefits of unconditional cash transfer programs.
He pragmatically distances himself from the concept of a full UBI given to all citizens. This is mostly a marketing tool to repackage the idea, but it also has unfortunate consequences. The commonsensical insistence on limiting the income support for people participating in the labour market (loosely defined) and making less than $50,000 a year adds a layer of bureaucratic complexity that worsens the model by loosening the "guarantee" part of the guaranteed income.
He also insists on raising taxes exclusively on the 1% (a controversial value judgment) and on keeping intact minimum wage laws (a bad idea) and a bunch of supplementary welfare services (another economically dubious solution). These, again, seem like unnecessary complications that distract from the simplicity of the idea.
The book is also rhetorically a bit boring and lacking in fire power. MLK the author is not.
Nor does the book offer great revelations about Chris Hughes the co-founder of Facebook. The book feels a bit too restrained and controlled in its delivery - as if ghost-written by a lawyer.
Despite these reservations, I think the book is worth listening to, since the basic idea is so powerful and revolutionary. If we cannot build bipartisan support for the idea of guaranteed minimum income (whether in the precise form as proposed by Mr. Hughes or hopefully not), we do not deserve to call ourselves civilized.
A vision for the future
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