Wealth Secrets: How the Rich Got Rich

by Sam Wilkin

Overview

Discover how the superwealthy made it to the top (and you can too!)

From the richest Romans to the robber barons to today's bankers and tech billionaires, Sam Wilkin offers Freakonomics-esque insights into what it really takes to make a fortune. These stories of larger-than-life characters, strategies, and sacrifices reveal how the wealthiest did it, usually by a passion for finding loopholes, working around bureaucratic systems, and creating obstacles to competitors.

Wealth Secrets of the One Percent gets at the heart of our feelings about the 1% of top income earners and the roughly 0.0001% who achieve billionaire status: we love to hate them, but we'd love to be them. Wilkin's insight into the sources of wealth is thought-provoking and rigorous, and he reveals that behind almost every great fortune is a "wealth secret" — a moneymaking technique designed to defeat the forces of market competition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316378956
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	03/15/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Sam Wilkin is a senior advisor to Oxford Economics, one of the world's foremost global forecasting and research consultancies, where he previously served as head of business research. He is also a senior advisor to Oxford Analytica, a strategic analysis and advisory firm that counts among its clients many global companies and more than twenty-five world governments.

Wilkin received his B.A. in economics from Eckerd College, where he was the 2004 alumni fellow, and his M.A. in international relations from the University of Chicago. He lives in New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

1 Why Is It So Hard to Get Rich? 11

2 Wealth Secrets of the Ancient Romans 41

3 Wealth Secrets of the Robber Barons 79

4 Wealth Secrets of Today's One Percent 155

5 Wealth Secrets of the Forbes Global Rich List 215

6 Dot.com Wealth Secrets 275

7 Seven Secrets of Spectacularly Rich People 327

Acknowledgments 373

Notes 375

Index 417

Editorial Reviews

"Want to become "obscenely" rich, as the subtitle of this illuminating book has it? Well, the best bet is to be born that way. The next best bet is to have a "wealth secret," the better-mousetrap sine qua non for building an empire. Economic forecaster Wilkin, head of business research at Oxford Economics, has good fun looking at how some fabulously rich people got to be that way.... Eye-opening."—Kirkus Reviews

"Wilkin is a knowledgeable guide to the world's greatest fortunes.... Thoughtful, playful prose."—Bryan Burrough, New York Times Book Review

"An amazing read... Get on to one of those [secrets] and you too can light your cigars with $100 bills.."—Marvin Zonis, Professor Emeritus, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago

"Sam Wilkin combs history for a provocative and well-written account of the secrets of wealth formation. Just reading this book will make you richer."—Darrell M. West, Vice President of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and author of Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust

"So how do our billionaires make their billions? Business analyst Sam Wilkin offers up the real scoop.... Delicious and insight-packed."—Sam Pizzigati, Too Much

"Clever, entertaining.... Rich and poor will enjoy it equally, and if you have a modest entourage, I would consider getting copies for them too."—Marcus Berkmann, Daily Mail (UK)

"Pay attention.... What makes this book different is Sam Wilkin is an inside man."—Joe Shute, The Telegraph (UK)

A "highly entertaining and useful guide to the 'fascinating economic puzzle waiting to be solved' behind every billion-dollar fortune.... If you too would like to get your hands on today's equivalent of 250,000lb of fattened goose meat, Wilkin's book is a brilliant place to start."
—Julia Richardson, Daily Mail (UK)

"This is at heart a theoretical book, not an historical one. Its merit lies not in the stories it tells, but in the connections it draws between them."—Nick Wolven, Washington Independent Review of Books

"A great read.... Infused with a great sense of humor."—Life Elsewhere

From the Publisher

2015-06-01
Of robber barons, monopsonists, and oligarchs, in which it's revealed that the free market is anything but free. Want to become "obscenely" rich, as the subtitle of this illuminating book has it? Well, the best bet is to be born that way. The next best bet is to have a "wealth secret," the better-mousetrap sine qua non for building an empire. Economic forecaster Wilkin, head of business research at Oxford Economics, has good fun looking at how some fabulously rich people got to be that way. Though he teases a bit with the thought that you and I can "exploit their wealth secrets to become fabulously rich" as well, in the end, his book becomes a subtle, between-the-lines indictment of capitalism as it is mostly practiced these days. For instance, as Wilkin notes, the aspiring wealthy person doesn't want a level playing field—far from it. Nor does he or she want competition, for competition is messy and tedious, and "when masters of wealth secrets compete, they do not compete in the market" but instead, the courtroom and other arenas where they can effectively destroy their enemies without having to face them on the shelves and divide the market. This was the way of the great 19th-century robber barons, too, as with John D. Rockefeller, "strangling his competitors with cartels," and his ilk, who regarded competition as "that oppressive force that prevents great men from achieving fortunes commensurate with their greatness." Thus it is in emerging markets, where Wilkin counsels would-be monopolists to head, since corrupt political systems favor creative and extralegal ways of securing the startup money necessary to become a tycoon. And besides, he writes, "it's good to go where no one else wants to go." Against this backdrop, so-called natural monopolies like Microsoft look benign. Eye-opening and sure to make libertarian heads explode.

Kirkus Reviews