Eat the Rich provides a flamboyant slightly indigestible pudding!

The title is taken from Chapter 11 of the book, which starts: ‘We’re so close to being rich. Everybody in the world could be as rich as hell. The benighted masses of India could quit pedalling bicycle rickshaws and start dragging Lear jets through the streets of Calcutta. Indians in the Brazilian rain forest could be singing in the rain…’  Money won’t solve all our problems. But money, he says, will give us options and allow us to choose the problems we want to have!

Having seen good capitalism on Wall Street he looks at bad capitalism in Albania. Having seen good socialism in Sweden he looks at Cuba. He goes to Russia and comments ‘How (or How Not) to Reform (may be) an Economy (if there is one).’

What’s wrong with the world, he asks. His answer is ‘The whole miracle of the modern industrial economy is based upon:

• Hard work
• Education
• Responsibility
• Property rights
• Rule of law
• Democratic government

It shouldn’t be difficult to make some minor adjustments to get things right.

Underlying the froth this book is every bit as serious as the other two. In a way it is incredible we cannot find a way to make the simple changes needed to eradicate poverty in every country of the world.

Eat the Rich:  A treatise on economics
by P J O’Rourke

To order phone Macmillan Direct on +44 1256 329 242 or fax +44 1256 842 084
Michael Brophy is Chief Executive of CAF.