Evan Osnos's writings reveal the growing wealth inequality in the United States, where over two-thirds of the wealth is concentrated in the top 10% of households. His book, The Haves and Have Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich, examines the behaviors and lifestyles of the ultrarich, including tax evasion and lavish spending. Osnos highlights the fragility of American democracy amid rising economic inequality and expresses concern about its potential to destabilize society, emphasizing the urgent need to address these disparities for the future stability of the nation.
Osnos's new collection of essays, The Haves and Have Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich, explores the world of the 1%, from their tax-dodging and yacht-buying techniques to their propensity for building luxury bunkers and employing pop stars to perform at private events.
In 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president, I realized that the normal tools of political analysis—the way that I usually write about what's happening in the world—were not going to suffice. I couldn't understand how a guy who declared himself the enemy of the elites could somehow inhabit that role.
The question of course is whether we can still address these disparities in a meaningful way before they lead to the undoing of our society. The volatility we see today is not just an outlier; it's symptomatic of deeper societal fractures.
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