Battlers & Billionaires: the Story of Inequality in Australia

'This is required reading for every Australian who seriously cares about the fair go enduring.' - Peter FitzSimons 'Be warned: this book will open your eyes and prick your conscience.' - Ross Gittins Is Australia fair enough? And why does inequality matter anyway? In Battlers and Billionaires, Andrew Leigh weaves together vivid anecdotes, interesting history and powerful statistics to tell the story of inequality in this country. This is economics writing at its best. From egalitarian beginnings, Australian inequality rose through the nineteenth century. Then we became more equal again, with inequality falling markedly from the 1920s to the 1970s. Now, inequality is returning to the heights of the 1920s. Leigh shows that while inequality can fuel growth, it also poses dangers to society. Too much inequality risks cleaving us into two Australias, occupying fundamentally separate worlds, with little contact between the haves and the have-nots. And the further apart the rungs on the ladder of opportunity, the harder it is for a kid born into poverty to enter the middle class. Battlers and Billionaires sheds fresh light on what makes Australia distinctive, and what it means to have - and keep - a fair go. 'A thought-provoking book which emphasises how far we have strayed from confidently discussing public policies that seek to give meaning to our egalitarian spirit.' - Laura Tingle About the author: Andrew Leigh is the federal MP for Fraser and a former economics professor at the Australian National University. He holds a PhD from Harvard and in 2011 received the Economics Society of Australia's award for the best Australian economist under forty. He is the author of Disconnected, co-author of Imagining Australia and co-editor of The Prince's New Clothes. Redbacks - books with bite. Short books on big issues by leading Australian writers and thinkers.