Winners Take All: What are the Economic and Social Costs of Altruism?

On May 2, join former New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas and Booth professor Marianne Bertrand as they discuss the themes of economic and social costs of altruism in Giridharadas’ new book, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, in which he argues that the global elite's efforts to "change the world" often serve to preserve the status quo and obscure their role in causing the problems they later seek to solve.

During lunch, Giridharadas and Bertrand will discuss the implications of the rich and powerful fighting for equality and justice and what that means for democracy. “We see how they rebrand themselves as saviors of the poor; how they lavishly reward ‘thought leaders’ who redefine ‘change’ in winner-friendly ways; and how they constantly seek to do more good but never less harm,” Giridharadas writes in Winners Take All.

Giridharadas' book will be available for purchase at the event, courtesy of the Seminary Co-op.

This event is cohosted by Chicago Booth’s Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation, the Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, and the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago. This event is part of UChicago Innovation Fest 2019.

Anand Giridharadas is the author of The True American and India Calling. He was a foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times from 2005 to 2016, and has also written for The Atlantic, The New Republic, and The New Yorker. He is an Aspen Institute fellow, an on-air political analyst for MSNBC, and a former McKinsey analyst. He teaches journalism at New York University and has spoken on the main stage of TED. His writing has been honored by the Society of Publishers in Asia, the Poynter Fellowship at Yale, and the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Award. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Marianne Bertrand is the Chris P. Dialynas Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at Chicago Booth, where she is also faculty director of Booth’s Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation and faculty director of the Poverty Lab at the University of Chicago Urban Labs. She is a Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Center for Economic Policy Research, and the Institute for the Study of Labor. Professor Bertrand is an applied micro-economist whose research covers the fields of labor economics, corporate finance, and development economics. Her work has been published widely, including numerous research articles in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, the American Economic Review, and the Journal of Finance.

The conversation will take place from 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Harper Center, Room 104 (5807 S Woodlawn Ave)