VIDEO: How Our Communities Get Burned by Billionaires

IPS inequality expert Chuck Collins’ book Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power Are Ruining Our Lives and Planet explains how billionaires are harming our everyday lives — and how to rein them in.

Book TV on C-SPAN recently re-aired a video of a November 2025 event at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C. where Chuck spoke with veteran labor journalist and IPS Associate Fellow Sam Pizzigati about some of the key takeaways from Burned by Billionaires that resonate deeply with ordinary communities.

Chuck and Sam discussed the impact of wealth concentration on society and politics. They pointed to examples like the Citizens United Supreme Court case, which enabled the ultra-rich to invest huge amounts of dark money to achieve political influence. But as Chuck outlines in his book, so many other aspects of our society are also rigged in favor of the ultra-wealthy — in fact, the whole system is designed to favor them over ordinary workers and working families. 

“The fundamental concern to me is how the economy has been rigged or changed to funnel wealth to that top 1,000 [households]. That’s what we should be focusing on,” Chuck urged. It’s not enough to focus on the bad behavior of individual billionaires, he explained — we also need to tackle the overall rise in billionaires and extreme wealth. 

Chuck highlighted the stark contrast between billionaires raking in enormous profits each year and ordinary Americans who are struggling to get by, including 4 in 10 Americans who are just one emergency away from financial ruin. “I would say we need fewer billionaires and more thousandaires,” Chuck explained.

Chuck and Sam also discussed how billionaires get to exploit tax loopholes instead of paying their fair share in taxes. As Sam highlighted, the book points out that while ordinary Americans all know we pay local, state, and federal taxes, we might not realize that we’re also paying a different kind of tax — to large private corporations and private equity funds. We’re helping bankroll them, while we’re being squeezed. 

“Lo and behold, here we are at the local level — low- and middle-income people, working people, are picking up the slack for the taxes that the wealthy aren’t paying,” Chuck explains.

“I’m constantly sitting with people who are complaining about local property taxes and local taxes. Who are they mad at? They’re mad at the local city council ,” Chuck notes. They should direct their anger instead at the wealthiest among them, who force local residents to bear the cost of their refusal to pay their fair share in taxes. 

Chuck urged policy reforms to “tax the excess luxury” to fund affordable housing and other vital programs and services that help our communities survive and thrive. States like Massachusetts offer a great example of how even small increases in taxes on the richest residents can help fund programs and services that address communities’ most urgent needs.

You can get more info about virtual and in-person events for Chuck’s Burned by Billionaires book tour here. And you can watch the full event below.