The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use "Plain English" to Rob You Blind

by David Cay Johnston

Overview

A bestselling author’s shocking analysis of the many ways we are victimized by corporations
 
David Cay Johnston, the bestselling author of Perfectly Legal and Free Lunch, is famous for exposing the perfidies of our biggest institutions. Now he turns his attention to the ways huge corporations hide sneaky stipulations in just about every contract, often with government permission.
 
No other modern country gives corporations the unfettered power found in America to gouge customers, shortchange workers, and erect barriers to fair play. Johnston shares solutions you can use to fight back against the obscure fees and taxes, and to help end these devious practices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781591846536
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/27/2013
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	1,090,507
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who wrote for the New York Times for thirteen years. He lives in Rochester, New York.

Visit www.davidcayjohnston.com


 

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“If you enjoy learning about the dirty little secrets behind the ways powerful businesses make their profits, you probably will like this book.”
—The Washington Post

Editorial Reviews

David Cay Johnston is one of the few journalists who understand and write about the inner workings of the U.S. tax code. He's made a fine career of chronicling how large companies and the wealthy have plundered the government's coffers, often with help from the politicians who write our tax laws. His accolades include a Pulitzer Prize for exposing outrageous loopholes used to shelter vast amounts of income…The Fine Print expands on that theme, showing a gamut of ways in which big corporations, especially regulated utilities, cheat ordinary people (as well as each other) out of their money. Some of the examples could leave you feeling so disgusted and powerless that you might wonder if you were better off not knowing. But if you enjoy learning about the dirty little secrets behind the ways powerful businesses make their profits, you probably will like this book.
—Jonathan Weil

The Washington Post

"Todd McLaren narrates at a good pace, keeping the energy high throughout. Reading with conviction and enthusiasm, he makes it sound as if the words are his own." ---AudioFile

From the Publisher

After listening to this audiobook, listeners are sure to pay more attention to the fine print in all areas of their lives. Johnson unveils many of the ways that big business—including railroads, utilities, banks, and others—are taking advantage of tax breaks and regulations and costing customers and taxpayers millions. Todd McLaren narrates at a good pace, keeping the energy high throughout. Reading with conviction and enthusiasm, he makes it sound as if the words are his own. He also uses a variety of accents for the quotations, which nicely breaks up the performance and adds a touch of humor as he varies his tone and pitch to fit the person being quoted. E.N. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2013 - AudioFile

Veteran investigative reporter Johnston reveals how businesses, with the consent of government agencies, rip off consumers in plain sight. This book completes a kind of trilogy, after 2003's Perfectly Legal (about tax scams) and 2007's Free Lunch (about government subsidies). The "fine print" refers to a variety of bills--telephone, electric, water, insurance, credit card, hospital--and other documents that technically disclose costs to the bill payers but are intended to obscure as many hidden costs as possible. Although Johnston's research is meant to shame the powerful for accumulating eye-popping wealth by exploiting the less fortunate, the book also serves to empower recipients of the bills so they can demand repayment and maybe even systemic reform. In a closing chapter, Johnston recommends self-education by consumers, and he provides a start by delineating, for example, how to analyze a utility bill in order to fully understand the many clever surcharges and fees. The author hopes to encourage organized campaigns aimed at all levels and branches of government. The influence of the ballot box can speak truth to power, Johnston believes--perhaps naively but with heartwarming passion. Minimum-wage laws once seemed hopeless to achieve, he writes, yet they are now prevalent because consumers banded together effectively. Investigative journalism at its best, as Johnston seeks to comfort the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable.

Kirkus Reviews