According to a common belief, the best way to help the poor and relieve them of their misery is to allow the rich to become richer: if the wealthy pay fewer taxes, then the rest of us will find ourselves in a better situation. Therefore, the wealth of the few benefits us all.

However, these common beliefs contradict our daily experience, a plethora of findings based on studies, and of course, logic. This paradoxical gap between irrefutable evidence and common perceptions makes us stop and wonder: why are these beliefs so widespread and why do they resist the accumulated and ever-growing evidence that proves otherwise?

This small book attempts to provide an answer to this question. Bauman records and analyzes the implicit assumptions and thoughtless beliefs on which the above perceptions are based and finds that, one by one, they are false, deceptive, and misleading.

These perceptions would hardly remain in the foreground if they did not defend –in essence, if they did not promote and reinforce– the current, unprecedented, unjustified, and increasingly accelerating rise of social inequality, as well as the widening gap between the elite of the wealthy and the rest of society.