Winner-Take-All Politics

Hacker explores the connection between America’s present yawning inequality and the deliberate decisions made by key political figures throughout the last 50 years. While off-shoring and technological innovation have contributed to the ever poorer job prospects and conditions for the poor and working-class, he argues that our government is just as much to blame. We could have taken action to protect these constituencies but rather defended the interests of corporate America and the radical rich (his term for wealth conservative donors such as the Koch Brothers). The book is very well-researched and easily digestible.

This is a book about how inequality and economic crisis reflect what the government has done to aid the rich and what it has not done to safeguard the interests of the middle class. Hacker and Pierson trace the rise of the winner-take-all economy back to the late 1970s when, under Democratic president Carter and a Democratic Congress, a major transformation of American politics occurred. With big business and conservative ideologues organizing themselves to undo the regulations and progressive tax policies that had helped ensure a fair distribution of economic rewards, deregulation got underway, taxes were cut for the wealthiest,… show more.