Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Cla

[dtotire]

Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class

Paul Pierson (Author)

(Author), Jacob S. Hacker


From Booklist
How did the widening gap between haves and have-nots—even worse, the haves and have-mores—come about? In the past 30 years, the top 1 percent have enjoyed 36 percent of all the income growth generated in the U.S. economy. Treating the growing socioeconomic gap like a whodunit, Hacker and Pierson painstakingly detail the gap between the superrich and everyone else. They paint a portrait of a nation that has fallen behind other developed nations in the widening income gap among its citizens. Worse, the wealth gap cannot be explained away by a lack of education or skills. Even among the well educated, a chasm has developed between the middle class and the wealthy. Whodunit? The U.S. government, which details changes in taxation and public policy, particularly regarding the financial markets, which have favored the wealthy at the expense of others over the last 30 years. Finally, they consider the long-term implications of this troubling trend and offer some encouraging signs—health care and financial reform, however anemic—and a growing discontent with the status quo. --Vanessa Bush

“Engrossing. . . . Hacker and Pierson . . . deliver the goods. . . . Their description of the organizational dynamics that have tilted economic policymaking in favor of the wealthy is convincing.”

--Justin Fox, Harvard Business Review

“How the U.S. economic system has also moved ‘off center’ toward an extreme concentration of wealth, and how progressive efforts to reverse that trend have run aground. . . . A very valuable book.”

--Ed Kilgore, Washington Monthly

“Hacker and Pierson argue strongly that the concentration of income at the top is not just the work of deep economic forces. It is aided and abetted by politicians who favor the very rich or allow policies that once favored the rest of us to erode. Hacker and Pierson look closely, sharply, and entertainingly at the way that interest-group politics and the political power of money have allowed this travesty of democracy to happen. This book is a wake-up call. Read it and wake up."

--Robert Solow, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics in 1987


more:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_24?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=winner+take+all+politics&sprefix=winner+take+all+politics

[OHdem10]

1. Shoen and Rasmussen have written a book jointly MAD AS

HELL. In their book they too make very similar statements.
Even go so far as say it was intentional citing laws and
regulations passed or repealed which caused the Gap to widen.

They were on Book TV this past Sunday for an hour. Very
Interesting.

[madmax]

2. Thanks - it's in my cart

It's a pity and a disgrace that I don't know what I should at my age about how our government works.

That's why I have empathy for those who don't - I too spent most of my younger years working my ass off to support myself, my son and my Mom. Married and divorced a deadbeat. I had other priorities. Now it's time to catch up.
Thank you for the book recommendation.