The title of this
piece is how one of the authors of a new book Winner-Take-All Politics: How
Washington Made the Rich Richer – And Turned It’s Back on the Middle Class
describes their magnificent work about how the incomes between the majority of
our citizens and the richest of the rich reached that point. Most of us know
the numbers by now that the top 1% of the top 1% in this country have half the
wealth of this country. Also these ultra rich are pretty much in control of the
government which many now call a plutocracy rather than a democracy.
The authors, Jacob S.
Hacker and Paul Pierson (Hacker is a professor of political science at Yale and
Pierson is also a professor of political science at the University of
California, Berkley) talk about how foreign trade, financial globalization,
changes in technology in the workplace, and the highly educated at the top,
which are usually blamed for our inequitable situation are not the real
culprits in the saga, rather it is American winner-take-all politics that has
created this winner-take-all economy.
They go back to the
1970’s when a Democratic president and congress (Lyndon B. Johnson) made major changes that
transformed politics. It really takes off under the Reagan administration when
big business and conservative ideologues deregulated all they could, cut taxes
for the rich and labor unions were defeated as major players in politics. It
continued under Bushes as well as Clinton. It comes to a head during the Obama
administration.
In essence winner-take-all
politics shows how the political system has been hijacked by the rich at the
expense of the middle class. They also theorize how democracy might be rebuild
to serve the interests of the many rather than the few.
This is not a quick
read as I have discovered but a very worthwhile and important book in understanding
what has happened in our country. The Christian Science Monitor poses the
question while reviewing the book as to how Republicans and Democrats are
behaving like Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq.
Their numbers can be
mind numbing such as 2009, a good year for Wall Street when the 38 top firms
earned 140 billion. Goldman Sacks paid its minions $600,000 per person.
I encourage you to
read and you will find reviews all over the internet. You can even listen to
the authors themselves on YouTube and the link below.
"Goldman Sacks paid its minions $600,000 per person."
ReplyDeleteConsidering the bad policy of the TARP bailouts to G-S and others, a policy opposed by Republicans and approved by Democrats, this is outrageous because this money paid to the minions is taxpayer money.
The more I read of this book the more impressed I am by it. The authors move right past political partisanship to the nuts and bolts of what has been going on in this country since the 60's and 70's. Their perspective is unique and very well informed. I recommend it very highly.
ReplyDeleteThe "misleading to the point of false" statements in the review certainly do not do much to sell this book to me.
ReplyDeleteFor example, "It really takes off under the Reagan administration when big business and conservative ideologues deregulated all they could, cut taxes for the rich..."
Reagan cut taxes for all taxpayers... only a tiny minority of whom were rich. It'd be far more accurate to say that he cut taxes for the middle class. Or even poor people: see his expansion of the EITC.
As for this: "and labor unions were defeated as major players in politics"... is it a bad thing? Unions weren't supposed to be political fundraising organizations in the first place! This is especially bad when you realize that the membership of the unions has always been divided between Democrats and Republicans. Having the union direct dues to political purposes for just one party is an abuse against all the union members of the other party.
Finally, in regards to:
ReplyDelete"Also these ultra rich are pretty much in control of the government which many now call a plutocracy rather than a democracy."
The evidence is to the contrary. The top 10% earners pay 70% of the taxes. If the ultra rich controlled things, they'd pay nothing.
The only rich people who control government are those like Obama, Pelosi, and Boehner. They are actually in control. And they are rich, either through independent means, or from soaking the taxpayers for millions of dollars.
They are supposed to pay the taxes. It was the way it was set up since the beginning of taxes. Progressive taxes are fair taxes taking the most tax from those who benefit the most in the system. With your reasoning the top 1/10th of the top 1/10th percent of the people in the country should be paying 50% of all that taxes. They don't. I would argue lets just go back to what the rates were under Ronald Reagan who made the first major changes in lowering taxes on the wealthy. They were still making big money.
ReplyDelete