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Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made The Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back On The Middle Class (2010)

by Jacob S. Hacker(Favorite Author)

4.01 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1416593845 (ISBN13: 9781416593843)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Simon & Schuster

review 1: This may be one of the most depressing but most useful books I've read all year. The authors describe in detail how the American economy has shifted over the last 30-40 years to funnel wealth increasingly to those who already have it, leaving the vast majority of Americans to languish with minimal or no economic improvement. A key factor in this shift, they argue, lies not in educational opportunities or shifting global markets, but in the active and passive work of the American Congress. Our politicians have colluded to shift our economy from one which seeks to distribute wealth more evenly (though by no means entirely so) to one that rewards those who already have wealth. This shift has created the biggest gap in income equality in this country since the early years of t... morehe previous century, an income gap that increasingly threatens both the economic and political foundations of our society. This is not an easy read, but I found it very eye-opening and challenging.
review 2: If you want to know how "sausages are made" in Washington D.C. then you need to read this book. It seems to paint an equivocally daunting picture of what the political environment looks like today, and although it tries to provide an idea of how to fix it, it's not very good at demonstrating a whole lot of actionable steps. It demonstrates how the internet might help some, but it fails to mention the ambiguity and crowd-mindedness of the internet, which leaves me wondering if their solutions could be equally as mired in false truths as the others.However, because of my other reading, I also realized how to solve the problems anyways, and I really enjoyed the history and quotes from our nation's well meaning founders and past presidents on the gradual disenfranchisement of the general public and middle class. less

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