Winner-Take-All Politics (2010) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

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Characters/People edit see section history

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• Ronald Reagan: Former President
• Schumer: Add a description of this character.
• Phil Gramm
• Obama
• George W. Bush
• Baucus
• Saez
• Jimmy Carter
• Newt Gingrich
• Brock
• Emanuel
• Breaux
• George H. W. Bush
• Charls Walker
• Dick Armey
• Tom
• Bartels
• John Mccain
• Manatt
• Robert Rubin
• Lippmann
• Joe Lieberman
• Ted Kennedy
• Bob Dole

Quotes edit see section history

• “Nixon, not Johnson, oversaw the most rapid increase in domestic spending since the New Deal.”

• “Nixon, not Johnson signed into law the huge extensions of national regulatory policy... EPA, OSHA, NTSC, CPSC,”

• “American income inequality is the highest in the advanced industrial world. … Standard measures show that the United States more closely resembles a developing country than an advanced country on this measure of economic performance.”

• “… if the effects of taxation on income at the top had been frozen in place in 1970, a very big chunk of the growing distance between the superrich and everyone else would disappear. This dramatic change in tax policy didn’t happen magically. Starting in the 1970s, the people in charge of designing and implementing the tax code increasingly favored those at the very top.”

• “No industry has a comparable talent for privatizing gains and socializing losses.”

  Martin West

• “Where governments in other democracies worked energetically to offset increasing inequality, public policies in the United States actively nurtured it”

• “Polarization primarily reflects not the growing polarization of voters, but the declining responsiveness of American politicians to the electoral middle.”

• “What at first sight may seem a remedy, is, in reality, a poison. To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser … If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good. … upon some occasions things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended, or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticably of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy”

  Alexander Hamilton (in Federalist Papers)

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• Economic growth was even more skewed between 2001 and 2006, during which the share of income gains going to the top one percent was over 53 percent.

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• The debate should not be over whether government is involved in the formation of markets. It always is. The debate should be over whether it is involved in a manner conducive to a good society.

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• GDP per hour worked—perhaps the best single measure of a country’s economic health—actually rose faster in Europe than in the United States between 1979 and 2006.

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• drift has two stages. First, large economic and social transformations outflank or erode existing policies, diminishing their role in American life. Then, political leaders fail to update policies, even when there are viable options, because they face pressure from powerful interests exploiting opportunities for political obstruction.

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• Government actually has enormous power to affect the distribution of “market income,” that is, earnings before government taxes and benefits take effect. Think about laws governing unions; the minimum wage; regulations of corporate governance; rules for financial markets, including the management of risk for high-stakes economic ventures; and so on. Government rules make the market, and they powerfully shape how, and in whose interests, it operates.

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• Beyond the stunning shifts in taxation already described, there were three main areas where government authority gave a huge impetus to the winner-take-all economy: government’s treatment of unions, the regulation of executive pay, and the policing of financial markets.

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• The average after-tax income of the richest 1 percent of households rose from $337,100 a year in 1979 to more than $1.2 million in 2006—an increase of nearly 260 percent. Put another way, the average income of the top 1 percent more than tripled in just over a quarter-century.

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• The top 0.1 percent (the richest one in a thousand households) collectively rake in more than $1 trillion a year including capital gains—which works out to an average annual income of more than $7.1 million. In 1974, by comparison, the top 0.1 percent’s average income was just over $1 million. (All these incomes are adjusted for inflation by expressing them in 2007 dollars.) In terms of the share of national income earned, the top 0.1 percent have seen their slice of the pie grow from 2.7 percent to 12.3 percent of income—a more than fourfold increase.

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• Step by step and debate by debate, America’s public officials have rewritten the rules of American politics and the American economy in ways that have benefited the few at the expense of the many.

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• The top 0.1 percent had about 7.3 percent of total national after-tax income in 2000, up from 1.2 percent in 1970. If the effect of taxes on their income had remained what it was in 1970, they would have had about 4.5 percent of after-tax income.9 Put more simply, if the effects of taxation on income at the top had been frozen in place in 1970, a very big chunk of the growing distance between the superrich and everyone else would disappear.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Washington
• Wall Street
• United States
• America
• White House
• Canada
• New York
• New Deal
• Richistan
• Europe
• Switzerland
• Germany
• Louisiana
• France
• Capitol Hill
• Texas

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• rents: money that accrues to favored groups not because of their competitive edge, but because public policy gives them specific advantages relative to their competitors.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Paul Pierson (Author)
2. Jacob S. Hacker (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 320

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Nonfiction › Government › Public Policy

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Moyers & Company: Bill Moyers' show on Winner Take All Politics aired January 13, 2012. Bill Moyers explores how America’s vast inequality didn’t just happen, it’s been politically engineered.
• The Economist blog: Democracy in America: Sept 21st 2010 Democracy in America blog. Winner-Take-All Politics-- It's a pretty good book.
• New America Foundation video on YouTube: Uploaded to Youtube by NewAmericaFoundation on Sep 20, 2010. (1:25) In Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer - And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, Jacob S. Hacker of Yale and Paul Pierson of Berkeley argue that America's money-addicted and change-resistant political system is at the heart of the enormous and rapidly growing income inequality that they say is undermining America's economic and political stability. Robert Solow, Nobel Laureate in Economics, says of Winner-Take-All Politics: "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. "Kevin Drum of Mother Jones describe the book as "the most complete and sustained explanation I've ever read of why, over the past 30 years, America has gone the direction it has even while most other countries haven't....a 300-page 'Aha!' moment."