Book · 2010 · intro level
Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
Jacob S. Hacker, Paul Pierson
- Venue
- Simon & Schuster
- Link
- publisher / source page
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In plain language
Argues rising U.S. inequality since the 1970s is best explained by decades of deliberate policy choices — deregulation, tax cuts, weak labor-law enforcement, financialization — shaped by an organized business lobby against a comparatively unorganized public.
Technical summary
Trade-book synthesis of the 'organizational drift' thesis: diffuse public interests lose out to concentrated, mobilized business interests over a multi-decade policy drift.
Key takeaways
- Core text (with Bartels and Gilens & Page) of the political-science 'power, not just markets' school on inequality's causes.
Themes
Related works
- Winner-Take-All Politics: Public Policy, Political Organization, and the Precipitous Rise of Top Incomes in the United States — Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson, 2010
- Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age — Larry M. Bartels, 2008
- Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens — Martin Gilens & Benjamin I. Page, 2014