Hacker Jacob S. - Winner-take-all politics: how washington made the rich richer--and turned its back on the middle class

Praise for
WINNER-TAKE-ALL POLITICS

Important. The collapse of the American middle class and the huge transfer of wealth to the already wealthy is the biggest domestic story of our time. The good news reported by Hacker and Pierson is that American wealth disparitiesalmost exactly as wide as in 1928are not the residue of globalization or technology or anything else beyond our control. Theres nothing inevitable about them. Theyre the result of politics and policies, which tilted toward the rich beginning in the 1970s and can, with enough effort, be tilted back over time (emphasis added for impatient liberals).

Jonathan Alter, The New York Times Book Review

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

The clearest explanation yet of the forces that converged over the past three decades or so to undermine the economic well-being of ordinary Americans is contained in Winner-Take-All Politics. Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson argue persuasively that the economic struggles of the middle and working classes in the U.S. since the late 1970s were not primarily the result of globalization and technological changes but rather a long series of policy changes in government that overwhelmingly favored the very rich. Nothing better illustrates the enormous power that has accrued to this tiny sliver of the population than its continued ability to thrive and prosper despite the Great Recession that was largely the result of their winner-take-all policies, and that has had such a disastrous effect on so many other Americans.

Bob Herbert, The New York Times

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 can hedge-fund managers who are pulling down billions sometimes pay a lower tax rate than do their secretaries? ask the political scientists Jacob S. Hacker (of Yale) and Paul Pierson (University of California, Berkeley) in their deservedly lauded new book, Winner-Take-All Politics. If you want to cry real tears about the American dreamas opposed to the self-canonizing tears of John Boehnerread this book and weep. The authors answer to that question and others amounts to a devastating indictment of both parties.... The book deflates much of the conventional wisdom.

Frank Rich, The New York Times

Over the past generation, the middle class has been repeatedly battered, and its once-solid foundations have begun to tremble. Uncovering the hidden political story behind this great economic challenge, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson shed light on what has gone wrongand why. Their book is must-reading for anyone who wants to understand how Washington stopped working for the middle class.

Elizabeth Warren, Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

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 make a compelling case. If Marie Antoinette were alive, she might aver of todays great economically challenged masses, Let them nibble on passbook-savings-account interestif they can manage to save anything, that is.

David Holahan, The Christian Science Monitor

A must-read book.... It broke down what was at stake in 2010 and will be at stake in 2012 better than anything Ive read.... Hacker and Pierson show how politics has become organized combat.

Joan Walsh, Salon

Two top political scientists tell us when America turned terribly wrongand how the rich and powerful organized to do the turning. Fascinating.

Sam Pizzigagi, Too Much, an online newsletter of the Institute for Policy Studies

Must buy this book.

Beezernotes.com

This is a transformative book. Its the best book on American politics that Ive read since Before the Storm. If it has the impact it deserves, it will transform American public arguments about politics and policymaking.

Henry Farrell, Crookedtimber.org

Winner-Take-All Politics is a marvelous connect-the-dots book. It makes not just one point, but a series of points that fit together like train-cars.

The Weekly Sift

A swiftly written political history that shows why were where we are and what crippled our governments ability to deal with it.

The American Prospect

Hacker and Pierson remind us that there are no such things as pure markets, and that markets everywhere are shaped by laws and regulations, cultures and the institutional arrangements that themselves are shaped by the political process.

Steven Pearlstein, The Washington Post

I really recommend it.

Chris Hayes, Washington editor of The Nation magazine, on MSNBCs Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Read Winner-Take-All Politics. This excellent work is all about how Washington has made the rich richerand turned its back on the middle class.

Liz Smith, WOWOWOW.com

Its a great review of the state-of-the-art thinking on the scope of the inequality explosion and... correctly frames this as a non-inevitable consequence of policy decisions.... Recommended.

Matt Yglesias, thinkprogress.org

This is an important book for raising some of the key questions of our time. I would recommend that people read it and give it serious thought.

Tyler Cowen, Marginalrevolution.com

Also by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson

Off Center: The Republican Revolution
and the Erosion of American Democracy

Also by Jacob S. Hacker

The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream

The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private
Social Benefits in the United States

The Road to Nowhere: The Genesis of President Clintons Plan
for Health Security

Also by Paul Pierson

Politics in Time: History, Institutions and Social Analysis

Dismantling the Welfare State?
Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment

Copyright 2010 by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or
portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address
Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department,
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.