Winner-take-all Politics: How Washington Made T... Apr 2026

Elite interests didn't always need to pass new laws. Often, they just had to block updates to old ones—a tactic called "drift"—letting inflation and market changes erode middle-class protections like the minimum wage or labor laws.

The "crime" wasn't committed by the market, but by . The story highlights a massive organizational shift starting around 1978: Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made t...

This political muscle led to deregulated financial markets, tax cuts for the hyper-wealthy, and a system where "banks are organized; their customers are not". Elite interests didn't always need to pass new laws

In their book , political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson present a "detective story" that investigates why American economic inequality has skyrocketed since the late 1970s. The Central Mystery: Who Stole the Middle-Class Dream? The story highlights a massive organizational shift starting

The authors found that economic growth didn't just favor the "educated"—it favored the , and even more so the top 0.1% .