Inequality again

I have just finished reading Winner Take All Politics by Hacker and Pierson that I mentioned in a previous post. It is a devastating account of what has allowed the steep increase in inequality in our country. Their analysis is that the extent of inequality in our society is not just an economic phenomena: it is the direct result of the dominance of business, in particular the financial industry, over the government. Their dominance over the last thirty years has allowed business, through active legislation and passive drift, to enrich itself at the cost of stagnation and decline in the incomes of the middle class. I encourage everyone reading this post to immediately get the book and read it.

Unfortunately their account of these thirty years and the dynamics involved make efforts to change the system more difficult, and I am going to have to rethink the rather optimistic suggestions I made about changing the system. It is not just that the political parties in general need to get organized: the Republicans have been doing this quite well. It is rather that the Democratic party, or whatever successor there is to it, has to get organized so that it can function as a counterweight to business, and this will be very difficult, because business is where the money is.