Book analysis-----“Winner-Take-All Politics”
Jingshu Xu
This book discusses the rising income inequality in America. During the last 30 years, the very wealthy people enjoy the unbalanced government politics and the middle class goes missing. The richer you are, the more you have benefited from economic changes. On the opposite, the poorer get the worse economic life and the middle class become vulnerable. The author give some statistics, since 1978—the richest 1% gaining 256% after inflation while the income of the lower earning 80% grew only 20%. In addition, the authors point out that it is not the market that makes this happen, but the politics.
This book is divided into three parts. First, in Part One, the authors raise a question about the how the puzzling politics of winner-take-all politics formed. In chapter 1, the authors use Piketty and Saez’s results of research. Rather than talking to witnesses, which is useless because it is not easy to find the super rich people and know their exact income, Piketty and Saez’s look into their income reported when paying taxes. However, the authors mention that argue that many of the explanations simply don't explain what is going on because it does not consider the government’s effect on incomes as well as tally up private noncash compensation. While the authors agree that technological change is part of the reason, they consider that politics plays a key role. Chapter 2 talks about the how the winner-take-all economy was made. In other words, what were the motives behind the public policies that fostered winner-take-all politics? The authors mention that government declines tax rates on the rich. Tax policy is one of reason that exacerbates American inequality. On the other hand, the absence of a government response to rising inequality can also be treated as a form of policy. Then the authors talk about the history of democratic capitalism in Chapter 3. The author examined what the government was actually doing during the 1970s. From Nixon to Cater, it built a dominant view called “politics as electoral spectacle”. In addition, the author mentioned that if politicians are doing something, it must be because voters want them to
The book mentions unrepresentative democracy. To be specifically, republicans were much more responsive to high-income voters than were democrats. But it has a problem because it misses the essence of American politics.
Part Two go depth into the rise of winner-take-all politics. The authors argue that government authority gave a huge impetus to the winner-take-all economy by three ways, government’s treatment of unions, the regulation of executive pay, and the policing of financial markets. As they describe in Chapter 4, the Nixon presidency saw the high-water market of the regulatory state; the demise of traditional liberalism occurred during the Carter administration, despite Democratic control of Washington, when highly organized business interests were able to torpedo the Democratic agenda and begin the era of cutting taxes for the rich that apparently has not yet ended today. Chapter 5 discusses businesses and the super-rich began a process of political organization in the early 1970s that enabled them to pool their wealth and contacts to achieve dominant political influence. Chapter 6 discusses the decline of the mid-century political world. It also discusses the disadvantage of winner-take-all inequality. The authors said that citizens on the losing end of inequality would use their power at the ballot box to rectify the imbalance. Also, wealthier Americans are less supportive of economic redistribution and Medicare and Social Security. They are more supportive of tax cuts, especially cuts in taxes on dividends and capital gains.
After discussing the formation of winner-take-all politics, the authors conclude the book by giving opinions on how to beat winner-take-all.
This book is very informative and interesting. It successfully reframes how I should think about American politics. I will definitely recommend it to my friend and I am interested to learn more about the politics role in American inequality. I will give 5 out of 5 points for this book. Because the most important I learned from this book is that when looking at economic phenomena, it's politics that matters, not just abstract economic forces. Winner-take-all politics also reveals where in our politics the central problems lie: in the fierce realities of organized combat.