Critical Analysis of Winner-Take-All Politics by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson - Book Report/Review Example

Winner-Take-All Politics: Critical Review A lot has been said about the state of income inequality that is slowly increasing in size and significance in the United States with the focus on understanding and controlling the contributing factors behind the situation. The book “Winner-Take-All Politics” by political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson presents an exploration of the issue along with their own strong arguments for the most important factor responsible for this dramatic increase in the economic disparity between the majority of the Americans and the top richest 1%. The book takes the reader on a historical and political analysis of the country and adds on a lot of pertinent intellectual commentary from the authors themselves. The book is designed to make the readers address the economic concerns in a new perspective. The reasons behind the increasing inequality between the socioeconomic groups of the country has mostly been studied and given attention from the economics of the country but it has not been studied in detail by the students and academics of American politics. The authors state that this is an oversight on the part of researchers as well as policymakers considering that the current political system of the country is one of the main culprits behind one of the biggest economic crimes facing the nation. The arguments around which the book is centered is straightforward, the authors show through statistics, anecdotes and theoretical work that the political system of the country which was originally designed to protect and represent the interest of the middle class is no longer responsive to their needs, having been tilted in favor of protecting the superrich. In recent years a small body of political science research has emerged that rejects the notion that the economic change in the country is taking place in the context of an apolitical environment. The book highlights three main weaknesses against the mainstream narrative that favors separating politics from economic realities. Firstly, the traditional research doesn’t take into account the most prominent feature of American inequality, that is, the extreme concentration of wealth at the top. Secondly, it ignores the vital role played by government policies in supporting a culture of “winner-take-all’ economy and thirdly and most significantly such theories fail to give the required attention to the dramatic transformation of the organizations and institutions of American politics that allowed such policies and ideas to thrive against majority welfare. These transformations seem to be long term in nature and will continue to impact the economic landscape as well. “Winner-Take-All Politics” is an energetic and challenging work that tackles on the weaknesses highlighted in more conventional research on income inequality. The authors strive to prove to the reader that current level of American inequality is not something that occurred as a natural consequence of changing economic or global trends but was a result of deliberate political planning that influenced the markets in the favor of those who are already privileged at the expense of the mass public. Examples of this planned attack include slashing capital-gains taxes and the top marginal income-tax rate, deregulating the financial markets, keeping corporate governance laws lax, diminishing the support provided by welfare programs and failing to raise minimum wage alongside inflation. The wealthy hijacked the political system starting somewhere around the 1970’s to create policies and laws that would safeguard their own interests, while the public would remain misguided and unaware about the real reasons for their increasing poverty. Statistics in the book provide a picture of the income trends of the country; between 1979 and 2005 the bottom middle and lower income 60% of American population received income gain of around 13.5% in total, most of which can be attributed to working longer hours than before. At the same time the top 0.1% reviewed a share of over 20% of total wealth. Despite a growing economy, Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson state in the book “Instead of a rising tide lifting all boats- yachts are rising, but dinghies are largely staying put and there is reason to suspect that the dinghies are staying put in part because the yachts are rising." (p20). The book is divided into two main parts, the first one of which describes the problem and then debunks some of the more popular theories about it. Suspects like technological changes in workplace, educational requirements and trends, foreign trade and financial globalization are all discussed in turn and then argued against. The authors make a lot of use of comparisons between the developed economies to show how income trends have remained stable for countries like France, Germany and Japan even as they dealt with the same economic forces that have been influencing American markets. Technological shocks have been similar for all these countries in the past decade, yet only America is the one where the response to these trends has been a significant decrease in the wealth of the majority of the population. The lack of Cross national variation in income equality cannot be simply explained through these isolated factors; while Hacker and Pierson do suggest that technological change has had an effect on the overall economic trends they say it is much more important to understand the national institutions through which the technologies were channeled in and utilized. As far as education goes, there is no dearth of skilled workers in America; no educational gap exists between the employable people in America and their counterparts in Canada and Europe if measured in years of schooling. The income trends have not shifted for increasing wealth for the 29% of Americans with college degrees, rather the change has come on demographic lines with the top 1% pulling away from the rest of the population. Besides the author’s point out that if the stratification has resulted from economic forces favoring the ‘strongest’ or the most skilled it should also have resulted in overall positive benefits such as faster economic growth or increased upward social mobility opportunities. The second part of the book discusses the actual reason behind the economic crises and possible solutions to rectify the situation. Hacker and Pierson take a historic route to delve into the actual reasons behind the rising inequality, tracing the development of a kind of “Winner Take All” economics that has allowed the rich to get richer in the country while the middle class is floundering. They state that this kind of economics is primarily a result of winner-take-all politics that has gripped Washington in the past few decades. The transformation in American politics occurred in the late 1970s under the Democratic Congress and a Democratic President when the corporations and conservative ideologues put in an organized effort to shift the legislations in their favor. Regulations and progressive tax policies keeping wealth in balance were cut down even as businesses become the dominant party over the common labor. This trend of politics working only for the benefit of the wealthiest continued on through the Reagan, Bush and Clinton era as well, with the politicians supporting their many sponsors and lobbyists. Protecting the interests of those at the very top has become so ingrained that to remove such winner-take-all politics from the system would be a great challenge. The author’s discuss the many political battles fought in Obama’s first two years as president to change the system as a sign that while steps are being taken to counter inequality and its causes, there is still a lot that needs to be done. Winner Take All places some blame for the distortion of the American governance onto the public, the popular media, and recent political science studies. While these sectors keep focused on the fast-paced and entertaining electoral spectacles and lives of the politicians, no one is keeping an eye on what is actually happening in the government. As long as the public remains unaware of how the policies and legislature is being manipulated against them, no one will openly challenge these trends. Throughout the book Hacker and Pierson provide evidence for their theories using the work of famed economists like Picketty and Saez as well as providing quotations and thoughts of other personalities in the field of politics and economics. Theodore Roosevelt, Louis Brandeis Alexis de Tocqueville 1st-century Greek historian Plutarch have all discussed the ideas about how concentrated wealth in the society is a sign of bad governance and; Adam Smith widely known as father of the fee market system himself declared that if civil government is used to defend the rich only it can cause great inequalities. The author’s of the book take up the ideas expressed by such people and attempt to extrapolate them onto the current American economy. The main weakness of the book is that not all arguments are fully supported by hard facts and some of the causalities presented by the author are merely anecdotal. And one cannot suggest that all ideas present are truly original; nevertheless the book highlights some important factors behind the income gap in America and as an entertaining read it is expected that the book will find a wider wide audience ready to listen to its message. Works Cited  Hacker, Jacob S. and  Pierson, Paul. Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class. Simon & Schuster (March 15, 2011) Read More