Mostly very depressing, with a little hope at the end ( )

I knew when I first picked up this book and started it that it would be great and it definitely lived up to my expectations. This is so well put together and easy to read for the most part. One of those books I would take the time and read again in the future. ( )

I knew when I first picked up this book and started it that it would be great and it definitely lived up to my expectations. This is so well put together and easy to read for the most part. One of those books I would take the time and read again in the future. ( )

This book along with Sapiens by Yuval Hurari and Caste by Isabel Wilkerson should be required reading by everyone over the age of 15. It will give you a clear picture of how we have gotten to the place we are as an American Society and in the Global world we live in. Anderson takes ideas that have been put forth by many authors about the economic inequality in our country and lays out the logical progression of a plan started in the 1970's to move power and money to the rich right wing of our country. People like Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, economist Milton Friedman, the Koch brothers, and of course the front man for the beginning of the whole thing, Ronald Reagan. It was done slowly but surely through tax cuts, weakening unions, court rulings, executive orders, academic institution changes and unfortunately the weak moves of the left that could have stopped these changes. The book is almost 400 pages but it really moved along pretty well. My favorite chapter was titled "Nobody but the Rich(and nearly Rich) got Richer:27 ways the Pie is cut differently now. It is bullet points that give specific data to support the shift of wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. Some highlights: The richest 0.01 percent or the one in 10,000 families worth an average of $500 million pay an effective federal tax rate of half of what it was in the 1970's. Since 1980 the only people whose incomes have grown at the same rate as the economy are household incomes in the $180,000 to $450,000 range.People with higher incomes, the top 1 percent, have had much higher growth than the overall economic growth. 90% of Americans have done worse then the overall economy since 1980. The 1 percent highest in wealth own 40% of all the wealth or twice the percentage they owned in 1980. So much for trickle down economics. There is a lot more statistics presented to show how much income inequality has increased in the last 40 years. My favorited statistic has to do with taking the entire income and wealth pie and dividing it up equally. The median household income is presently $64,000(half below, half above) and median wealth is $100,000. If we divided the $19 trillion in income and the $100 trillion in wealth held by the 130,000,000 million households equally, each household would have $140 thousand in income and $800 thousand in wealth. In other words all households would be quite well off. Enormous wealth concentrated in the hands of the few has never been a situation for overall health in a society. Americans flourished during 1935-1980 timeframe because the economy spread the wealth among the many. And by the way, the right wing rich also contributed to the denigration of the climate that could have been addressed in 1980 but would have stood in the way of their plan to take over the power and wealth. A great book, a must read. ( )

Very clear, understandable explanation of what went wrong with economic inequity in America. As these books tend to be, a bit too long and repititious. ( )