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The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Become Richer, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality
Brink Lindsey
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Description for The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Become Richer, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality
Hardback. .
The relentless increase of inequality in twenty-first century America has confounded analysts from both ends of the political spectrum. While many can point to particular contributing causes, so far none of the policies that have been enacted-not just in the United States but in other advanced countries-have been able to lessen the wealth and income gaps between the top decile and the rest. Critics on the left are more forceful critics of rising inequality, and they tend to blame capitalism and the private sector. Predictably, they see solutions in government action. Many on the right ... Read moreworry about the issue, too, but they come from a position that is more sanguine about corporations and more suspicious of government. But as the libertarian Brink Lindsey and the liberal Steve Teles argue in The Captured Economy, perhaps all of us-left, right, and center-are looking in the wrong places for culprits and solutions. They hone in on the government-corporate sector nexus, apportioning blame not only to both forces but also to the distorted form of governance that this partnership has created. Through armies of lobbyists, corporations and the wealthy have become remarkably adept at shaping policy-even ostensibly progressive policies-so that the field is tilted in their favor. Corporations have become classic 'rentiers,' using their monopoly power of influence over highly complicated legislative and regulatory processes to shift resources in their direction. FCC policy, health care regulation, banking regulation, labor policy, defense spending, and much more: in all of these arenas, well-resourced corporate rentiers have combined to ensure that the government favors them over everyone else. The perverse result is a state that shifts more and more wealth to the already-rich-even if that was never the initial intent of Congress, the President, or the electorate itself. Transforming this misshapen alliance will be difficult, and Lindsey and Teles are realistic about the chances for reform. To that end, they close with a set of reasonable policy proposals that can help to reduce corporate rentiers' scope and power to extract excessive rents via government policy. A powerful, original, and genuinely counterintuitive interpretation of the forces driving the increase in inequality, The Captured Economy will be necessary reading for anyone concerned about the rising social and economic divisions in contemporary America. Show Less
Product Details
Publisher
Oxford University Press Inc
Place of Publication
New York, United States
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About Brink Lindsey
Brink Lindsey is Vice President, The Cato Institute, and author of The Age of Abundance and Human Capitalism. Steven M. Teles is Associate Professor of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, author of The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement, and co-author of Prison Break.
Reviews for The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Become Richer, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality
A compelling and original argument about one of the most pressing issues of our time, The Captured Economy challenges readers to break out of traditional ideological and partisan silos and confront the hidden forces that are strangling opportunity in the contemporary United States.
Matthew Yglesias, Vox Are you looking for how to ... Read moreget out of our current mess? The Captured Economy is perhaps the very best place to start.
Tyler Cowen, Professor of Economics, George Mason University American politics is mired in endless arguments about how much downward redistribution we want and how to provide it. But as Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles point out in this engaging, powerfully argued book, the reality of our political economy often looks much more like upward redistribution. In one arena after another, public policy enriches the already rich and advantages the already advantaged.
Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs Steven Teles and Brink Lindsey ask one of the most important questions of our times: What are the political reforms we need to reduce the ability of the wealthy to maintain their capture of our government? Combining the analytic forces of liberalism and libertarianism, they provide a much-needed investigation into why the U.S. government works on behalf of the powerful and the steps we can take to address rising inequality and regressive regulation so that it instead acts in the public interest.
Heather Boushey, co-editor of After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality A clear and brilliant explanation of what has happened to America over the last few decades. Anyone who wants to understand what has happened to our economy, or our politics, needs to read this book. -Megan McArdle, Bloomberg View Regardless of where your sympathies lie - redistribution is both good and bad - what connects all these activities and many others is that they don't result in the production of goods and services. Instead, they involve the shifting of money and wealth from one party or group to another. They recall the spirit of 19th-century politicians' defense of patronage jobs: 'To the victors belong the spoils.' This sort of economy may be larger than you think. That's the gist of the provocative new book 'The Captured Economy' by Brink Lindsey and Steven M. Teles . . . They argue that the economy is riddled with self-serving arrangements, mainly benefiting the rich, that impose excess costs on the poor and middle class and reducreduce economic growth. -Robert Samuelson, The Washington Post Show Less