the Heist: how rich and corporations stole American dream

Over the last fifty years, the American economy has been transformed-and not by accident. Since the mid-1970s, a coordinated project by corporate leaders, wealthy elites, lobbyists, and policy intellectuals has quietly rewritten the rules of the U.S. economy. The result: more than $79 trillion has been shifted upward from the bottom 90% to the richest households, wages have stagnated despite decades of rising productivity, and entire communities have been left precarious, indebted, and insecure.The Heist tells the story of how this happened-and what it has done to the people who were left behind.Drawing on economic research, historical evidence, and clear, accessible analysis, Mark M. Orton shows how financialization, monopolization, deregulation, tax policy, weakened labor power, and deliberate political capture combined to redirect the gains of growth to a small elite. From the Powell Memo to the rise of private equity, from stock buybacks to the collapse of antitrust enforcement, Orton traces the mechanisms of upward redistribution in vivid, concrete detail.Far from inevitability, this new economic order was engineered-step by step, policy by policy, deal by deal. The Heist explains how:CEOs and financial firms extracted value through buybacks, LBOs, and debt-fueled predationCorporations rewrote tax policy to shield trillionsThe decline of unions and worker bargaining power hollowed out the middle classMonopolies in tech, finance, retail, energy, and healthcare reshaped markets and pricesPolitical influence, dark money, and lobbying blocked reform and entrenched inequalityOrdinary Americans absorbed the risks-precarity, debt, insecurity, and declining prospectsClear-eyed, urgent, and deeply researched, The Heist exposes the mechani

Pagina's: 204, Paperback, Davis Orton Group