I slogged my way through the entire book--I don't know whether it's age or the fact that it has been so long since I've had to study, but I really had trouble keeping myself focused, which is usually not the case when I read--and was totally disappointed when the authors, Jacob S. Hacker, Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University, and Paul Pierson, John Gross Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley, gave a detailed historical account of how we got screwed up, but didn't provide any solutions. Actually, if you see the book in a bookstore and just want to get the gist, go to the last chapter. They reprise all of the events and actions over the last three decades that landed us at the point at which 56 percent of respondents to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll of registered voters were in favor of replacing the entire 535-member Congress! Was that why House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) became so amenable in this last go-round?
They approach our current situation as if it were a mystery and they were CSI investigators, so the ending, in which they simply review everything they've presented in the previous chapters, and tell us democracy must "'lift itself up by its own bootstraps'" once again as it did after the Great Depression, a bit of advice attributed to Walter Lippmann, is not very helpful. Of course, in all fairness, the subtitle does indicate that all they've set about doing is telling us how we got here. In the last paragraph they quote both Roosevelts, FDR as describing "political equality as 'meaningless in the face of economic inequality,'" and Teddy declaring that "'the supreme political task of our day...is to drive the special interests out of public life.'" But throughout the book they have made it clear that political equality is threatened by the concentration of economic and political power in the top 1% of the population and don't tell the other 99% of us how we might right the inequality.
I've e-mailed the authors today and will see if I get a response and if they have any suggestions.
Dear Professors Hacker and Pierson--I just finished Winner-Take-All Politics and found the background history interesting and illuminating but was extremely disappointed you did not provide more concrete solutions in the final chapter. Anyone over the age of 25 probably realizes the current "sit-ins" are of little value other than to draw attention to the discontent, but how do those of us who consider ourselves middle, or now lower, class actually go about organizing with the necessary funds to counteract those in control? Have you published something since that doesn't just leave us dangling?
I am college-educated and retired, but currently living in a one-room uninsulated cabin with no running water or plumbing high in the Rocky Mountains that my father built during the last Depression. I graduated with a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 1966 when things were still on the upswing. I can remember earning $125 a week at my first job and being able to put money away in savings. Like many retirees, I have time but no money to put toward the discovery, election and support of a reformer or reformers who can work to change things in Washington over the next three decades. We all thought Obama was the answer, but, of course, he is thwarted at every turn.
Your comments would be appreciated.Do you have any realistic suggestions for taking back America from the wealthy and powerful? Or perhaps you are content with paying more taxes than they do, earning a bare bones wage or having no job at all, being without adequate health insurance and paying more and more to the companies they own for the basic necessities? Camping out isn't realistic or helpful. It only gets you cold and wet. Teddee
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