Plutocracy in America: How Increasing Inequality Destroys the Middle Class and Exploits the Poor

The growing gap between the most affluent Americans and the rest of society is changing the country into one defined-more than almost any other developed nation-by exceptional inequality of income, wealth, and opportunity. This book reveals that an infrastructure of inequality, both open and hidden, obstructs the great majority in pursuing happiness, living healthy lives, and exercising basic rights. A government dominated by finance, corporate interests, and the wealthy has undermined democracy, stunted social mobility, and changed the character of the nation. In this tough-minded dissection of the gulf between the super-rich and the working and middle classes, Ronald P. Formisano explores how the dramatic rise of income inequality over the past four decades has transformed America from a land of democratic promise into one of diminished opportunity. Since the 1970s, government policies have contributed to the flow of wealth to the top income strata. The United States now is more a plutocracy than a democracy. Formisano surveys the widening circle of inequality's effects, the exploitation of the poor and the middle class, and the new ways that predators take money out of Americans' pockets while passive federal and state governments stand by. This data-driven book offers insight into the fallacy of widespread opportunity, the fate of the middle class, and the mechanisms that perpetuate income disparity.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Web of Inequality The Founders' Vision American Think They Live in Sweden The Middle Class and Poverty Rising Public Awareness The Great Recession Some Are More Unequal Than Others 2. The Myth of Opportunity Mobility Education The For-Profits Eating Tuition Rise of the Adjuncts Death of a Contingent 3. The Shrinking Middle Class The Lost Decade The Geographic Dimension Running in Place and Falling Behind Jobs and Wages Wage-Productivity Gap " Why Screwing Unions Screws the Entire Middle Class" Staying Afloat / Sinking in the New Economy 4. Keeping the Rich (Filthy) Rich and the Poor (Dirt) Poor Rent Seeking and George Washington Plunkitt Two Tax Systems Corporate Taxes and CEO Compensation The 47 Percent Keeping the Poor Poor Minimum-Wage Welfare Queens 5. Inequality, Life, and Quality of Life A Tale of Two Counties Struggling to Make Ends Meet Food Insecurity, or Hunger amid Moocher Agribusiness Inequality and Health Two Americas? The Spirit Level Affluenza versus the "Hidden Prosperity of the Poor" 6. Political Inequality Participation and Citizens United Political Polarization Disenfranchisement The Assault on Voting The Assault on Voting, Continued Prisons and Felons Deferred Maintenance and Inequality 7. The Fracturing of America Americans Do Care about Inequality The Founders Cared about Inequality Public Opinion The Constitutional Stacked Deck The Decline of "the Commons" Conclusion Antipoverty Programs The Undeserving Poor The Undeserving Rich Plutocracy on the March, Democracy Trampled Underfoot Notes Index

About the Author :
Ronald P. Formisano is the William T. Bryan Chair of American History and professor emeritus of history at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of The Tea Party: A Brief History and For the People: American Populist Movements from the Revolution to the 1850s.

Review :
Formisano has written an obituary for a way of American life that is coming to an end. Times Higher Education