ROBERT REICH THE SYSTEM: WHO RGGED IT, AND HOW WE FIX IT

    A review of Reich's newest book:

  THE SYSTEM

  Who Rigged It, How We Fix It

  By Robert B. Reich

  BREAK ’EM UP

  Recovering Our Freedom From Big Ag, Big Tech, and        Big Money

  By Zephyr Teachout

  One of the mysteries in politics for decades now has been why      white working-class Americans began to vote Republican in large numbers in the 1960s and 1970s. After all, it was Democrats who supported labor unions, higher minimum wages, expanded unemployment insurance, Medicare and generous Social Security, helping to lift workers into the middle class.

Of course, an alternative economic view, led by economists like Milton Friedman, was that this turn toward the Republican Party was rational and served workers’ interests. He emphasized free markets, entrepreneurialism and the maximization of profit. These, Friedman argued, would raise wages for many and even most Americans.

But wages did not rise. And yet many in the working class kept voting Republican, still seemingly angered by Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which was dedicated to helping the poor and assuring equal rights for people of color. In the 1980s, under Ronald Reagan, income inequality began to rise sharply; wages for typical Americans stagnated and poverty and homelessness increased. Capital investment remained relatively weak despite deep tax cuts (as it does today under Donald Trump). At the same time, antitrust regulation was severely wounded, and giant corporations began to monopolize industry after industry.