By rgues that the nation’s economic system is rigged toward the powerful. Over the course of decades, this feat was accomplished by hundreds of (mostly) law-abiding lawyers, judges, regulators, policy makers, and lobbyists — adherents of a market-centered doctrine called neoliberalism.
They did this by changing the law in unseen ways. Tracing this largely unknown history from the late 1960s to the present, demonstrates that far from yielding fewer laws and regulations, neoliberalism has in fact always meant more―and more complex―laws, which uniformly benefit the wealthy. Narrates the key moments in the slow-moving coup that was, and is, neoliberalism. Shifting the focus away from presidents and national policy, tells the story of how this nation’s laws came to favor the few against the many, threatening the integrity of the market and the state.
Argues that neoliberalism is a failed economic idea―it doesn’t create more wealth or more freedom — but it has successfully seized the courts and enabled the age of crypto fraud, financial instability, and accelerating inequality. An original account of the forces that have brought us to this dangerous moment in American history, reshapes our understanding of the recent past and lights a path toward a better future.