Overview

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 predation Corporations rewrote tax policy to shield trillions The decline of unions and worker bargaining power hollowed out the middle class Monopolies in tech, finance, retail, energy, and healthcare reshaped markets and prices Political influence, dark money, and lobbying blocked reform and entrenched inequality Ordinary Americans absorbed the risks-precarity, debt, insecurity, and declining prospects Clear-eyed, urgent, and deeply researched, The Heist exposes the mechanisms behind America's inequality crisis-and shows why reclaiming shared prosperity requires rebuilding the rules of the economy itself. For readers of Joseph Stiglitz, Rana Foroohar, Robert Reich, Thomas Piketty, and Matthew Desmond, this is an essential guide to the real story of how the American Dream was taken-and how it can be restored.

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Mark M. Orton is a writer, researcher, and longtime observer of American political economy. His work explores the deep structural changes that have reshaped the U.S. economy since the mid-twentieth century, with a particular focus on inequality, financialization, corporate power, and public policy. Drawing on years of study and analysis, he writes at SUBSTACK.com, where he examines how economic institutions and political decisions shape everyday life. THE HEIST is his major work on how corporate America and the wealthy engineered the upward redistribution of trillions of dollars-and what it means for the future of the American Dream.

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