Corporate America

America today confronts a host of urgent problems, many of them seemingly intractable but some we are entirely capable of solving. In Five Easy Theses, James M. Stone presents specific commonsense solutions to a handful of our most pressing challenges, showing how simple it would be to shore up Social Security, rein in an out-of-control financial sector, reduce inequality, and make health care and education better and more affordable.

Before we can fix our economic problems, we must first diagnose what is causing them. Many of our political and intellectual leaders call for more government intervention to fix the economy. They tell us that it creates jobs, corrects "market failures", and boosts economic growth. And they insist that we need such intervention to help the poor, to coddle the consumer, and to protect the worker. But they're dead wrong. Government intervention is not the solution to our economic problems; it's the cause.

In the aftermath of the 2010 Citizens United decision, it's become commonplace to note the growing political dominance of a small segment of the economic elite. But what exactly are those members of the elite doing with their newfound influence? The One Percent Solution provides an answer to this question for the first time. Gordon Lafer's book is a comprehensive account of legislation promoted by the nation's biggest corporate lobbies across all 50 state legislatures and encompassing a wide range of labor and economic policies.