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Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson on Engineered Inequality

Jacob Hacker & Paul Pierson on Winner Take All Politics from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Jacob Hacker & Paul Pierson on Winner Take All Politics from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

In this show segment, Moyers & Company dives into one of the most important and controversial issues of our time: How Washington and Big Business colluded to make the super-rich richer and turn their backs on the rest of us.

Bill’s guests – Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, authors of Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, argue that America’s vast inequality is no accident, but in fact has been politically engineered.

Click here to view transcript.

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