notes on The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970 by Sam Pizzigati (2012)

It's a mouthful, but you get the point.

This book takes us back to a day when you could call rich folks "plutocrats."  It was a time when respectable people talked about "soaking the rich" and did not badmouth unions. It's a time when wealth caps were proposed by politicians and taken seriously.  And it explains the conditions and events-- depression, then world war, then scary cold war-- that allowed the creation of an empowered middle class.

Those days are gone  The "plutocrats" are now "job creators."  "Soak the rich" is now divisive class warfare.  Wealth caps are socialistic, which is a bad and scary thing.  But I thank Mr. Pizzigati for letting us know that things were once different.