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 fifty state legislatures and encompassing a wide range of labor and economic policies. In an era of growing economic insecurity, it turns out that one of the main reasons life is becoming harder for American workers is a relentless-and concerted-offensive by the country's best-funded and most powerful political forces: corporate lobbies empowered by the Supreme Court to influence legislative outcomes with an endless supply of cash. These actors have successfully championed hundreds of new laws that lower wages, eliminate paid sick leave, undo the right to sue over job discrimination, and cut essential public services. Lafer shows how corporate strategies have been shaped by twenty-first-century conditions-including globalization, economic decline, and the populism reflected in both the Trump and Sanders campaigns of 2016. Perhaps most important, Lafer shows that the corporate legislative agenda has come to endanger the scope of democracy itself. For anyone who wants to know what to expect from corporate-backed Republican leadership in Washington, D.C., there is no better guide than this record of what the same set of actors has been doing in the state legislatures under its control.
"Lafer (Univ. of Oregon) focuses interdisciplinary attention on the strategies and tactics of a handful of registered nationwide lobbyists (American Legislative Exchange Council, Americans for Prosperity, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the National Federation of Independent Business), which submitted model legislation to state legislators. He critiques the policies these groups espoused regarding
Choice
"Gordon Lafer's The One Percent Solution seeks to explain several puzzling aspects of American politics today. Why do people of modest means who depend on government-funded health care and Social Security or other supplements to their income continue to vote for candidates who promise to privatize or get rid of those very programs. Why do pepole who are poor vote for politicians who promise to cut
The New York Review of Books
"[T]he good news is that much of the conservative and corporate agenda recounted by The One Percent Solution is highly unpopular. Large majorities of adults, even Republicans, support efforts to take care of the environment, bolster social programs for families and children, improve our nation's infrastructure, and expand labor rights, even union rights. The bad news is that opponents to the right
