The market doesn’t play favorites! Bunk! Many of the most vocal proponents of the so-called  “free market” have for years been actively re-organizing the market  for their own benefit. They don’t want us to notice what happened over the last half century, as big money has  corrupted our politics. Laws that limit  campaign donations have been weakened  or repealed, allowing wealthy individuals and corporations to essentially bribe politicians. Antitrust laws have been virtually abandoned,

with the result that  big corporations have got much bigger. And mergers and acquisitions far more common. So-called “right to work” laws have made it harder to organize labor unions. So the unionized portion of the private sector workforce has dropped to just 6%. High-paid bankers have pocketed huge sums while exposing America to extraordinary economic risk. After the 2008 Wall Street crisis and the taxpayer funded bailout of the big banks, only one top banker went to jail. Corporations have been able to use bankruptcy

to get out of labor contracts, but homeowners cannot  use bankruptcy to protect their homes from being taken back by lenders. And former students  can’t use bankruptcy to protect their earnings from being garnished to pay  their student loans. Hedge fund and private  equity managers get a low tax rate on  their incomes, courtesy of a special loophole that neither Democratic nor Republican presidents have closed. Lower trade barriers have enabled corporations to outsource work to nations that pay lower wages

and then sell the goods back to the United States. Americans get the benefit of cheaper goods, but lose unionized manufacturing jobs. It’s been a vicious cycle. Each change in laws has ratcheted wealth and  power upward, making it easier for the wealthy and powerful to gain further legal changes that ratchet even more wealth and power upward.