In the 1980s it wasn’t yet clear to most people that the political economy was being changed from a more or less win-win game to one that was practically zero-sum, that over the next few decades, at least three-quarters of them would be the economic casino’s suckers, that their losses and forgone winnings would all go to the luckiest 20 percent, and that thenceforth in America only the rich would get much richer.

