Lowering the minimum wage, lowering the wage for waiters, cutting unemployment insurance, cutting Medicaid, cutting the earned income tax credit, cutting public housing, cutting public transportation, cutting libraries - because they're so well funded they can afford to put money and resources into nooks and crannies of economic legislation that most people don't pay attention to, at every turn we have a 50 state campaign to remake the economy in a way that makes the vast majority of Americans worse off, and the economy more unequal.

Political economist Gordon Lafer examines the state-by-state capture of legislatures by corporate lobbyists, buying seats for cheap and passing pre-written bills that impose a deeply unpopular and destructive agenda onto a country where political inequality and economic equality drive each other to higher levels, and the rich float above the consequences of their rule.

Gordon is author of The One Percent Solution: How Corporations Are Remaking America One State at a Time from Cornell University Press.