The Amer­i­can econ­o­my is about to under­go anoth­er shock. Yet this time there will be no burst­ing bub­bles, oil crises or col­laps­ing finan­cial insti­tu­tions to blame.

The super rich have shown that they want it all, and won’t give an inch without a fight. Next year’s elections are an opportunity to show what that fight could look like.

The cur­rent eco­nom­ic sta­tus quo — with stock mar­kets soar­ing while wages remain flat and inequal­i­ty widens — is both unsta­ble and unsus­tain­able. The com­ing shock will only accel­er­ate these trends in order to ben­e­fit the wealthy, and it’s being deliv­ered in the form of tax ​“reform” by a Repub­li­can Par­ty dead set on pleas­ing its donor class while hang­ing work­ing peo­ple out to dry.

As many econ­o­mists have point­ed out, at its core, the GOP’s tax bill rep­re­sents a mas­sive trans­fer of wealth from the bot­tom of soci­ety up to the top. The rich will ben­e­fit enor­mous­ly, while half of all tax­pay­ers will actu­al­ly see their tax­es increase over the next ten years. The top 1 per­cent will see a full 83 per­cent of the gains.

This bill isn’t just anoth­er give­away to the wealthy elite like pre­vi­ous Repub­li­can tax plans: It’s a direct assault on the peo­ple who actu­al­ly cre­ate the goods and offer the ser­vices that make our soci­ety run. In oth­er words, it’s a new front in the class war.

As writer and activist Nao­mi Klein explains in her book The Shock Doc­trine, true believ­ers in the mar­ket-obsessed ide­ol­o­gy of neolib­er­al­ism have long pushed for a ​“cor­po­ratist” eco­nom­ic sys­tem. ​“It’s main char­ac­ter­is­tics are huge trans­fers of pub­lic wealth to pri­vate hands,” she writes, ​“often accom­pa­nied by explod­ing debt, an ever-widen­ing chasm between the daz­zling­ly rich and the dis­pos­able poor and an aggres­sive nation­al­ism that jus­ti­fies bot­tom­less spend­ing on security.”

Such is the form of shock Pres­i­dent Trump and Repub­li­cans in Con­gress are attempt­ing to inflict with their new­ly signed tax bill, a dream come true for the Robert Mer­cers and Shel­don Adel­sons of the world.

Under this bill, cor­po­ra­tions will see their tax­es slashed from 35 per­cent to 21 per­cent, ful­fill­ing a long­time Repub­li­can pol­i­cy goal. Multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies that already evade tax­a­tion by shoring their prof­its over­seas will be reward­ed with a new tax rate as low as 8 per­cent — while also avoid­ing pay­ing full tax­es on future prof­its they claim to earn abroad.

Own­ers of cer­tain so-called ​“pass-through” busi­ness­es — includ­ing pri­vate real-estate firms like the type Pres­i­dent Trump has a stake in — will be able to take a 20 per­cent deduc­tion for the income they receive from their com­pa­nies. As Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Times reports, this give­away could per­son­al­ly ben­e­fit both Repub­li­can lead­ers and real estate tycoons.

At a time of sky­rock­et­ing cor­po­rate prof­its and mas­sive­ly unequal growth, the same com­pa­nies that have hol­lowed out work­ing-class com­mu­ni­ties by shut­ter­ing fac­to­ries and mov­ing jobs abroad will make out like ban­dits. And the poor and mid­dle class will pay the price.

In addi­tion to the tax increase they’ll face down the road, low-income fam­i­lies also stand to lose up to $19 bil­lion over the next decade due to changes in how infla­tion is cal­cu­lat­ed. The repeal of the indi­vid­ual man­date on health insur­ance will result in a 10 per­cent increase in pre­mi­ums for those who are insured. And it will mean that 13 mil­lion Amer­i­cans will most like­ly drop their health cov­er­age. As a result, many of these peo­ple will forego nec­es­sary treat­ment, almost cer­tain­ly lead­ing to seri­ous ill­ness and pre­ma­ture death for count­less Americans.

At the same time, the bill will increase the deficit by $1.4 tril­lion, prov­ing yet again that Repub­li­cans don’t actu­al­ly care about bal­loon­ing gov­ern­ment costs when they serve to enrich their afflu­ent friends and cam­paign con­trib­u­tors. In prac­tice, this deficit-inflat­ing tax bill is just the first step in a much broad­er plan to hack away at social wel­fare pro­grams includ­ing Social Secu­ri­ty, Medicare and Med­ic­aid. Paul Ryan, Mar­co Rubio and oth­er lead­ing Repub­li­cans have already admit­ted as much.

Even with­out these addi­tion­al cuts, the cur­rent bill is set to lead to a 4 per­cent cut to Medicare, which would prove dev­as­tat­ing to seniors who rely on the pro­gram for their health care. The bill’s elim­i­na­tion of state and local tax deduc­tions will fur­ther serve the inter­ests of the wealthy while mak­ing work­ing peo­ple pay more — and could cause cuts to vital pub­lic services.

The dis­as­trous effects of this bill on work­ing Amer­i­cans will be felt for decades to come. Cor­po­ra­tions will be able to pock­et more prof­its while the super rich are allowed to pass on even more of their grotesque lev­els of wealth to their chil­dren — all with­out hav­ing to pay into the social com­pact. These heirs to opu­lence are the true win­ners in the new tax régime.

The loss of pub­lic funds, mean­while, will be used as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to slash the social safe­ty net. And the ratio­nale for the entire scheme will once again be proven a mirage.

The the­o­ry that wealth and jobs will trick­le down from the top once cor­po­ra­tions and the rich are freed from the con­straints of tax­a­tion has always been a lie used to val­i­date tax cuts at the top. It didn’t work in the 1980s under Rea­gan, it didn’t work in the 2000s under Bush, and it’s not going to work today under Trump.

Cor­po­ra­tions are already sit­ting on record prof­its and still aren’t invest­ing. The idea that if the gov­ern­ment just lets them keep more of their mon­ey these mas­ters of cap­i­tal will sud­den­ly change course is non­sense. Instead, the wealth gap will con­tin­ue to swell, income inequal­i­ty will wors­en, and the grip of home­grown oli­garchs over our democ­ra­cy will grow ever stronger.

The effects of this shock will be deep and far-reach­ing. But the class war has two sides. Repub­li­cans have put their stock in a bill that is both unpop­u­lar and will hurt the very vot­ers who make up the party’s base. Polls show that near­ly two-thirds of Amer­i­cans believe the bill was writ­ten to ben­e­fit cor­po­ra­tions and the rich.

At a time when vot­ers are embrac­ing a pop­ulist mood, reject­ing cor­po­rate influ­ence over gov­ern­ment and elect­ing pro­gres­sive — and open­ly social­ist—can­di­dates, this bill presents an open­ing to push for a real alter­na­tive to the shock of an entrenched cor­po­ratist system.

The super rich have shown that they want it all, and won’t give an inch with­out a fight. Next year’s elec­tions are an oppor­tu­ni­ty to show what that fight could look like.

Six­ty-five per­cent of Amer­i­cans believe that cor­po­ra­tions already pay too lit­tle in tax­es, so why not demand they pay much more? And three quar­ters think the rich should be taxed at a high­er rate, so how about run­ning on a plat­form of tax­ing the hell out of the 1 per­cent? And that’s just the start of what a pro­gres­sive tax agen­da could look like. Can­di­dates could demand that the gov­ern­ment hike the inher­i­tance tax rather than reduc­ing it, insti­tute a finan­cial trans­ac­tion tax and sharply increase tax­es on cap­i­tal gains.

What could be done with the wind­fall from such tax rev­enue? The Unit­ed States could move toward mak­ing col­lege tuition-free, ini­ti­at­ing a Medicare for All health­care sys­tem and ful­ly fund­ing broad-based social wel­fare pro­grams such as food stamps and child care. These are the kind of bold, uni­ver­sal pol­i­cy ideas that would mark a clear break with both the mar­ket fun­da­men­tal­ism that under­girds the GOP tax bill and the tepid means-test­ing approach favored by many cor­po­rate Democrats.

This kind of left eco­nom­ic agen­da won’t come about on its own. Move­ments have recent­ly tak­en to the streets in towns and cities across the coun­try to voice out­rage at the Repub­li­can tax plan. And the bill is already being used by Democ­rats to paint Repub­li­cans as out of touch and too aligned with the wealthy. But to build momen­tum behind a redis­trib­u­tive tax pol­i­cy, those dis­gust­ed with the GOP’s lat­est leg­isla­tive gam­bit will have to join togeth­er to demand that cor­po­ra­tions and the rich pay far, far more.

The peo­ple who hold the most wealth and eco­nom­ic pow­er in our soci­ety do so only because they are allowed to hoard their rich­es and prof­it from their invest­ments with­out mean­ing­ful checks on their glut­tony. No real democ­ra­cy can coex­ist with such a sys­tem of unchecked eco­nom­ic power.

This tax bill is proof that the only way to upend the cur­rent sys­tem is to take the fight straight to the bank accounts of the rich — and redis­trib­ute both mon­ey and power.