Joe: In 1970, 92% of Americans in their thirties earned more than their parents did at the same age. Today, that number is just 50%. Lewis: Whoa. That’s a staggering drop. That’s the American Dream in reverse. Joe: Exactly. And this isn't a story of a slow, natural decline. It's a story of a deliberate, fifty-year heist. And today, we're exposing the playbook. Lewis: A heist? I'm intrigued. This sounds like we're opening a cold case file on the entire economy. Joe: We are. And that playbook is laid out in Kurt Andersen's bestselling book, Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America. Lewis: Right, and Andersen is the perfect person to write this. He co-founded the satirical Spy magazine, so he's been a sharp cultural critic for decades. He's not just an economist; he connects the dots between culture, politics, and money in a way few others can. Joe: He argues that the America we live in today—with its massive inequality, its political rage, its feeling of being stuck—wasn't an accident. It was designed. Lewis: Okay, a design, a playbook... that sounds a little like a conspiracy theory. Was there really a plan?

Joe: There was. And it starts with an actual, physical document. In 1971, a prominent corporate lawyer named Lewis Powell—just before he was appointed to the Supreme Court—wrote a confidential memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It was titled "Attack on American Free Enterprise System." Lewis: An attack? What did he think was attacking the system? Joe: Everything. Ralph Nader, environmentalists, college professors, the media. He saw it as a full-blown assault on capitalism. And his memo was a call to arms. It was a detailed battle plan for a corporate and right-wing counterinsurgency. Lewis: A counterinsurgency? What did he propose? Joe: It was incredibly strategic. He said business needed to stop being defensive and go on the offense. He laid out a long-term plan to reshape America's thinking. He called for funding networks of conservative scholars, creating pro-business think tanks, placing their people in media, and, most importantly, systematically capturing the judiciary. He basically said, 'We need to build our own counter-establishment.' Lewis: That is chillingly methodical. So this wasn't just a few rich guys complaining at the country club, this was an organized, long-term strategy to change the entire country's operating system. Joe: Precisely. And they did it. Billionaire-funded think tanks like the Heritage Foundation popped up. Its co-founder, Paul Weyrich, was explicit. He said, "We are radicals, working to overturn the present power structure of this country." They weren't just trying to win an election; they were trying to win the whole intellectual and political war. Lewis: And this is where the "evil geniuses" come in. It's not just about money, it's about the ideas that justify the money. Joe: Exactly. They needed an intellectual permission slip. And they got it from the economist Milton Friedman. In 1970, he published a hugely influential essay declaring that the one and only social responsibility of a business is to increase its profits. Any talk of serving the community or caring for employees was, in his view, a "suicidal impulse" that was a gateway to socialism. Lewis: That one idea is a nuke. It basically gives CEOs a moral justification to be ruthless. Forget your workers, forget your town, forget the environment—your only duty is to the shareholder. Joe: It became the gospel. But it's important to note what some critics of the book point out. Andersen's focus is very much on these economic architects. Some argue he downplays other powerful forces, like the racial backlash to the Civil Rights movement in the 60s and 70s. Lewis: That makes sense. It probably wasn't just one thing. Joe: Andersen agrees. He argues it was a powerful, and frankly, unholy alliance. You had the rational, calculating "evil geniuses" like Powell and Friedman designing the economic takeover, and they were politically supercharged by the more irrational, emotional forces of cultural and racial resentment. One provided the blueprint, the other provided the votes.

Lewis: Okay, so they have the blueprint and the political fuel. How did they actually start to... well, unmake America, as the title says? Joe: Once they had the plan and the intellectual cover, they started to systematically dismantle the old system. And the first, and biggest, target was organized labor. Lewis: The unions. Joe: Yes. For about 40 years after the New Deal, America had what the book calls "countervailing power." The idea was that for capitalism to be stable and fair, the power of big business had to be balanced by other powerful forces. The two biggest were strong government regulation and strong labor unions. They acted as a check. Lewis: So the "geniuses" decided one of those checks had to go. Joe: Both, eventually, but they started with the unions. And the pivotal moment, the one that broke the dam, was the PATCO strike in 1981. Lewis: I've heard of this, but I don't know the details. This was the air traffic controllers, right? Joe: Right. 13,000 federal air traffic controllers went on strike for better pay and a shorter work week. It was technically illegal for federal employees to strike. President Reagan went on television and gave them an ultimatum: return to work in 48 hours, or you are fired. Permanently. Lewis: And they didn't come back. Joe: Most didn't. So Reagan fired over 11,000 of them and banned them from federal service for life. It was a political earthquake. Before PATCO, there was a strong social norm against hiring permanent "replacement workers" or strikebreakers. It was seen as fundamentally unfair. After PATCO, Reagan had sent a message to every CEO in America. Lewis: The message being: "It's open season." Joe: It's open season. The government has your back. Go ahead, break your unions. And they did. Companies started aggressively hiring permanent replacements. Union-busting became a booming industry. Lewis: Wow. And you see the echoes of that everywhere now. Union membership in the private sector has plummeted from over a third of workers in the 50s to just 6 percent today. This is the "Great Risk Shift" Andersen talks about, isn't it? The risk moved from the corporation to the individual worker. Joe: Perfectly put. It's not just about wages. Companies used to provide pensions, a guaranteed income for life. Now, you're lucky if you get a 401(k), which is basically a tax-advantaged savings account where all the risk is on you. Same with healthcare. The costs have been systematically shifted from the employer to the employee. Lewis: It's like the company used to provide a safety net, and now they just hand you the rope and say "good luck." And this whole shift was supercharged by Wall Street, right? The book talks about how financialization took over. Joe: Completely. The focus shifted from making things to making money from money. Leveraged buyouts, hostile takeovers... it became about extracting value from a company, not creating it. They'd buy a company with borrowed money, load it with debt, lay off workers, sell off its assets, and pay themselves huge fees, often leaving a hollowed-out shell behind. Lewis: So the economy's pit crew became the casino owner. They stopped fixing the car and just started betting on the race. Joe: That's a perfect analogy. And the people who used to build the cars were left on the side of the road.

Lewis: But how did they get away with it? If life was getting so much more precarious for the average person, why wasn't there a massive political backlash? Joe: This is one of the most fascinating parts of Andersen's argument. He says we were distracted and sedated by a powerful drug: nostalgia. He uses the metaphor of Rip Van Winkle. If Rip fell asleep in 1960 and woke up in 1980, the world would be unrecognizable. The music, the clothes, the politics, everything had changed. Lewis: Okay, I'm with you. Joe: But, Andersen says, if a modern Rip fell asleep in the year 2000 and woke up today, he'd barely notice a difference. The music on the radio is still dominated by artists from the 80s and 90s. The biggest movies are remakes and sequels of franchises from that era. Fashion is just recycling the same trends. Culturally, we got stuck. Lewis: Huh. I've never thought of it that way, but it's true. Why? Joe: Andersen's theory is that this cultural stasis was a form of "national self-medication." The economic anxiety and insecurity became so intense that we retreated into the familiar. We sought the reassurance of the past because the future looked terrifying. And this nostalgia was weaponized. Lewis: So the "Make America Great Again" slogan is the ultimate expression of this? A nostalgia for a past that's been mythologized, while the actual economic policies are doubling down on the system that destroyed that past for many? Joe: It's the perfect culmination of the entire project. It sells a return to an imaginary, simpler time—a time of factory jobs and strong communities—while simultaneously pushing for more tax cuts and deregulation, the very policies that dismantled that world. We were, as Andersen puts it, "hoodwinked, and we hoodwinked ourselves." Lewis: And this became a permanent revolution. Andersen points out that even Democrats like Bill Clinton in the 90s basically accepted the new reality. He declared "the era of big government is over," deregulated Wall Street, and signed welfare reform. The right had successfully shifted the entire political center of gravity. Joe: They won. The blueprint from the 1970s was fully implemented. The countervailing powers of labor and government were crippled, and the economy was re-engineered for the benefit of a few.

Lewis: So, where does that leave us? It feels pretty bleak. The game seems thoroughly rigged. Joe: It is bleak, but Andersen's core insight is actually a hopeful one. His point is that this system was built. It was designed and constructed by people making specific choices. And if it was built, it can be unbuilt. Or, more accurately, it can be re-engineered again. Lewis: So the first step is just realizing what happened. Joe: Exactly. The first step is recognizing we've been living in a rigged game. The book isn't just a history; it's an exposé of the operating system that's been running America for 50 years. And Andersen argues we're at another "strategic inflection point," a moment of crisis and opportunity, just like the 1930s or the 1960s. Lewis: A moment where the old rules are breaking down and new ones can be written. Joe: Precisely. The choice is between continuing down this path of stagnation and inequality, or rediscovering America's original, innovative spirit to imagine and build a fairer future. It's about rejecting the old, failed certainties of the last 50 years. Lewis: That makes me wonder, what are the 'old certainties' we're clinging to today that are holding us back? What would a genuinely new America even look like? Joe: That's the big question, isn't it? And it's the one Andersen leaves us with. We'd love to hear what you all think. What part of this history surprised you the most? Let us know your thoughts. Lewis: This is Aibrary, signing off.