The New Deal order sold a large majority of Americans on the proposition that a strong central state could manage a dynamic but dangerous capitalist economy in the public interest. The neoliberal order persuaded a large majority of Americans that free markets would unleash capitalism from unnecessary state controls and spread prosperity and

The belief in a world with no national borders, in which goods could be produced everywhere and sold anywhere with a minimum of friction, had been a cardinal principle of the neoliberal order. As this belief lost influence, so did the order that it had done so much to bring into being. “Protectionism” had been a dirty word of political economy for

In each of Trump’s three beliefs—that free trade and open borders were harming America, that America should privilege its people of European descent, and that America’s true strength lay in its professional wrestling heartland far more than in the aspirations of America’s coastal elites—we can see an incipient attack on America’s neoliberal order.

Trump’s style of populist politics took shape in this aggressive world of staged male combat, a world always teetering—tantalizingly, in the view of many supporters—on the edge of violence. As multicultural America became obsessed with tracking micro-aggressions, those immersed in this parallel universe of professional wrestling delighted in the

His worldliness thrilled the Americans who voted for him and who viewed his election as the dawn of a new America, one that gloried in its diverse, multicultural character. But to millions of whites who were already feeling as though they were being left behind by declining opportunities and by the rising status of people of color both in the

Some in the Tea Party ranks began to charge that the worst damage to America was being engineered by an unholy alliance of political-economic elites and the nation’s undeserving (and largely nonwhite) poor. Allegations regarding this unholy alliance had been percolating in American society since the days of the Great Society and the civil rights

the gig economy began to resemble what economists had long called a casual labor market, casual because the only form of work available was intermittent and inadequate. Casual labor markets worked to the advantage of employers, as these markets were crowded with individuals who had less work than they needed and thus were willing to labor for lower

Neoliberalism had provided the conceptual underpinning for the gig economy by theorizing how individuals could transform themselves into entrepreneurs able to monetize material and personal assets in new ways.

In sections that resonated powerfully with black readers, Alexander showed how the punishments of those imprisoned never really ended, even years after the imprisoned had served their time. Those released from jail were obligated to report their convictions and jail sentences to potential employers, thereby costing them access to jobs. In many