Losing Your Mind
We Used to Be Wise is the accounting Zeigler has been threatening to write for years. Nineteen chapters, one indictment. The premise is simple and the evidence is overwhelming: in August 1971, Lewis Powell wrote a memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that read like a battle plan.
Prices didn’t just rise. They moved. Not evenly. They moved toward the people who can still pay. And stayed there. For a long time, the United States ran on a simple assumption: build for the middle. Price for the middle. Sell in volume. Cars, houses, appliances, tuition. Everything pointed