Many people imagine the state as a kind of referee — a transcendent mediator enforcing theoretically neutral rules, arbitrating as fairly as possible between different interest groups in society. This faith in the state’s basic neutrality leads even people who care about inequality to miss the big picture, which is that the capitalist minority is absolutely pummeling the working majority and has enlisted the referee to assist their victory.

From the Supreme Court’s assault on unions, to cities shamelessly prostrating themselves before corporations, to big companies taking gobs of public money and then instituting mass layoffs, to bank bailouts to regulatory capture to deadly austerity, we’re not looking at a series of bad calls. This is a deliberate program of class domination being administered through the state itself.

One place we can look to gauge the extent of the capitalist class’s triumph in the state is the tax code. While government programs in the US are commonly viewed as the province of the poor, the US tax code is actually riddled with giveaways to the rich. In 2014, the average household in the top 0.1 percent — people with more than $100 million in assets — received more in tax breaks than the average household in the bottom 50 percent.