This statement by Frederic Bastiat is all you really need to know in order to understand the current political economy:
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
It’s always interesting how reading the great minds of the past reveals how little changes in human society. But how surprising to see such a quote appear in the New York Times, even from an outsider!