Status
Available
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Publication
New York : Simon & Schuster, 2016.
Description
"A spirited examination of why what's good for American business elites and what's good for Americans have become misaligned"--Front jacket flap. In the past, government and business were as much partners as rivals, resulting in broad-based growth and healthy social development. But advocates of anti-government market fundamentalism are intent on scrapping the instrument of nearly a century of unprecedented economic and social progress. Hacker and Pierson examine why what's good for American business elites and what's good for Americans have become misaligned.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Othemts
Two political scientists discuss the history of the "mixed economy" in the United States, how it was dismantled, and why our current political and economic malaise is due to it's absence. The mixed economy was ascendant in the United States from roughly the 1910s to the 1970s and at it's height
During the long progressive period when the US was under a mixed economy, government was generally looked upon in a positive light. The "American amnesia" is the state we are in today where most Americans are anti-government and have completely forgotten our ancestors' admiration for government. This is due to a five decade campaign spearheaded by individuals such as the Koch Brothers and corporate interests like the Business Round Table and the Chamber of Commerce whose Randian ideology of free market libertarianism required debasing and then dismantling the government and the mixed economy. These views soon were adopted as the Republican Party platform and by the 1990s, even Democrats echoed anti-government sentiments.
This book is important work of political science, economics, and history that shows where Americans once were in a time of more generally widespread prosperity, how we lost that, and what we can do to regain it.
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received wide bipartisan support and was recognized as unchallengable norm by even the most right-wing Republicans. Mixed economy is defined as one in which corporations have wide ranging freedom to control the means of production and accumulate capital but the government has strong powers of regulation while also providing extensive public services.During the long progressive period when the US was under a mixed economy, government was generally looked upon in a positive light. The "American amnesia" is the state we are in today where most Americans are anti-government and have completely forgotten our ancestors' admiration for government. This is due to a five decade campaign spearheaded by individuals such as the Koch Brothers and corporate interests like the Business Round Table and the Chamber of Commerce whose Randian ideology of free market libertarianism required debasing and then dismantling the government and the mixed economy. These views soon were adopted as the Republican Party platform and by the 1990s, even Democrats echoed anti-government sentiments.
This book is important work of political science, economics, and history that shows where Americans once were in a time of more generally widespread prosperity, how we lost that, and what we can do to regain it.
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LibraryThing member breic
I read this as a companion to Jane Mayer's "Dark Money." In comparison, it has a much broader scope, which I appreciated, while avoiding personal details like the Koch brothers' biographies. You learn about the Koch brothers' political network, that Mayer covers in more detail, but also about other
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right-wing organizations like the Chamber of Commerce. There is also more history, policy and economics than in Mayer's book. The tone is a bit more strident than Mayer. Even though I agree with the authors' thesis of the importance of the mixed economy, I don't think they argued for it very well. I expected a book with more economic history and less politics. Show Less
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