Customer Reviews

America: What Went Wrong?

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is a book that really helps ordinary Americans understand what is happening to the economy. Though somewhat dated by being written before our so-called period of prosperity, the trends emphasized in the book not only continue, but in some instances have accelerated. In that important sense, B's & S's work remains as topical today as it was yesterday. It's also an excellent companion to Kevin Phillip's more recent *Politics of the Rich and Poor*, though the former aims at a more popular audience. Many of the statistical comparisons of Phillip's book were originated here: the junk bond plunder of healthy companies, the massive export of high-wage jobs, the decline of pension funds and health care, et.al. And a sorry, sorry tale it is.

Several pressing topics not included in Phillip's book are discussed here. "Net operating loss" is perhaps the most egregious method of transferring wealth upward. This highly biased tax allowance allows struggling companies to write off last year's net operating loss on this year's tax bill, forcing taxpayers to pay for operating losses incurred by private sector firms. Similarly, Chapter 11 bankruptcies allow indigent firms to continue operating with present management but immune from creditors. The net effect of both measures is to lessen risk and encourage reckless speculation, thereby undermining long-term market health. Included in the book are other degenerate measures deriving largely from the 1980's: Deduction of interest from corporate borrowing, Tax-free government bonds (deriving from early 1900's), Untaxed stock transactions, et.al. The overall result is to transfer the tax burden from wealthy categories to middle-cass brackets. For more far-sighted conservatives, this amounts to an alarming social and political development.

Though much the same ground has now been trod in other books, the story can stand multiple retellings, since middle-class decline is perhaps the most important domestic trend of our time. What distinguishes this book's original telling are the vivid personal profiles amidst the welter of relevant statistics. These cameos have the crucial effect of reminding the reader that behind the abstractions are real people whose lives are shaped by tax legislation, wealth transfers, and job export. The result is a little like Studs Turkel meets the tax collector.

Recommended for those interested in the social contours of the future.

This book was bought as one of the text books I needed for my college civics class. Of all the text books I have bought, this is the only one that I read from cover to cover. This book will make you angry with what is allowed to happen to the average American. Most of the incidents that are talked about are not general public knowledge. I don't feel that it is a fatalistic book as other reviewers have indicated. It does bring out some disturbing issues that should not have happened or allowed to happen.

Interesting that there are no one star reviews after the economic downturn of 2008--present day. We see only what we want to see, t'would seem. Thus, when Bartlett and Steele's "doomsday" arguments bore fruit in 2008, we ought to note that they were on to something. I read this book when it was first published as a serial piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and then later in the book form. I've been citing their work for just as long.

Can't wait to see Bartlett and Steele's latest work: What Went Wrong: The Betrayal of the American Dream. They're working with the Investigative Reporting Workshop of the American University School of Communications. Bartlett and Steele are true examples of what used to sell papers--smart, in-depth reporting that never flinched.

This book is really an eye opener. It cuts through all the bull that we normally get in the press or from politicians. It suddenly puts everything in focus and you realize why things are the way they are now, especially if you were around in the 50's as a pre-baby boomer or a baby-boomer. I think it's even more important that people born in the 70's read it so they can get a grasp on where this country is headed. Intelligent, clear, well documented writing, it should be included in every school curriculum as required reading.

I recall, when Regan's "simplified" 3-tier federal income tax code took effect, conducting a simple experiment: I calculated the tax on several incomes, from poverty level to over $200000, both before and after the change. Although the gross tax dropped, the percentage paid by the lower incomes increased, while the upper decreased. This, I remember thinking, does not look good.

Barlet and Steele's book gave substance to my suspicion, and helped to form my current understanding of US government, which is, I believe, increasingly under the sway of a wealthy elite.

Particularly interesting were the parallel the book drew between the early '1920s and the '80s.

While the book does well in illuminating the problems faced by our republic, it does less well in suggesting a cure, though, in its defense, this is a less easy task.

I recommend this book to every serious, thinking person I meet.

Any one really reading this book can't help but be angry at the way a small segment of the ultra wealthy control our government and our tax situation for their benefit. Thais has nothing to do with socialism, Marxism, or anything else. The progressive income tax system brought us out of the terrible conditions of the 1930's Carnegie and Mellon era of extreme wealth surrounded by masses of poor Americans. We are now returning to those conditions, the middle class prosperity of the 50's, when most families could buy a house, send their kids to college and take vacations is now replaced with two wage earners in the family, who can just make ends meet while the ultra wealthy have more money then they know what to do with. If you believe in conditions that the feudal kings lived in, this is not the book for you. If you care about others and want to know why things are so messed up in this country, this book will explain it in simple, straight forward, factual manner and you will want to do something about it before the next generation can do nothing.
This should be required reading in every high school and college.

The basis of this book was a PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER series in 1991. Reader response was overwhelming. The 1980's and our economic circumstances bear resemblance, and so the work remains current.

At one time interest rates, gross national product, gross domestic product, and savings rates meant something. The growth of the middle class has been one of the underpinnings of democracy. A large transfer of wealth is taking place and the middle class is being dismantled. In the 1920's and the 1980's large tax cuts were enacted for the wealthy. There are middle class casualties of the government rule book. Conditions are structural, built into the economy.

In 1976 rules for tax-sheltered manufacturing in United States possessions were created. A great number of pharmaceutical companies moved their plants to Puerto Rico to take advantage of the scheme. Deregulation of the trucking industry, savings and loan industry, the airline industry, and the banking industry has been costly to consumers and workers. The year 1990, (at least until 2001), was the worst year in aviation history. In that year Braniff, Eastern, TWA, Midway and Continental were all in bankruptcy or on the verge of bankruptcy and liquidation. In trucking, cutthroat discounting, price wars, destroyed many companies.

In the mid 1970's there was deregulation fever. The trucking and airline industries were deregulated in the Carter years. Corporate bankruptcies result in the loss of health insurance for employees. The Simplicity Pattern Comapany was hit by corporate raiders. It was bought and sold four times after 1971. So much debt was incurred in the serial acquisitions, (using the concern's own money), that it had to default on its bonds and bank loans. There was weakness because during the 1970's Simplicity was making more money from investments than from pattern sales. It was a stagnating company and a take-over target.

Pension chaos exists in private sector employment. The demise of Studebaker highlighted the lack of a coherent pension system. ERISA was enacted in 1974. Unfortunately in the 1980's over two thousand companies dipped into their pension funds. Also many pension plans were terminated and replaced by uninsured annuities. Underfunding a pension plan may signal a company's distress. Similarly, pension raids may carry the same message.

The authors' recounting of events overtaking actual people illustrates strongly the economic forces at play in this modern regulation-free era.

Tis a usually natural reaction to want to lash out at the bearer of bad news, this book defines the limitations and restrictions that various pressure groups have inflicted on that dysfunctional corporation known as the United States.

"America: What Went Wrong" is just as important and relevant today as it was when initally released. America's overall economic situation is much worse today than it was when this book was initially published. This book accurately forecasts the problems America has as it loses its manufacturing base and became a service-oriented society (Wal-Mart supposedly has 700 Chinese factories of its own). Now the multi-national's factories are fleeing Mexico in 2002 for the slave-like workers of China.Unsettling for sure, I challenge you to read this book and don't be surprised if you re-read parts of it as the late 1990s Clinton/Greenspan artificial economic bubble unwinds into a 1930s style worldwide economic depression.

I am amazed that the other reviewer would tout the Reagan years as being fiscally "hunkydory." Reagan was the one who gave us years of defense budgets which certainly benefited defense contractors (Lockheed, Martin-Marietta, McDonald Douglass, General Electric) but nearly destroyed the country by running up the national debt to astronomical levels. It is now being learned that this debt was not designed to "protect" us from the Soviet Union, which was even then on its knees, but a deliberate attempt to destroy all New Deal social programs (Medicare, Social Security, etc.). And if the above were not enough, Reagan deregulated the savings and loan industry which led to a feeding frenzy by unscrupulous people thus costing the American taxpayer $1 trillion to clean up.

The 80's were truly the era of GREED and should not be held up as a model of fiscal responsibility, let alone a model for emulation.

Reagan was indeed good for a few; his friends at the top 1% did get richer - immorally richer. The rest of us learned how to tread water really good.

Barlett and Steele have done a great service by writing their books and giving the American people a chance to see what has really been done TO US.

I read this book in hindsight of course, but the facts were already obvious to those paying attention, and more than their fair share of the tax burden. Everything is on schedule, and the worse is yet to come. If others are unable to see our National demise, then they choose to do so regardless of data. Economists always choose the figures that make their point, so they make sure that only True Criminals ever make it into the Whitehouse, or Congress. We would be better off to put our Government out to the highest bidder, and fire everyone in Washington. Putting out a "hit list" on the big bankers would be a good start as well. These people have murdered citizens of other Countries, without remorse, so it is only justifiable retaliation. Just ask the Panamanians, and the Columbians. Drugs are now our greatest Government assest, and we plant new fields each year throughout the world. Read and learn, then observe the real American Business attitude. When our Nation is attacked, who will care whether it stands or falls, certainly not I. I am working for the Foreign powers anyway.