1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Washington Strangling America, March 26, 2009
This review is from: Call for Revolution (Paperback)
To bring Alexis de Tocqueville's concerns (especially regarding the tendencies of democracies to degrade into dictatorships) into the political battles of today, let me mention A Call for Revolution: How Washington is Strangling America--and How to Stop It (New York: Ballantine Books, c. 1993. This is a journalistic expose, an anecdotal alarm, a stentorian call to upend the government which is sucking life from its citizenry. It's not the book you turn to for solid analysis or contextualized data. It's a sermonic-style call for action which deserves a hearing.
Gross began his book with a quotation from Al Gore, who hardly ever appears "revolutionary," who said: "The federal government has grown stale, wasteful, inefficient, bureaucratic, and is failing the American people. Rock 'em, sock 'em, shake 'em-up changes are what the American people want" (p. 1). If it's what the people want, it's not what the Washington establishment will grant, but Gross takes Gore at his words and proposes some real "rock 'em, sock 'em, shake 'em-up changes."
The federal government, Gross shows, is utterly wasteful and prodigal in spending the people's monies. Between 1960 and 1990, the combined local, state, and federal government costs have soared 350% and now yearly spend $38,000 per family! More than 40% of the nation's GDP went to support government. This financial burden slowly strangles us all, and the burden results from the utter irresponsibility of our elected officials and entrenched bureaucrats.
To illustrate, consider what's happened in Long Island, New York. A house which cost $8,000 in 1950 costs $210,000 four decades later. The owner, in 1950, made $5,000 yearly and paid a total of $615 in taxes; he had $4,000 in disposable income. Today's owner earns $41,000; his wife works to raise their total income to $58,500. School taxes alone are now 25 times what they were, amounting to $5,700. Add in all the other taxes, and this family pays $20,000 a year, and struggles to make ends meet in ways their counterparts in 1950 never imagined. The main difference in their economic status, Gross insists, is out-of-control taxation.
As another example of the nation's problem, consider one aspect of our welfare system: some 12 federal agencies dole out $5 billion each year to help American Indians; that amounts to $20,000 per family of four--though in fact their income averages one-third of that! Washington collects and expends money with abandon. Unfortunately, only small amounts of it actually reach the intended beneficiaries. In fact, the current welfare system, which constitutes this nation's largest budgetary expenditure, costing us $300 billion a year, not only sustains but helps create poverty in America! All our efforts to eliminate poverty have misfired. "Despite the expenditure of a trillion dollars over the years, the number of people in 'poverty,' as defined by the U.S. Bureau of Census, is larger today than when the antipoverty programs went into full gear" (p. 91). A reasonable person, Gross assumes, would be inclined to explore other remedies as quickly as possible--right now, in fact!
Concerned citizens can, in fact, make a difference. Join organizations such as Citizens Against Government Waste. Push politicians to pass a balanced budget amendment and authorize a line item veto for the President. Push for term limits. The list of suggestions is extensive, and perhaps many of them would make a real difference.
What Gross's book does is make available some of the alarming details many of us never hear about. With such information in hand, with the courage to confront the powers that be, the United States might recover from the strangle-hold of its federal dictators.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How to right the ship of state, July 8, 2007
Martin Gross has written many books, but none as important as this one. Written back in 1993, it is more relevant today as our Federal Leviathan of a government continues to consume, swallow and waste more of our hard-earned tax dollars. When you read how little your parents paid in taxes in the '50s, you'll know why they didn't need two paychecks and had more disposable income. It was, and should still be, a wake-up call to heed the words of our Founding Fathers who warned against the bloating and expansion of the Federal government. Sadly, The Gross Commission, which recommended concrete examples of how to rein in the government, was totally ignored by our elitist politicians of both parties. The result is the monstrous federal government which has single-handedly wiped out the middle class about which they claim so much to want to protect. Read and be informed, then start rattling the cage with your Congresspeople and Senators. It is going to takew another American Revolution to get our country back.
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