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The Confiscation of American Prosperity: From Right-Wing Extremism and Economic Ideology to the Next Great Depression (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: recent economic changes, perpetual prosperity, capitalist restoration, United States, Michael Perelman, Social Security (more...)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Can a recent history of the U.S. economy read a bit like a crime story? Yes, in the hands of Michael Perelman" - Seth Sandronsky, Sacramento News & Review

"The Confiscation of American Prosperity is a highly readable work that offers equal servings of serious economics and controlled anger. Michael Perelman is outraged by 30 years of deepening disparities in the U.S. economy, and by the fact most economists either ignore the reality before them or worse, provide academic firepower on behalf of a more unequal and unstable society. Read Perelman, and prepare to be challenged, both intellectually and morally."

--Robert Pollin, Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts-Amherst

"This book gives an original perspective on the changes in the country over the last three decades. It documents how the wealthy have managed to structure the economy so that they could monopolize the gains from growth over this period. It shows how the resulting growth in inequality is undermining economic stability and productivity growth, creating an economy and society that will not be sustainable in the long-run."

--Dean Baker, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research

“Michael Perelman is author of a long series of important works on the history and theory of capitalism. In his latest book The Confiscation of American Prosperity, he offers an integrated account of economic and political developments in the postwar period that could not be more timely. Going beyond moral denunciation of the ever-worsening distribution of income and wealth, he shows the way in which an ascendant far right used the levers of power to counter declining profitability, but, in the process of assaulting American living standards and further enriching the wealthy, ended up weakening the mainsprings of the economy and preparing the ground for devastating crisis. This is a story that economic orthodoxy cannot tell but one that everyone needs to hear.”

--Robert Brenner, Director, Center for Social Theory and Comparative History, UCLA

"In this age of ever-increasing concentrations of power and wealth, economists have been quick to attribute changes in inequality to factors such as globalization and technological change, while paying much less attention to the social and political forces that have shaped the outcome. With its analysis of the political, economic, and social forces behind recent changes in the distribution of power, wealth, and income, this book takes important steps to fill this void. Beginning with its analysis of the right wing's exploitation of the discontent from the unraveling of the Golden Age as a means to promote free-market ideology, continuing with its analysis of later efforts to further free-market ideology in the political and public arenas, and ending with its characterization of where we are now, this book helps us understand how we attained the level of inequality we have today, and where we might be headed next."

--Mark Thoma, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Oregon

Product Description

This book argues that the right-wing revolution in the United States has created deepening inequality and will lead to economic catastrophe. The author makes the case that over the past three decades the rich have confiscated wealth and income from the poor and middle class to a far greater extent than many realize, and he explores in detail important but commonly unmeasured dimensions of inequality. He also takes aim at the economics profession, criticising the analytical blinders that leave economists incapable of seeing the coming crisis.

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Product Details

Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (October 2, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0230600468
ISBN-13: 978-0230600461
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #884,766 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
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#98 in Books > Business & Investing > Economics > Comparative

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!

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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
recent economic changes, perpetual prosperity, capitalist restoration

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Michael Perelman, Social Security, Great Depression, World War, Golden Age, Ronald Reagan, New Deal, The Dangerous Consequences of Inequality, Richard Nixon, Heritage Foundation, Wall Street, New York Times, American Economic Association, Lewis Powell, White House, National Bureau of Economic Research, Hold the Line, Republican Party, Supreme Court, Democratic Party, General Motors, Lockheed Martin, Federalist Society, Professor Feldstein

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!

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5.0 out of 5 stars Confiscating American Prosperity: High Crimes and Economics, April 7, 2008

By	Seth Sandronsky (Sacramento, California United States) - See all my reviews

April 7, 2008
Reviewing The Confiscation of American Prosperity: From Right-Wing Extremism and Economic Ideology to the Next Great Depression, Michael Perelman, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007
By Seth Sandronsky

Michael Perelman, a professor of economics at California State University, Chico, has written a compelling new book which puts the current social crisis into historical context. As the U.S. credit and housing bubbles crash, mortgage defaults and home foreclosures are tearing a hole in the nation's social fabric. For Perelman, the main story line which got the American nation to this point of instability begins in the early 1970s, the end of the "Golden Age" of the U.S.'s post-World War II prosperity. As the balance sheets of German and Japanese rivals rose, corporate America's fell.

Its recovery points to the winners and losers of this process to restore profitability to U.S. corporations. In a main theme of the book, American politicians and think tanks united to weaken corporate regulation and taxation. Accordingly, Perelman's book reads a bit like a crime story. One of the figures who loom large in it is Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell. His 1971 memo, penned as a corporate lawyer, set off alarm bells for big business. It was time, Powell said, to ideologically and politically confront the popular movements (Civil Rights and Vietnam War) of the day. Later, the two U.S. political parties, in response to their large corporate funders, targeted social policies of the New Deal and Great Society protecting the American people from the scourge of hunger and poverty due to loss of jobs, health care, etc.

Powell's role in Main Street's declining fortunes since the end of the Vietnam War illustrates Perelman's close attention to class interests. He brings into sharp focus the reasons for and results of a one-sided upper-class campaign over the past three decades. The extent to which a small but strong minority of Americans hoarded the bulk of growth from the sweat of a diverse labor force, increasingly female, boggles one's mind.

Consider this data. As the nation's gross domestic product tripled from 1970 to 2003, the "top 13,000 tax-paying households ... saw its wages and salaries increase fifteen-fold," Perlman writes. Meanwhile, for the bottom 99 percent of Americans, average income remained basically unchanged between 1970 ($36,008) and 2004 ($37,295).

One outcome has been working Americans' growing reliance on credit to make ends meet, Perelman explains in jargon-free prose. Such clear language from a professor of economics may startle some readers who might be accustomed to opaque English from the likes of Alan Greenspan, former head of the nation's central bank.

Perelman reminds readers that pro-business policies of deregulation are not the monopoly of the GOP. The weakening of government oversight of industry took off under Democratic President Jimmy Carter. So did the high-interest rate policy of Paul Volcker, former Federal Reserve Bank chief. This one-two policy punch buckled the knees of the U.S. working class.

Likewise, former actor-turned-California Governor Ronald Reagan did his part as president to batter organized labor. Reagan fired striking federal air-traffic controllers who had earlier campaigned for him. Later, private employers aped Reagan, terminating their work forces during union actions throughout the 1980s and beyond. Unionized Americans have been backpedaling since, mainly in the private sector, in which workers creates profits (what Marx termed surplus value), unlike the public sector.

Political right-wingers pushing corporate-friendly policies have left no stone unturned. Some public schools whose students fail to score well enough on highs-stakes achievement tests and consequently face closure. One option is to re-open them as private charter schools. The owners who are politically connected to business leaders and political officials can then void employees' union contracts and earn profits.

And who helps shape public opinion as the upper-class rollback proceeds? Perelman answers in part with a look at the Heritage Foundation, which grew with funds from beer mogul Joseph Coors. This think tank became a service provider of so-called expert commentators to news media, increasingly in the hands of fewer and fewer global corporations such as News Corp. and its chair Rupert Murdoch.

On that note, Perelman's radical viewpoint runs counter to the mainstream notion that income and wealth inequality are regrettable but inevitable outcomes of market forces that free people's productive potential. He evaluates the research on the past three decades in the U.S. and finds that this notion is a false assumption. Alternatively, Perelman suggests that such inequality disrupts and obstructs economic growth.

Lastly, Perelman critiques the economics profession and Professor Martin Feldstein. In brief, his research said Social Security harmed the U.S. economy by cutting personal savings. In time, Feldstein's methods were found to be fatally flawed. Yet he stayed close to the White House and remained a Harvard professor, shaping the world views of policy makers and corporate execs.

What is to be done with a profession that basically serves moneyed interests? "In the longer run, a total rethinking of economics is needed," Perelman writes in conclusion. "Economists can make a contribution to this transformation by deemphasizing competition, while learning to understand more humane motives of behavior than profit maximization."

Seth Sandronsky lives and writes in Sacramento.
<ssandronsky@yahoo.com>

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