Customer Reviews

EconAmerica: Why the American Economy is Alive and Well... And What That Means to Your Wallet

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Just finished reading your book from cover to cover in one sitting! Thanks for sharing your positive, clearly stated and sensible views on the outlook for us and the rest of the world!

Peter Genereaux

Founder and Retired CEO of the Utah Information Technology Council

It is very difficult for the average person to get a handle on the American economy from the popular press. The people writing about the various issues rarely have a solid background in economics or finance, less experience in investing or managing money, and often have an unstated political bias that shades what they write.

The author of this book, Jeff Thredgold, is an unabashed enthusiast for the American economy. This book takes you through all that he sees as positive and tells you why he thinks so. Even the problems he talks about, he thinks can be managed and handled. What he wants to underscore is that far from gloom and doom, the positives about the American economy are hugely greater than its negatives.

The book is not a detailed argument about a single economic argument, but rather a tour of a number of topics. He starts with the economy in general, employment, government and deficits, entitlement programs, inflation & interest rates, the consumer, the workplace, American retirement, what he sees as guaranteed growth industries (personally, economic guarantees scare me to death), savings, investment, global issues, and some on international affairs.

All his presentations are informative for the general person, and he never gets very technical or too detailed. However, in some ways, this does shortchange some of the topics. For example, when discussing the minimum wage, he finally concludes that we can afford to give those at the bottom of our economic ladder a raise. However, he doesn't talk about other very real costs of the minimum wage to those who will not be employable at the higher wage, AND that the raise in the minimum wage is often advocated by many who themselves are paid much more than that base, but whose core pay is tied to it. However, I can see how this would be beyond the scope of this book. Still this kind of thing can distort the general reader's perspective.

So, if you want to get a broad view of the American economy that doesn't leave you looking for razor blades or some mood altering substances, or looking into emigrating to Australia, hey, this book is a good sound bit of good news.

It was a great book. The book made real sense of what is happening in America. Written in a real pleasant manner and was very easy to understand. I truly felt like Jeff really knew what he was talking about. I highly recommend to read it.