Most Helpful Customer Reviews
73 of 82 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fifteen Reasons to Read This, October 13, 2010
This review is from: The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy: And Everything Else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Author Joshua Holland comes out swinging against the rhetoric and arguments that conservatives and Republicans have been inundating media and blogs with, in the past several years about the future and stability of our economy.
Holland takes fifteen topics, topics on taxes, jobs, corporations, free trade, illegal immigration, unions, healthcare, the deficit, minorities, and socialism, to name a few, and demolishes their arguments and charges that Republicans misinform the public to instill fear in the electorate.
For years, Republicans and conservatives have turned their message into an art form of slogans and falsehoods that do not stand scrutiny when Holland gives you the analysis, the stats, or the historical reality behind each of them.
Holland's prose is somewhere between strident and measured, but lucid and factual. He offers percentages and charts that are easy to follow and do not bore. He demonstrates clearly how corporations and lobbyists control the message and determine everything from legislation to trade agreements.
This is for the avid observer of the political struggle that is currently raging in this country. This is especially informative for the person whose political awareness is just germinating. The very well informed may wish to read this to recall things momentarily forgotten.
It is an alarming story and a depressing one. It is the story of our country being owned by the entities just described, how legislators do the bidding of their contributors rather than citizens, how our government does more to protect business than consumers.
What was just as important is what Holland didn't say. He was describing the slow strangulation of the death of a republic that was bought through avarice and greed with a powerful message of fear, and the perversion of a dream that belonged to our Founding Fathers.
I can give you fifteen reason why you might want to read this.
I also recommend the following:
The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and StickYou with the Bill)
Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane
Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else
The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperityand What We Can Do About It
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A good start, November 6, 2010
This review is from: The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy: And Everything Else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
As other reviewers have pointed out, if you're a liberal or at the very least an open-minded individual when it comes to what you've heard for the past decade in regards to our economy, then this book will be an eye-opening experience for you. I contemplated giving this book four stars but in truth the author does exactly what the title promises. He discusses how our politicians and media outlets regularly lie, obfuscate, generalize, and omit details from their reports, statements, sound bites, and speeches. I would have appreciated if the author spent a little more time on what he believes are the answers to some of the problems we're experiencing, but that is not what the title promised, so I can overlook that weakness. Also, while the author points out some of the problems inherent in 'big government', there are definitely situations that are overlooked; but in truth that doesn't take away from what the author's arguments offer in respect to the regurgitated lies we're often confronted with on a daily basis. Furthermore, the book is about events in our very, very recent past. Thus what is a simple 'truth' today might become a complex look at a piece of our history five or ten years down the road. This also applies to the author's sources, the majority of which are newspaper/journalism pieces. While the author is meticulous in his sources and presents a lot of evidence to back up his position and opinions, I am more inclined to trust scholarly monographs and peer-reviewed journals, especially when today's journalists are as interested in pursuing sensationalist stories as they are in pursuing some form of the truth or challenging the status quo.
At the very least this book will give you an interest in further research about topics like the 'free market' and whether it truly exists in today's world of big corporate America. To what degree is government regulation good, needed, or superfluous for our everyday safety. What really caused the recent economic recession, how it was handled, and why government regulation of the financial sector is still lacking and leaves us all open to another bubble and perhaps an even worse outcome for the middle and working class. Why tax breaks for the rich are not a guarantee that jobs will be created and in fact are part of the reason for the recent economic disaster the world experienced. How Republicans can ramble on and on about 'small government' but in truth are inclined to spend as much, if not more, than Democrats who are by proxy made out to look as if they want 'big government' when in truth they are interested in government responsibility and society's safety and progress. These are some of the issues discussed and they will undoubtedly make you question the dominant narrative we hear on a daily basis coming out of the mouth's of TV personalities and our politicians.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
32 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Won't convert those who aren't already believers but good, if flawed look at political issues, December 31, 2010
This review is from: The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy: And Everything Else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
"The Fifteen Biggest Lies About the Economy" provides a lot of good information about how Americans have been misled by our leaders about a wide variety of topics to suit their own political agenda. Whether it be the myth about how tax cuts for the wealthy increases jobs and/or spending (it doesn't--the wealthy spent the LEAST amount of their free capital and rarely do tax cuts for the wealthy or corporations lead to the creation of jobs); the health care debacle of last year (and how loaded PR terms like "Death Panels" were fed to the American public by insurance companies to discourage the option--note the word OPTION--of National Healthcare in addition to private insurance); how American politicans because of re-election funds have allowed jobs to be exported to other countries or the fact that, somehow, you and I casued the banking crisis (it was Wall Street pushing their own agenda and getting sloppy that caused the melt down of the economy) author Joshua Holland sheds light on a variety of lies that have been perpetuated in the media by politicians.
The problem with Holland's book is that there are some factual errors (not huge ones but big enough for someone to discredit some of his rants)and the fact that Holland's tone in the book is unlikely to sway those who don't already believe that these are all myths or lies. If Holland is going to sway those who don't believe this and buy into the political agendas "sold" to them by their party of choice (and there are good guys and bad guys on both ends of the political spectrum that have been compromised by the lack of ethics in politics and corporate America).
Still, the fact that Holland sheds light on these "lies" calling out various politicians and companies for their greedy, unethical behavior IS important and he does a pretty good job with his facts and support arguments. The main problem is that this book will never reach beyond the core audience that already believes all of this and knows much of it already. I just wish that his book came off less as an extended rant and more as a well balanced, thoughtful argument for reform in our society.
The fact is that we've witnessed the gutting of our economy and American way of life by multinational corporations that have no ties beyond greed. I just wish that Holland's book would reach beyond the scope of those who already see problems in our country and provided some fair balanced observations about solutions.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
