Prize-winning journalist Phillip Longman exposes the vast and hidden middle class welfare state in this country and shows how its outrageous growth has coincided with a dramatic decline of middle-class values--simple yet important ideals such as thrift, family, work, and citizenship.
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Often lost in the hue and cry about problems with welfare in the United States is the abysmal state of the country's entitlements for the middle class. Yet, as Phillip Longman points out in this timely and important book, Americans must prepare for an "imminent collapse of the middle-class welfare state" resulting in the loss of "no less than a way of life." Given the current structure, the Social Security system will go broke in the year 2025, meanwhile, the Medicare fund, the veterans' benefit program and the systems for civil service and military retirees all are financially unsound. Longman explains how dependent middle-class Americans has become on these welfare programs, shows the cost of these programs compared with those for the poor, and provides solutions to avoid a collapse of the system.
From Booklist
Americans have all heard the bad news: Medicaid and Medicare will soon founder, and Social Security won't limp on much longer, either, unless we are prepared, by 2030, to pay every cent of our taxes to keep them going. In his history of what, sometime in the 1980s, we started calling entitlements and his explanation of how they are bankrupting the country, Longman powerfully bolsters those predictions. Worse yet, he reveals that the big three middle-class welfare programs have a host of little siblings (military and bureaucratic benefits, federal guarantees of company pensions, and the not-so-little mortgage interest deduction from federal taxes) that are also vacuuming the purses of generations yet unborn. But he has some good news, too: entitlements will never grow to eat up all our resources because we will come to our senses, curb consumption, and renew saving. To that end and after some of the most lucid writing ever on national macroeconomics, he suggests measures for the nation and for individuals to take to prepare for the more modest, but also more familial and communal, circumstances we will and must enter into as the twenty-first century looms. Ray Olson
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
He knew it before everyone else,
This review is from: RETURN OF THRIFT: How the Collapse of the Middle Class Welfare State Will Reawaken Values in Americs (Hardcover)
I picked this book up at the library on a whim. Everything he predicted is coming true. We are seeing the collapse of the middle-class welfare state. He is one of the few commentators that has been honest about the overwhelming debt obligations and promises of our government and how it is unsustainable. The bubbles are bursting and there are none left to inflate and philip candidly spells out in the book the looming issues that everyone knew for years and is happening TODAY. Read it if nothing else, to understand how tragically all this could have prevented.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Somewhat prescient short piece by a prolific writer/researcher...,
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This review is from: RETURN OF THRIFT: How the Collapse of the Middle Class Welfare State Will Reawaken Values in Americs (Hardcover)
Mr. Longman's message can be distilled into just a few words. The wealthy of our country have lost their concern about whether or not the non-wealthy eat their food from garbage cans. If one wants to survive in the future, one must save one's cash and other assets.
What Mr. Longman seems to miss is that this is going to make the non-wealthy very angry. At some point, life will become decidedly unfortunate for those who will not share. It is relatively easy to put the squeeze on the disenfranchised poor and working class. When one attacks the relatively large middle class of our country, converting this class to virtual slaves, Mr. Longman will have to write a new chapter.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Language drives perception,
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This review is from: RETURN OF THRIFT: How the Collapse of the Middle Class Welfare State Will Reawaken Values in Americs (Hardcover)
Phillip Longman uses vocabulary which drives the perception of the content.
He calls Social Security "entitlement" v. "safety net." He does not take in to account the impact of inflation on the defining of Middle Class. He does not take into account that the temporary tax cuts have resulted in decreased revenue, which has a much greater impact than he would have one believe on the health of the middle class. He links it to a later book on declining birth rates further exacerbating our decline. The fact that business is making more money than ever, while decreasing hiring has further threatened the middle class. This is not well communicated in the book. Perhaps I missed the presentation that rise of the middle class was due to these types of supportive programs and rise of union labor. Missing is a discussion of the impact of "right to work", removing those private industry safety mechanisms given by unions. If this book were written better, perhaps I could see his point. In fairness, this book was written before the current econonic crisis, but I believe those values are what generate the worry about class warfare. I don't think that what I experience today in an urban environment where individuals are in a free fall from econonic down-turn would see these programs as entitlements at all. Additionally, this fall from financial security is exactly what is causing the children of the former middle class baby boomer generation to realize they cannot afford children. Perhaps the greed of Ayn Rand is the basis for values he wants reawakened. My philosophical bend is "To each to his need: from each according to ability."
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