A Fun Read. As I opened this book I was expecting a daunting dive into the mysterious numerical depths of the Federal Budget--something only a tax consultant might follow. As I read onward I was repeatedly surprised at how nakedly simple the areas of the budget can be shown. I was increasingly reminded of a scene in the movie Dave (1998, Kevin Kline & Segourney Weaver). In that movie Kevin Kline plays Dave, the proprietor of a temp employment agency in a small town. Dave is an uncanny Presidential lookalike who is secretly recruited as a momentary stand-in for the real President. Things don't work out as planned and Dave finds himself continuing the masquerade indefinitely. To the horror of the Chief of Staff, who started the masquerade, Dave begins assuming the powers of the office. At one point he decides to cut part of the Federal budget. For help he calls on his old friend, a small-town accountant. They sit in the Oval Office with a copy of the Federal Budget and the accountant says: "I've been through this stuff a bunch of times. It just doesn't add up. Who does these books? I mean if I ran my business this way I'd be out of business."
Show Don't Preach. The book lets the clearly exposed facts speak for themselves. Of course, this leaves it to the gentle reader to damn our crew of clown politicians and the culture of sound-bite pragmatism that is delivering us to bankruptcy. But the book does not cloud itself with that dimension. There is a genuine and infectuous caring about the future in this book. Enough so that there is no significant political moralizing in the thoroughly fact-based presentation. I found this very refreshing.
Amazing Clarity. The book shows our financial predicament without a massive overload of obtuse data. There is an aim toward simplicity of overview by using concise summary tables and bar graphs. I came away from this book with a much better intuitive understanding of the Federal Budget.
Authoritative. The reference notes and a concise 3 page collection of resources were valuable to me in appreciating the extensive research and authority behind this book. The convenient web links made it very easy to surf the web for some of the "official" government background information.
Personal Relevancy. For all the major dimensions of proposed action, the author consistently uses the same very simple tabular device. This is a very good expositional technique that soon became familiar to me and did a dual job. While it showed how much money would be added to my billfold every year by taking the proposed action, it simultaneously showed how much money these excessive and questionable government moneypits are costing me every year. In fact, this is the aspect that hooked me into becoming a big fan of this book as I read through the government expenses. In many cases, huge areas of mis-spent money which I had only a vague notion of before came into clearer view.
Not An All-Or-Nothing Vision. Not all of us readers will agree with all the proposals. I became convinced that this book presents a clear and full vision of a corrective direction. In effect it says something like, "for maximum benefit come to heading 175 degrees". If the book inspires any positive change at all toward that direction, it will be a great contribution to our future. Some corrective change is better than none at all. The author presents a compelling case that our Titanic America is now on course for a nemesis iceberg unless we move the rudder to get us much nearer to the full direction proposed.
Recommendation. I highly recommend this book. As a retired baby-boomer, I'm increasingly wary of what the government is doing to my future. All baby-boomers should read this book. Perhaps if enough of us sent copies of this book to our congressional representatives, it would clue those clowns that we're getting wise to their irresponsibilities. Ok, I confess I'm falling into being less than tactful here. I check myself and recommend that we should convey this book to friends and influential authorities with less of an off-putting blame-game and more of the benevolently objective spirit so evident in the book itself.
