The Case for Big Government (The Public Square) (Hardcover)

~ Jeff Madrick (Author)
Key Phrases: United States, Civil War, World War (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Former New York Times economics columnist Madrick takes aim at what he perceives as a dominant American antigovernment ideology with this overly ambitious text. The author's decidedly left-of-center thesis rests on the argument that "active and sizable government" is "essential to growth and prosperity." To make his case, Madrick begins with a too brief history of the relationship between the American government and the economy, from Hamilton and Jefferson's attitude toward laissez-faire economics through Jacob Riis's famous documentation of urban squalor near the turn of the 20th century to the Great Society initiatives of the 1960s. The author details the country's economic problems since the 1970s, despite the relative prosperity of the 1990s. In elaborating these points, Madrick attacks both the right and the left, and he returns consistently to the persistent influence of Milton Friedman on the antigovernment bias in American politics. This well-researched but somewhat formless book concludes with an extensive progressive agenda for redressing the limited influence of American government, covering a wide range of issues, from same-sex marriage to universal pre-k education. (Nov.)
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From Booklist

Former New York Times economics columnist Madrick announces this book as a refutation of laissez-faire economics encapsulated in Milton Friedman’s classic Capitalism and Freedom (1962). Friedman’s low-tax, deregulation principles, laments Madrick, have spread from its Republican Party bastion into the Clintonian centrist segment of the Democratic Party, impeding an expansion of the kind of government Madrick desires. His argument for hiking taxes, increasing spending, and creating new bureaucracies runs on parallel tracks: one maintains that such measures have not historically impeded economic growth; the other asserts social-justice reasons for transforming the American welfare state into the Euro-style version. Both tracks carry Madrick’s data-heavy citations of studies and statistics, which, if a fair sampling of professional economic research, seem convincing. However, Madrick’s dismissive coverage of free-market-oriented scholars as ideological and simplistic raises doubt, though perhaps not among proponents of government-run day care, government-paid universal health care, government-equalized K–12 spending, government-paid college tuition, and much more that Madrick urges. Helpful to debaters, Madrick’s work succinctly summarizes a perspective from the Left on America’s economic problems. --Gilbert Taylor

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; 1 edition (October 6, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691123314
• ISBN-13: 978-0691123318
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #166,958 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Backward Rather than Forward Looking Policies for Liberals, February 18, 2009

By	Herbert Gintis (Northampton, MA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

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Well, conservatism is in retreat in the United States and `liberal' is no longer a term of abuse. So, what are liberals going to do about long term social policy? I don't mean how should we deal with the current crisis, but rather how should we set and meet social goals to make a better society in the long run? I say "we" advisedly because I am neither a liberal nor a conservative. Rather I am more of a social planner-type who just wants to get the job done. This tends to make me critical of, and exasperated by, traditional political ideologies, which often substitute political correctness for solid ideas. This is why I read Madrick's book. Madrick is a true liberal of Michael Dukakis vintage, so his ideas will be in the running for such a vision in the next several years, provided we emerge healthy from the current financial meltdown.

If you want a well documented exposition of the thesis that the size of the government sector is not a problem, this is your book. I know that this finding will come as a shock to many, especially younger, readers who have been lectured to all their lives about the sins of drug abuse and big government, but Madrick is quite correct. It is not the size of government that affects social welfare, but rather the content of its taxation, expenditure¸ and regulatory policies. The simple fact is that there is no advanced economy without a large state sector, and traditional economic theory tells us exactly why: market failures and unintended outcome must be corrected by social intervention, in the absence of which a high level of wealth cannot be sustained.

If you want innovative ideas about new ways that government can serve the people, Madrick is not your man. His recipe list for social policy is basically, "let's go back to where Michael Dukakis left off, and finish the job." What this approach forgets is that there is a reason why conservatism took over, and if liberals make the same mistakes that they did in incurring voter wrath, the same thing will happen all over again. The idea, for instance, that trade unionism should be a considerable part of a progressive coalition is simply the kiss of death. In a global economy, unions cannot thrive in a competitive sector, because there is no monopoly surplus generated by firms that can be shared with the workers---profits fall to their competitive levels. This is why unions only do well in the state sector. This, by the way, is true the world over, not just the United States (e.g., the level of unionization in France is only 8%). Of course, one can also oppose globalization, but Madrick is not obtuse enough to suggest an anti-globalization policy (indeed, he tends to say that globalization is not a serious problem---p. 76).

Madrick also does not understand that the public's rejection of liberal social policy was not on grounds of economic efficiency and growth, but rather moral legitimacy. People believed the government wasted money, funneled perks to cronies, and administered a welfare state that rewarded sloth and anti-social behavior. The brilliance of Clinton as president was his clear recognition of this fact, and his support for policies that restored the appearance of legitimacy to the welfare system. Nowhere does Madrick recognize or affirm this point. All he says, over and over, is "big government does not lead to a low rate of economic growth."

Central to Madrick's vision of social policy in a redistribution of wealth to the lower middle class (non-college working class) through severe taxation of the rich and some vague transfer to wage earners (e.g., through unions, lower payroll taxes, and the like). I believe this is just a non-starter. The whole idea that the income distribution is "too unequal" and that voters are dissatisfied with the distribution of income is almost certainly incorrect. Only the liberal-left fringe care about the income distribution. Most voters care about the legitimacy of the private economy and the capacity of government to improve this legitimacy. For instance, the public is now pissed at the financial elite because they are feathering their nests while everyone else suffers, and their misdeeds are the cause of the crisis. This is a legitimacy issue, not one of abstract notions of inequality.

A progressive social policy must be based on the notion that attractive social programs are both efficiency enhancing and can be legitimated on general moral grounds. The so called "Employee Free Choice Act," which in fact severely reduces workers' democratic participation in union affairs, is a case in point. There is zero chance the public will not see right through the hypocrisy of abolishing the secret ballot in union elections. Similarly, liberal hostility to voucher and charter schools will be clearly seen as a payoff to the venal teachers' unions, the major enemies of better schooling, especially for the poor.

Rather than taxing and subsidizing, or strengthening unions, expanding day care for working parents and voucher/charter educational systems that transfer power to parents and communities will be heartily supported by voters, as will a heightened American leadership in the development of alternative energies sources and creating sustainable environments. We need more policies of this sort in the liberal reform dossier.

I hope that my alternative vision comes about, but I would not be surprised if the Democrats are no less pigs than the Republicans they have replaced, and avidly feed at the public trough just as Republicans did when their turn at the helm came to pass. What happens depends not on the politicians, but rather the progressive culture that develops on the local level around pressing social problems that we face.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars How we raced each other to the bottom, May 4, 2009

By	Harry Eagar (Maui) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A good part of Jeff Madrick's "The Case for Big Government" has been
overtaken by events. Want much more spending on public works or
alternative energy? You got it.

On the other hand, federally subsidized (Madrick mistakenly calls it free)
national prekindergartens? Not yet.

New School policy wonk Madrick's solutions aren't new or interesting
anyway, just what you'd expect if a former Ted Kennedy staffer ground up
10 pounds of his old boss's speeches and made a papier mache policy out of
them. However, Madrick's analysis of what's wrong is interesting.

Not very new, but it's something we haven't been hearing enough lately: In
a nutshell, what's wrong now is exactly Reaganomics fulfilled.

Madrick calls Reagan the Great Pessimist, because, despite his cheery
delivery, he offered America a stinted, stultified version of itself, one
in which, for the first time, Americans were told their children would not
do better than their parents had. And, of course, we haven't. Not most of
us.

The figures do not lie. Most of the gain in American wealth over the past
30 years went to a few who started out rich. Working people got stiffed.

In exchange for real jobs, they were offered -- and swallowed -- a bogus
vision of unleashing the power of the markets that would lead to easy and
endless prosperity.

Part of the con was the idea that government was the problem. As we now
know, unsupervised markets were the problem. Madrick spends about half his
pages retelling -- accurately -- the real economic history of America, in
which government always intervened in a big way, usually creatively, to
adapt our ways of living to an endlessly changing set of circumstances.
He really does know his history.

He complains that even Democrats like Bill Clinton bought the bogus idea
that government was necessarily pernicious. "The empirical problem with
the economic claims is that the economies of nations with high taxes and
big governments have grown rapidly, are highly productive, and provide
their citizens with a standard of living every bit the equivalent of
America's and some would argue superior to it," He writes.

For that matter, our own economic welfare has been best during periods of
active government.

"Government's management of change is what is critical." No one alive
during the past 12 months could doubt that.

Having spelled out that salutary lesson, Madrick then spoils it by
offering the full laundry list of left nostrums. He'd have been more
persuasive if he'd stuck to lunch bucket issues.

For example, his list includes homosexual marriage. Whether you are pro or
con, obviously that has nothing to do with the state of the economy.

American mating arrangements are one thing that cannot be blamed on Wall
Street.

24 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars More a narrative of big government than a "case" for it, November 7, 2008

By	C. Steiner (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Let me start by saying that I am a conservative. I went to the bookstore to find a book about the federal budget. I didn't find one but the title of this book caught my eye. As a conservative I was curious what case could be made for "big government." I'm always eager to challenge my beliefs so I bought it.

I was disappointed. The title of the book suggested to me that a rational case would be made for big government. I didn't find that in the book. It seemed to me that the majority of the book was simply a history lesson on the American economy and where government was part of that history--the history itself was interesting, but I grew impatient for the *case* to be made for big government.

The problem I had with the "history" portions of the book is that, again and again, I felt that the book was assuming that if the reader read how the government did something and the economy did something positive, that was proof that what the government did was good--but there's no logical connection to prove that. The argument is made that since the size of government was growing in the 1900's and the economy was growing, it can be concluded that a growing government does not hinder growth--but that is a non sequitur. I found no real evidence or strong arguments that suggest that the growing economy was because of the growing government, nor no real answer to the belief that the economy could have grown even more had it not been for the growing demands of government.

As a conservative I found pages 136-138 particularly disgusting: The book goes on for three pages essentially fantasizing about all the different ways the government could tax the citizens and how much revenue the government could raise by doing so. Some of the ideas presented are downright confiscatory: Taxing wealth goes beyond the pale. It's bad enough that citizens cannot really own property, but rather are buying the right to rent it from the government (in the form of annual property taxes). The idea of taxing wealth takes that questionable idea to its logical (or illogical) conclusion: Such a tax would essentially mean that people would be working to earn the right to rent wealth from the government. The mind spins. But I digress.

I guess I don't know who the target audience is. I suppose if it's targeted at frustrated liberals that need a little pep talk, perhaps it would serve that purpose. But with a title like "The Case for Big Government" I was expecting the case to be made compelling enough to hopefully convince some skeptics or, at least, explain the liberal rationale to the rest of us.

If the latter was the intent, I think the book failed.