Buy new:
$13.46
FREE delivery: Tuesday, April 23 on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.
Ships from: Amazon
Sold by: WorldPrime
List Price: $28.00 Details

The List Price is the suggested retail price of a new product as provided by a manufacturer, supplier, or seller. Except for books, Amazon will display a List Price if the product was purchased by customers on Amazon or offered by other retailers at or above the List Price in at least the past 90 days. List prices may not necessarily reflect the product's prevailing market price.
Learn more
Save: $14.54 (52%)
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns
FREE delivery Tuesday, April 23 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Or fastest delivery Thursday, April 18. Order within 7 hrs 8 mins
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
$$13.46 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$13.46
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Ships from
Amazon
Ships from
Amazon
Sold by
Sold by
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Payment
Secure transaction
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime
FREE delivery Monday, April 22 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Or fastest delivery Thursday, April 18. Order within 5 hrs 8 mins
Condition: Used: Good
Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Other Sellers on Amazon
Added
$9.43
+ $3.99 shipping
Sold by: AZ-Fast SHIP
Sold by: AZ-Fast SHIP
(908 ratings)
100% positive over last 12 months
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Shipping rates and Return policy
Added
$13.58
FREE Shipping
Get free shipping
Free shipping within the U.S. when you order $35.00 of eligible items shipped by Amazon.
Or get faster shipping on this item starting at $5.99 . (Prices may vary for AK and HI.)
Learn more about free shipping
on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.
Sold by: KyncStore
Sold by: KyncStore
(105 ratings)
100% positive over last 12 months
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Shipping rates and Return policy
Added
$14.17
FREE Shipping
Get free shipping
Free shipping within the U.S. when you order $35.00 of eligible items shipped by Amazon.
Or get faster shipping on this item starting at $5.99 . (Prices may vary for AK and HI.)
Learn more about free shipping
on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.
Sold by: RoseBookz
Sold by: RoseBookz
(222 ratings)
100% positive over last 12 months
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Shipping rates and Return policy
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper Hardcover – March 29, 2016

4.5 out of 5 stars 285

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$13.46","priceAmount":13.46,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"13","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"46","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"cGN94M7J6ldAC7ugrvuWRUe5YNCZOcghKsao7L0KkhkfYmZ9CkueaAljtrUZPK5srSUO0K8t%2BI2IiQMTEcxnMnRU4Q5uA2UFML%2BlEoEG1fO4BQeoyguBPAx2lmo6BRtPV6%2FZUPx7H3iNcDv9B%2BUZFAgZO9GpSSvkXJxdBua1aGJo4FXyVnRzzJTDtgCBoEsz","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$10.78","priceAmount":10.78,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"10","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"78","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"cGN94M7J6ldAC7ugrvuWRUe5YNCZOcghcBeTjlM019VMex3P%2B97KA7zAijQimlrg96wV7IxUErC8td%2Ftmi%2BSI3GCIed3Pr2awE26wiEYFLI5SK3FuoWIFdRiqUXvh0w92dhkfVW%2FaImhOgYPjtVKpJCE8syyuYRgZr6b168J5XpdIHomUpET8PX%2BxBKzmiJ6","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

From the groundbreaking author team behind the bestselling Winner-Take-All Politics, a timely and topical work that examines what’s good for American business and what’s good for Americans—and why those interests are misaligned.

In
Winner-Take-All Politics, Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson explained how political elites have enabled and propelled plutocracy. Now in American Amnesia, they trace the economic and political history of the United States over the last century and show how a viable mixed economy has long been the dominant engine of America’s prosperity.

Like every other prospering democracy, the United States developed a mixed economy that channeled the spirit of capitalism into strong growth and healthy social development. In this bargain, government and business were as much partners as rivals. Public investments in education, science, transportation, and technology laid the foundation for broadly based prosperity. Programs of economic security and progressive taxation provided a floor of protection and business focused on the pursuit of profit—and government addressed needs business could not.

The mixed economy was the most important social innovation of the twentieth century. It spread a previously unimaginable level of broad prosperity. It enabled steep increases in education, health, longevity, and economic security. And yet, extraordinarily, it is anathema to many current economic and political elites. And as the advocates of anti-government free market fundamentalist have gained power, they are hell-bent on scrapping the instrument of nearly a century of unprecedented economic and social progress. In
American Amnesia, Hacker and Pierson explain how—and why they must be stopped.

The Amazon Book Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

Frequently bought together

$13.46
Get it as soon as Tuesday, Apr 23
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Sold by World✓Prime and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.
+
$26.00
Get it as soon as Tuesday, Apr 23
Only 6 left in stock (more on the way).
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
$32.27
Get it Apr 23 - 25
In stock
Usually ships within 3 to 4 days.
Ships from and sold by ZiFiti.
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Details
Added to Cart
Some of these items ship sooner than the others.
Choose items to buy together.

Editorial Reviews

Review

In this lively,engaging, and persuasive book, Hacker and Pierson explain how much of our health and prosperity rests on what governments have done. American Amnesia will help slow the intellectual pendulum that is currently swinging towards ananarchic libertarianism that threatens more than a century of American progress.”—Angus Deaton, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics in 2015

“The best business book of the year on the economy.”
—Brad DeLong, strategy+business

“This is a fascinating and much-needed book. America once invented universal public education and sharply progressive taxation of income and inherited wealth, and has shown to the world that strong government and efficient markets are complementary—not substitutes. But since 1980 a new wave of anti-governmentideology has prospered, and is about to make America more unequal andplutocratic than Europe on the eve of World War I. If you want to understandwhy this great amnesia occurred, and how it can be reversed, read this book!”—
Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century

If you are curious about why our infrastructure, our roads and bridges and water systems, is falling apart—then read
American Amnesia. Curious about why the U.S. spends almost 18 percent of our GDP on medical care, but has health outcomes that are at levels of many developing countries—then read American Amnesia."—Inside Higher Ed

Progress and prosperity in the United States, they demonstrate, have rested in no small measure on a constructive relationship between an effective public authority and dynamic private markets. We are now paying a terrible price for "forgetting this essential truth."
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

American Amnesia provides chapter and verse on why the public has good reason to be angry..."The New York Times

About the Author

Jacob S. Hacker is the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University. A Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC, he is the author of The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream, The Divided Welfare State, and, with Paul Pierson, of American Amnesia: The Forgotten Roots of Our Prosperity; Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class; Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy. He has appeared recently on The NewsHour, MSNBC, All Things Considered, and Marketplace. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

Paul Pierson is the John Gross Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of
Politics in Time, Dismantling the Welfare State?, and (with Jacob S. Hacker), American Amnesia: The Forgotten Roots of Our Prosperity; Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class; Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy. His commentary has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and The New York Review of Books. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster; First Edition (March 29, 2016)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1451667825
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1451667820
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.4 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.75 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 out of 5 stars 285

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Paul Pierson
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
285 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2017
American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper. Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson. 2016.

The first half of the Twentieth Century was characterized by economic extremes that included marked inequality at the turn of the century, severe economic collapse with the Great Depression, and recovery by enormous, debt-fueled World War II spending. This was followed from the 1940s to the 1970s by a brief Goldilocks just-right period when a mixed economy (democratic capitalism) not only made the US rich by providing robust growth but also avoided increased inequality by sharing gains at all levels of income. The mixed economy that made this possible was a combination of market forces to generate growth and government action to correct for the many predictable market failures that result from misalignment of investor’s self-interest and the public interest.

A key component of the success of the mixed economy was bipartisan support for the active role of government, including from the leading Republicans and business leaders of the day, such as Eisenhower, Nixon, GE’s Owen Young, and GMs Charlie Wilson. These leaders supported collective bargaining, extensive social insurance, a reasonable social safety net, provision of crucial public goods, and interventions tackling market failures. Government activity during this Goldilocks period included redistributive progressive taxation, heavy investment in education and infrastructure, dominant investment in basic science and computer science, administration or oversight of social insurance, regulation of business and finance, and much more.

Government action contributed enormously to the strong economic growth of this period. Increased productivity is the source of the growth of per capita GDP, and technical change is the source of most increased productivity (88% 1909-49). Most of the basic science that led to this technical progress during the period was funded by government. The US Defense department created the internet and provided funding and the biggest early market for many high tech items like computer chips and integrated circuits. The US government funded 18 of the 25 biggest advances in computing technology in the critical years of 1946-65, and 60-70% of university computer science and EE research in the 1970s to the 1990s. Government funding of infrastructure and education also contributed substantially to increasing productivity. The federally funded interstate highway system alone increased productivity by one-third in the late 1950s and one-fourth in the 1960s.

Government actions to prevent or cushion the effects of many market failures were a major source of capitalism’s legitimacy during the years of the mixed economy and created a non-socialist alternative to harsh laissez-faire systems. Even Friedrich Hayek in The Road to Serfdom saw no reason “why the state should not be able to assist the individual in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individual can make adequate provision….The case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong.” Hence, where markets failed to do so, government worked to prevent increasing inequality, provided collective goods, regulated against externalities like pollution and excessive financial risk, protected consumers and investors from corporate predation and their own myopic behavior, and provided social insurance.

So, what happened? What kind of American amnesia allowed the strong growth, widely shared gains, and decreased national debt (from 129% to 30% of GDP) of the mixed economy of the 1940s-1970s to be discarded in favor of weaker growth, gains almost entirely to the rich, and markedly increased national debt (from 30% to 100% of GDP) with market liberalism? Unfortunately, inflation and stagnation of the 1970s provided the opportunity for powerful economic interests to pursue tax cuts and deregulation to increase their fortunes by pressing for the shift to market liberalism. In retrospect, this shift did little to address the causes of the economic turmoil of the 1970s. The inflation was related to the 1973-4 OPEC oil embargo, Johnson’s earlier guns and butter spending, and Nixon’s loose monetary policy prior to reelection. The stagnation was related to slowing of post-war expansion, greater competition from recovering trading partners, and Carter’s appointment of Paul Volker to control inflation by raising interest rates.

The right wing extremist libertarian Koch brothers, Charles and David, played a leading role in creating this antigovernment shift that targeted the mixed economy. Beginning in the 1970s, they brought together many of the nation’s wealthiest families into a rich people’s movement with a political infrastructure that rivals—and in some ways surpasses—that of the GOP itself. This organization now includes hundreds of nonprofit foundations that funnel hundreds of millions of dollars of tax-free, untraceable “dark money” to massive campaign contributions and lobbying. This system was enhanced by financing the legal campaign that led to the Citizens United decision to remove limits for corporate donations to these foundations and PACs.

The Koch network also invested heavily in intellectuals, university institutes, think tanks, and right wing media to shape public opinion. The Koch’s secretive semiannual donor summits raised $889 million for the 2016 elections and were attended by many right wing billionaires, media celebrities, politicians, and even two Supreme Court justices. Enormous sums were also raised by allied but separate groups like Karl Rove’s PAC American Crossroads, which had a budget of $3oo million for the 2012 elections.

Business leaders and associations were also captured by this right wing antigovernment wave. A widely circulated 1971 Lewis Powell memo (from the corporate lawyer and later Nixon Supreme Court justice) was a very influential blueprint for extensive transformation of US politics, academia, and media to serve right wing business agendas. The Chamber of Commerce switched course from relatively nonpartisan business advocacy to open collaboration with the GOP and extreme policies when Thomas Donohue became president in 1997. The chamber registered $1.1 billion in lobbying outlays from 1998 to 2014 and also spent additional large sums on Republican campaign contributions and efforts to influence the nation’s legal system. Of course, corporations also make direct political expenditures. From 1998 to 2014, FIRE (finance, insurance, and real-estate) alone spent $6 billion on lobbying and $3.8 billion on campaigns.

The Chamber now essentially engages in political money laundering when it disguises the self-serving nature of donations from corporations and the superrich by redirecting them without attribution to their real targets. Donohue said, “I want to give them all the deniability they need.” For example, the health insurance industry silently transferred $102 million by this route to fight health care reform while negotiating publicly with the Obama administration. Many of the nonprofit foundations of the Koch network, such as Donor’s Trust and Freedom Partners, do the same thing. For example, three-fourths of $558 million donated for climate change denial was untraceable due to use of these conduits (Jane Mayers, Dark Money).

The third leg of this attack on the mixed economy was the transformation of Republicans from a center right party that believed in compromise for fair governance of multiple constituencies to a radical right party that created dysfunctional government to obtain total victory for one constituency only—the rich and powerful. From 1994 on, the more a tax fell on the wealthiest Americans, the more important it was to cut it—particularly the estate, dividend, and capital gains taxes and the top marginal tax rate.

During this time Republicans purged their ranks of many of their own moderates, routinized filibustering to block all majority party initiatives, provoked repeated government shutdowns, impeached President Clinton, resorted to mid-decade gerrymandering, systematically attempted to disenfranchise voters unlikely to vote for the GOP, refused to raise the debt ceiling to finance spending already appropriated, and blocked appointments of many federal judges and all appointments for some statutorily established bodies. Republican appointees to the current Supreme Court (before the death of Scalia) are four of the six and one of the ten most conservative in the last seventy-five years.

Why would Republicans want to move so far to the right? To begin with, the Republican base is becoming older, whiter, more rural, and more male. Before the 1960s, conservatives were divided between Democrats in the South and Republicans elsewhere. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 changed that. Within a generation, southern conservatives changed from Democrats to Republicans at least partly from racial antipathies easily pandered to by ostensibly race-neutral language conveying racially charged messages. Other catalysts for Republican transformation are Christian conservatism, polarizing right-wing media, and growing bankrolling by business and the wealthy. Key components of the well-funded right-wing propaganda machine include Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, built by Roger Ailes, a former consultant to Republican candidates, and conservative talk radio that dwarfs on-air minutes of liberals by more than 10 to 1.

The two major figures within the Republican Party for its transformation were Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell. Gingrich’s strategy was to make bipartisan government dysfunctional to create misdirected voter anger against it and shift control to his antigovernment Republicans. In a 1988 speech, he said, “This war has to be fought with a scale and a duration and a savagery that is only true of civil wars.” His PAC sent out tapes to Republicans telling them how to demonize Democrats, including by a long list of “contrast words”: betray, corrupt, sick, decay, incompetent, disgrace, traitors, pathetic, obsolete. McConnell knew that voters would punish and reward politicians for events they have no control over, including failure of their opposition to play by the norms. Hence, he worked to deny even minimal Republican support to Obama by unprecedented use of the filibuster, procedural delay, and protracted bad-faith negotiation. Supporting roles are described for several other Republicans, including Tom DeLay, John Boehner, Paul Ryan and organizers of the Tea Party.

Parties that become too extreme on the major issues of the day are supposed to lose. So why are Republicans winning even as middle of the road voters remain moderate? Turnout favors the GOP, whose affluent and elderly are more likely to vote than younger and minority Democrats, some of whom experience GOP-directed voter suppression. The increasingly rural base of the GOP is favored in all federal elections. With two senators per state, the smaller rural states with one-sixth of the population control one-half of senate seats. This same pattern contributes to the rural bias of the Electoral College, for which states are assigned one vote for each senator and for each congressman. After the 2014 election, Democrats had won the majority of votes for all seated senators but had only a 46 to 54 minority of seats. In the last five presidential elections (one after this book was written), Democrats won the general election four times but the presidency only twice because of the Electoral College. For the House of Representatives, Democrats won 51% of the vote but only 46% of seats in 2012 due to gerrymandering and higher percentages of Democrats packed into urban districts.

According to Mann and Ornstein (It’s Even Worse Than It Looks), the first step in dealing with dysfunctional government and the overthrow of the mixed economy is to understand the origins of the problem. Seeing Republicans and Democrats as equally at fault superficially suggests objectivity, but it’s an abdication of responsibility. As they wrote:

"However awkward it may be for the traditional press and nonpartisan analysis to acknowledge, one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the center of American politics, it is extremely difficult to enact policies responsive to the country’s most pressing challenges."

Unfortunately, the prospect of sensible reform of our political dysfunction is likely to depend on a series of GOP electoral defeats. When conservative business leaders like the Koch brothers invested in Cato, Heritage, AEI, and other intellectual weapons of the right, they were playing the long game. When Gingrich and McConnell developed a strategy to tear down American government to build up GOP power, they were playing the long game. Those who believe we must rebuild a mixed economy for the Twenty-first Century need to play the long game, as well. Americans must remember what made America prosper.
34 people found this helpful
Report
Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2016
This is an excellent book, well written, well researched. It analyzes the modern nation state and the value of Government in the "mixed economy"., and how that relates to today's America. For the author the successful modern nations are those with a robust and fairly big government sector as a counterweight to the market sector. Most of his points are unassailable. The problem, in today's America, is how do we get there from here, how do we get rid of the virulent obstructionism and move to a functional government. And there he does not have much to offer, other than we need a new political class. So the ending is a letdown, not the author's fault but still
2 people found this helpful
Report
Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2016
American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led US to Forget What Made America Prosper by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson

“American Amnesia” is a much-needed refresher of what truly made America great and what we can do to restore a well-functioning government that promotes shared prosperity. Political Science professors Hacker and Pierson join forces once again to provide the public with the virtues of the greatest invention in history, the mixed economy. This insightful 464-page book includes ten chapters and is broken out by two parts: 1. The Rise of the Mixed Economy, and 2. The Crisis of the Mixed Economy.

Positives:
1. A professionally written and exhaustively researched book.
2. A much needed topic, what truly made America great and what we can do to restore it.
3. Professors Hacker and Pierson make a great team, they have great command of the topic and make persuasive arguments based on sound research.
4. An excellent introductory chapter that captures the main topics of the book and the general approach taken. “We are told that the United States got rich in spite of government, when the truth is closer to the opposite: The United States got rich because it got government more or less right.”
5. Taking back Adam Smith, the authors counter revisionist economy. “When ‘regulation . . . is in favor of the workmen,’ he wrote in The Wealth of Nations, ‘it is always just and equitable.’ He was equally enthusiastic about the taxes needed to fund effective governance. ‘Every tax,’ he wrote, ‘is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty.’” Bonus, “As Adam Smith was keen to point out, the greatest threat to functioning markets is often those functioning in markets.”
6. Throughout this book the recurring theme of the virtues of a mixed economy is at its heart. “The mixed economy was at the heart of this success—in the United States no less than in other Western nations. Capitalism played an essential role. But capitalism was not the new entrant on the economic stage. Effective governance was.”
7. Taking back James Madison against conservation revisionist rhetoric. “Madison arrived at the convention with one firm conviction: Government needed the authority to govern.” Bonus, “Like the demonization of Woodrow Wilson, the morphing of Madison into some sort of protolibertarian is a manifestation of American Amnesia.”
8. A look at the current reality versus what once was. “Older Americans are the most educated in the world. Younger Americans, not even close.”
9. Inequality. “When it comes to inequality, the United States once looked relatively similar to other rich countries. Today it’s the most unequal rich nation in the world by a large margin.”
10. Highlights some underrated themes, lack of science funding. “The United States now ranks ninth in the world in government R&D expenditures as a share of the economy.”
11. The emergence of effective government. “What happened around the turn of the last century was neither a revolution in medical treatment nor a natural dividend of growth. It was the emergence of effective government action to improve the health of citizens.” Bonus, “In drug development, a 1995 investigation by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that government research had led to eleven of the fourteen most medically significant drugs over the prior quarter century.” Bonus #2, “A short list of nonmedical technologies that originated in government-funded research or contracts would include semiconductors, integrated circuits, nuclear power, satellite communications, GPS, radar, the microwave (used in communication as well as cooking), jet engines, the radio (and its sister technology, television), and a dazzling range of high-tech materials and innovative methods for making them, from titanium to powder metallurgy.” And finally bonus #3, “Of the twenty-five biggest advances in computing technology during the critical period between 1946 and 1965—breakthroughs like magnetic core memory, graphics displays, and multiple central processors—the US government financed eighteen.”
12. The achievements of America’s mixed economic model. “Alongside companies like Apple, however, government plays a dominant or vital role in the many places where markets fall short. Look inside that iPhone, and you’ll find that nearly all its major components (GPS, lithium-ion batteries, cellular technology, touch-screen and LCD displays, internet connectivity) rest on research that was publicly funded—and, in some cases, carried out directly by government agencies.”
13. The important role of governance. “A big government isn’t a guarantee of prosperity, but where we find prosperity, we find big government, too.”
14. The resistance to government. “The annals of consumer safety see this story repeated again and again: On issues from smoking to auto safety, government regulations faced tenacious resistance from the industries that profited from our myopic behavior.”
15. The role of government. “Governments provide essential public goods, correct externalities, combat monopolies, reduce the intensity of boom-and-bust cycles in the economy, expand economic opportunity, and promote social stability and the legitimacy of the market economy.”
16. How and why the successful mixed economic fell apart. How negative forces depleted political support needed to sustain the mixed economy but have undermined effective governance to secure American prosperity. “When businesses can use their economic power to influence government, they can extract policies that guarantee them returns above and beyond those they would obtain in a competitive marketplace.”
17. The two grave threats to the mixed economy. “A new economic elite with ideas (and earnings) starkly distinct from the American mainstream and a newly influential economic philosophy that we call “Randianism” (after the radically individualistic thinking of the midcentury novelist Ayn Rand).”
18. A look at the forces that have undermined our mixed economic model: the Roundtable, the revamped US Chamber of Commerce and the Koch brothers. “In American political history, few groups have assembled more resources or amassed more power than these three, and few have done more to shape the world we occupy today.”
19. Libertarian politics, the why behind smaller government. “No doubt the Koch brothers’ stance was also consistent with the interests of Koch Industries, a company knee-deep in oil. The economic rents that flow to corporations from the absence of regulation are especially great for companies, such as Koch Industries, that engage in the business of extracting, processing, and transporting commodities. If your business model generates huge negative externalities, libertarian governance is profitable.”
20. The march of the Republican Party further to the right and how it threatens our mixed economic model.
21. How to restore a well-functioning politics that promotes shared prosperity.
22. Links and so much more…

Negatives:
1. At over 400 pages, it will require an investment of your time.
2. Lacks charts and visual material that would have complemented the excellent narrative.
3. The flow of the book is not optimal. It is a little repetitive and it drags here and there.
4. I would have provided a chapter or two on the top technologies that originated from government-funded research versus incorporating it loosely in the narrative. Too important a highlight to allow it to get lost in the shuffle.
5. No formal bibliography.

In summary, this is a very good and provocative book that dispels many of the myths emanating from the right-wing conservative machine. Professors Hacker and Pierson show that America’s mixed economic model was at the heart of its rise to prominence and persuasively present the forces that are undermining government and hence a threat to the prosperity that made America great. There is so much valuable information in this book. A must read, I highly recommend it!

Further suggestions: “Winner-Take-All Politics” by the same authors, “Dark Money: The Hidden Story of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer, “Plutocrats” by Chrystia Freeland, “Why the Right went Wrong” by E.J. Dionne Jr., “Nation on the Take” by Wendell Potter, "The Age of Greed" by Jeff Madrick, “Predator Nation” by Charles H. Ferguson, “The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America…” by Michael W. Hudson, “Republic, Lost” by Lawrence Lessig, and “The Looting of America” by Les Leopold.
15 people found this helpful
Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
edward gabis
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on September 18, 2017
a truly insightful book which portrays the insanity of the US political system.
Anckarström
5.0 out of 5 stars Ein politischer Kurswechsel ist dringend angesagt
Reviewed in Germany on August 14, 2016
In Amerika (und auch bei uns) herrscht seit etwa 1980 eine Ideologie, die meint, der Staat ist der Feind der Wirtschaft und je weniger Staat man hat, desto besser geht es die Wirtschaft.
Mit etwas Kenntnis von der Vergangenheit kann man aber seit längerer Zeit sehen, dass dies nicht stimmt, zumindest nicht für die Mehrheit der Bevölkerung oder für die kleineren und mittleren Unternehmen. Der Staat hat früher in wesentlich größerer Umfang die Wirtschaft geholfen, Wohlstand zu schaffen, als sie es heute tut. In den ersten 25 Jahren nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg hat USA mehr für Forschung und Entwicklung ausgegeben als der Rest der Welt zusammen. Heute liegt USA an Platz 9. Rechnet man die militärische Forschung nicht, liegt USA auf Platz 39. Dies wird langfristige Folgen haben.
Als USA 1956 beschlossen hat, das Autobahnnetz zu bauen, lag der Spitzensteuersatz in USA bei 94% und auch die großen Unternehmen haben ihre Gewinne versteuert. Heute sind Schulen, Straßen und Brücken in USA in einem miserablen Zustand, weil kaum etwas unternommen worden ist um sie im Stand zu halten. Millionen von Amerikaner haben ihre Arbeitsplätze verloren und die Ungleichheit ist so groß wie in Europa vor dem ersten Weltkrieg.
Auf dem Umschlag wird das Buch von Thomas Piketty gelobt.
Amazon Customer
1.0 out of 5 stars One Star
Reviewed in Canada on June 6, 2016
Heavy reading. Too general. Lacks case study.
One person found this helpful
Report