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Monica Prasad
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The Land of Too Much: American Abundance and the Paradox of Poverty Illustrated Edition

by Monica Prasad (Author)
4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 11 ratings
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The Land of Too Much presents a simple but powerful hypothesis that addresses three questions: Why does the United States have more poverty than any other developed country? Why did it experience an attack on state intervention starting in the 1980s, known today as the neoliberal revolution? And why did it recently suffer the greatest economic meltdown in seventy-five years?

Although the United States is often considered a liberal, laissez-faire state, Monica Prasad marshals convincing evidence to the contrary. Indeed, she argues that a strong tradition of government intervention undermined the development of a European-style welfare state. The demand-side theory of comparative political economy she develops here explains how and why this happened. Her argument begins in the late nineteenth century, when America’s explosive economic growth overwhelmed world markets, causing price declines everywhere. While European countries adopted protectionist policies in response, in the United States lower prices spurred an agrarian movement that rearranged the political landscape. The federal government instituted progressive taxation and a series of strict financial regulations that ironically resulted in more freely available credit. As European countries developed growth models focused on investment and exports, the United States developed a growth model based on consumption.

These large-scale interventions led to economic growth that met citizen needs through private credit rather than through social welfare policies. Among the outcomes have been higher poverty, a backlash against taxation and regulation, and a housing bubble fueled by “mortgage Keynesianism.” This book will launch a thousand debates.

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  1. ISBN-10
    0674066529
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0674066526
  3. Edition
    Illustrated
  4. Publisher
    Harvard University Press
  5. Publication date
    December 31, 2012
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    6.2 x 1.1 x 9.3 inches
  8. Print length
    344 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

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“Prasad offers a dramatically new explanation for the weak U.S. welfare state and shows that the conventional wisdom in academic, popular, and journalistic circles―that the U.S. is a liberal, less interventionist state than those in Europe―is wrong.”―Richard Lachmann, University at Albany, State University of New York

“This engrossing book provides an arresting answer to the questions of why America's welfare state is so weak and why so many Americans live in poverty. Prasad forges an elegant argument using both historical and cross-national evidence to show that countries chose between two strategies for managing income distribution, welfare programs and consumer credit. By the 1940s the U.S. had chosen consumer credit, and has since been using 'mortgage Keynesianism,' which does nothing for the truly poor and invites economic volatility. A startling and ultimately convincing contribution to the most important debate of our times.”―Frank Dobbin, Harvard University

“This book is a brilliant addition to two divergent literatures: American political development and comparative political economy. Prasad sees credit as the basis of the American welfare state and its robust capitalist economy; but the essential scaffolding of the Credit Welfare State was the remarkable system of regulatory institutions constructed from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. When regulation and progressive taxation were dismantled while credit continued to expand, the result was inequality and economic meltdown. Not understanding the vital interplay among taxation, credit expansion, and regulation, U.S. politicians did enormous damage to both democracy and the economy.”―M. Elizabeth Sanders, Cornell University

“Why is there more poverty in the U.S. than in similarly developed nations, notably in Europe? The conventional wisdom holds that the U.S. is less redistributionist due to the strong hold of laissez-faire ideology. In this interesting book, Prasad debunks conventional wisdom...A timely, accessible work on an important topic.”―R. S. Rycroft, Choice

“As one of the world’s super-rich countries, the poverty rate of the USA has remained stubbornly high for half a century, resulting in an intriguing paradox between the coexistence of American wealth and poverty. Prasad provides much needed insight into this troubling contradiction.”―Xueli Huang, Social Justice Research

About the Author

Monica Prasad is Associate Professor of Sociology and Faculty Fellow in the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvard University Press; Illustrated edition (December 31, 2012)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 344 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0674066529
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0674066526
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.53 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.2 x 1.1 x 9.3 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 11 ratings

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Monica Prasad

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Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
4.8 out of 5
11 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

T.H. Gee
5.0 out of 5 stars Really enjoyed this
Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2019
Verified Purchase
Balanced, comparative look at American economic history
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LanceManion
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant.
Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2014
Verified Purchase
Brilliant book. Incredible sweep of literature and subject matter. It will take a while to absorb this. I'm glad I read it during the summer break so that I could take it all in. Very nicely written, too.
3 people found this helpful
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William Kostlevy
4.0 out of 5 stars Are Huey Long and Bob La Follette Really to Blame?
Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2014
In this provocative and often insightful book Monica Prasad argues that the United States has more poverty than other developed countries because a set of American Progressive agrarian interventions in the economy backfired. These "well meaning" agrarians repeatedly defeated "enlightened" Northeastern backed tax reforms such as a non-progressive national sales tax that would have ultimately produced a more robust welfare state. Instead insurgent Midwest Progressive and their Southern agrarian allies succeeded in imposing a series of "progressive" taxes including inheritance taxes and income taxes that while raising adequate revenue for the 1930s and 1940s proved inadequate in the post WW II era.

As Prasad sees it American prosperity was built on the shaky foundation of easy credit generated by such trusted farmer supported insurgent programs as Federal Farm Loan Act, Federal Housing Administration and the now notorious Fannie Mae. European countries followed a more reliable route of high protective tariffs for agriculture, limited credit and non-progressive taxation. Tragically it was the very powerful and often left leaning farm lobby that saddled the nation with inadequate revenue producing taxes with unfortunate consequence for the nation's poor.

There is much to applaud in this justly praised book. As Prasad demonstrates, in spite of the myth of the invisible hand successful capitalist states are the creation of a political class anxious to serve mammon. In other words the hidden hand needs guidance from the not so hidden government. Secondly, agrarian actors both as creators of capital and victims of the predatory practices of the market have generally been the most forceful and articulate critics of capitalism's all too frequent abuses of power and wealth. She also is to be applauded for showing how lawyer friendly adversarial regulation poorly serves either industry or consumers.

One of the most impressive features of Prasad's scholarship is her remarkable command of the literature of comparative political economy. As she notes the robust welfare states of the Scandinavian countries are largely the product of an agrarian insurgency not unlike the Scandinavian supported Farmer-Labor tradition of the Upper Midwest. This of course begs an important question, if these agrarian insurgents created strong welfare states in Europe why not in the United States? What Prasad seems to miss is the fact that while insurgent agrarians did play key roles in supporting legislation establishing such credit friendly policies as the FHA, Farm Security Administration, and the establishment of the REA, these programs were never their ideal solutions to the farm crisis of the 1930s. A better student of comparative economy than history, Prasad also ignores the fundamental differences between competitive sectors of the agricultural economy. While Southern agrarians and Upper Midwesterners joined forces to support farm loans, TVA, rural electrification, and many other New Deal programs they often clashed over the specifics of marketing and tariffs. In fact key New Deal Agricultural policy creators such as Rexford Tugwell ridiculed the far more radical proposals of the Farmer's Union and actually supported key elements of the large scale farmer agenda of the Farm Bureau Federation. As a traditional Democratic free trader FDR's supported secret reciprocal trade agreements flooded the US with agricultural goods from South America, Canada, and even Australia while protecting such favored commodities as cotton and tobacco. As the Farmer's Union knew, the interests of dairy farmers and sometimes even wheat and beef producers were sacrificed to encourage increased economic activity that might possibly benefit manufacturing interests.

In spite of Prasad's provocative thesis as an unreconstructed La Follette Progressive, my faith in the power of progressive taxation remains unshaken. By exclusively focusing on tax policy Prasad ignores the choices societies make about spending the resources they have. As the Midwestern insurgents knew there is a real economic cost to empire. Prasad suggests that if we had a more robust non-progressive tax base we would now spend more on actual human needs. Progressives like Robert La Follette, Jr. and congressman Merlin Hull knew better. Instead of adequately funding old age pensions and increasing spending on health care, the US has since the late 1930s chosen to spend its limited resources fostering American empire aboard. It has chosen to fund often ill advised regime changes while enriching military contractors often with direct ties to Congress and the executive branch. I certainly respect Prasad's knowledge and find her book an engrossing read but the agrarians who helped give us progressive taxation would have (if left to their own devices) given us a far more robust welfare state than the New Deal, Fair Deal or Great Society. And even more importantly they would left us with a far more just society.
8 people found this helpful
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S Smyth
4.0 out of 5 stars Scholarly, but misses the point.
Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2013
This is an interesting book as a comparative study of economic systems that are doomed to failure at different rates and with different degrees of catastrophe for civil society and the economy. The fundamental and politically inconvenient truth, is that the extent of the market is remarkably inelastic with regard to the extent of exchange value diversity which is less subject to the iron law of wages, and automation which makes the need for the employment of mass labour less and less necessary, in the manufacture of new technologies.

As for "Not understanding the vital interplay among taxation, credit expansion, and regulation, U.S. politicians did enormous damage to both democracy and the economy." --M. Elizabeth Sanders, Cornell University. This was/is a well understood socio-political inconvenience that neither suited the temper of the electorate, nor the ambitions of the aspirants to government, then and/or now, to confront.
2 people found this helpful
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63 alfred
4.0 out of 5 stars Looking at the roll of taxes and the evolution of our health care system in a new and interesting way
Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2014
The role of sales taxes and income taxes in this country and the effects it had on the development of our social safety net (or lack there of) in the US presented in this book is interesting and non-intuitive, at least for me. An interesting analysis and well worth the read.
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