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W. Michael Cox

Myths Of Rich And Poor: Why We're Better Off Than We Think Paperback – January 13, 2000

by Michael W. Cox (Author), Richard Alm (Author)

4.1 33 ratings

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Popular wisdom holds that the years since 1973 -- the end of the "postwar miracle" -- have been a time of economic decline and stagnation: lackluster productivity, falling real wages, and lost competitiveness. The rich have gotten richer, the poor have gotten poorer, and most of us have barely held on while watching all the best jobs disappear overseas. As Myths of Rich and Poor demonstrates, this picture is not just wrong, it's spectacularly wrong. The hard numbers, simple facts, and iconoclastic arguments of this book will change the way you think about the American economy.

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publication date

January 13, 2000
Dimensions

5 x 0.63 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

9780465047833
ISBN-13

978-0465047833
Lexile measure

1190L
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Phil Gramm
220
Hardcover
73 offers from $17.07

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

W. Michael Cox is senior vice president and chief economist of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. He has written for The New York Times and was interviewed in Wired magazine; his annual reports for the Federal Reserve Bank are often controversial and receive nationwide publicity.

Richard Alm is a business reporter with the Dallas Morning News.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0465047831
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books (January 13, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780465047833
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465047833
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1190L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.63 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,893,158 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,022 in Economic Conditions (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.1 33 ratings

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4.1 out of 5

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M. Heiss

Needs an update

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 9, 2014

Verified Purchase

This book was published in 1999. Most of the data is current through 1997 or so.

The book compares material well-being and shows the profound improvement in American standards of living since 1970. It also tackles government reporting, showing how government staistics presents COSTS but fail to measure VALUE.

The book seeks to present data in new measurements, in terms of hours worked to purchase equivalents, etc.

It's very well done.

I would like to see an update to current times, taking into account the effects of massive government spending under Presidents Bush43 and Obama. When the government sucks so much money out of the economy and runs the printing press full tilt, it does have an impact on the economy. How much? When labor force participation rates drop and vast swaths of the citizenry become permanent wards of the state, it does have an impact on the economy. How much?

Those are the questions.

3 people found this helpful

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Peter Lorenzi

The good news is the bad news is wrong

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 28, 2002

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Like Will Rogers said: "It ain't what you don't know that hurts you. Its what you know that just ain't so that will hurt you." Or words to that effect. Like Ben Wattenberg's earlier book (whose title I used for this review), Myths of Rich and Poor explains that much of what you have been led to believe about wealth and poverty is simply incorrect.
The authors drill down into census data, the basic "facts" of American life, to show that we are not getting poorer. Our homes are bigger, food is cheaper, gas is less expensive, many 'poor' people enjoy home and car ownership, air conditioning, cable television, and an entire collection of things that most truly poor people would never even dream they could own.
Like David Landes' Wealth and Poverty of Nations and the best-selling Millionaire Next Door, this book does a better job of really reading and analyzing what is right -- and wrong -- about the American market economy.
All of these books show that finishing high school, staying married, and getting a job are th best poverty prevention strategies available and that the American market facilitates these things better than any other system. There are no guarantees and much of it is up to the individual. You just have to have the desire, direction and discipline to win your share of the American dream.

21 people found this helpful

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RoboTeach

I can say for sure that both the poor and the rich are far better off today than ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 29, 2016

Verified Purchase

This book presents a convincing case for the benefits of capitalism. As someone who was born nearly 70 years ago, I can say for sure that both the poor and the rich are far better off today than they were in the 50s. I am giving this book a mediocre rating because it uses average values for the vast majority of its comparisons of economic progress. Average values can greatly distort the differences between various income levels.

3 people found this helpful

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Ed Pouliot

Very different perspective on measuring quality of the economy. ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 17, 2016

Verified Purchase

Very different perspective on measuring quality of the economy. Many of the comforts and conveniences we have today were out of reach or non existence to my parents. Yes we could all want more; that is never ending. Embracing economic engine change is difficult but essential to ride the wave of economic empowerment.

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JakeDaSnake92

MOST BORING BOOK EVER

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 25, 2011

Verified Purchase

I had to read this for an economics class, all it is is facts. You can look those up on the internet now a days

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 4, 2014

Verified Purchase

Great book, but a little outdated now.

One person found this helpful

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Richard

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 4, 2015

Great read!

The "we" in the title is the middle class.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 31, 2004

I teach this book in my philosophy of social science class. It is easy and entertaining to read, and full of provocative claims because it makes no attempt at being balanced or cautious. In general, they do a decent job explaining basic economic concepts. It is, thus, an excellent book to analyze statistical reasoning. For example, throughout the book they offer data on the "average" or "per capita" American rather than providing the more illuminating median figures, but when they deal with executive pay suddenly the median (the middle of a distribution) is the right number, thus, underplaying excess at the top. When they try to convince the reader that wages are not the right tool to measure living standards, they use the buying power of a "typical manufacturing worker." Not only is that worker disappearing (as their own data shows, but they call it "improvements in productivity") and thus not very typical, he cannot be a good proxy for somebody on minimum wage, which has not kept up with wages in manufacturing sector. Nevertheless, the book is unintentionally very insightful: it turns out that on the authors' own account the reason why even the poor are better off (as measured by their ability to consume) than they were a generation ago is, besides the lower real cost of some necessities, the existence of welfare payments! Of course, this is not trumpeted. Moreover, when trying to show (in chapter 4) that minorities and women are sharing in rising living standards, they inexplicably shift, as my students pointed out to me, from their favored measure (consumption) to data on wage-income, which they had castigated as misleading earlier in the book. Even so, they conclude the chapter with the remark, "income distribution doesn't say much about...the opportunities [an economy] offers." (88) Thus, undermining their own argument! Finally, when they analyze upward mobility they fail to control for class; so the post-collegiate income performance of students, including those that have upper middle-class and wealthy backgrounds, is cited as evidence of upward mobility. Furthermore, their data-set excludes the homeless and others that do not have regular sources of income. So, their result tells us little about the upward mobility of what is known as the (new) "underclass."

44 people found this helpful

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