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The Betrayal Of The American Dream (2012)

by Donald L. Barlett(Favorite Author)

3.84 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1586489690 (ISBN13: 9781586489694)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

PublicAffairs

review 1: A very depressing book. The middle class seems to be doomed in this book. Globalisation, deregulation, congress, the rich, all other countries that have a trade surplus with America and even misguided economists are all going to destroy the middle class in America. The author seems to suggest that the good old days are indeed good. They suggest that we should tax the rich more, and retaliate against countries that have free trade agreements with America but actually restrict their products' sales. Well I am not sure about that, as investors, like it or not, will always go to set up shop at places that have the lowest tax rate and the best incentives. Even different states in America try to fight for investments in their states. Unless there is one single world government, ... morecountries will do their best to be as attractive to business as possible. So Singapore attracts investments by giving massive tax breaks to the MNCs and it takes only one day to set up a business. What is wrong seems rather to be that everyone is just looking out for his own good, pretty much lime the tragedy of the commons. But I believe Americans will find a solution out of this.
review 2: In Betrayal of the American Dream, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalists Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele contend that the middle class has been, and continues to be, hollowed out by a corporate ruling class that is able to buy politicians. They go as far as to say that "We are no longer the democracy we once were. We have become a plutocracy in which the few enact programs that promote their narrow interest at the expense of the many." To back up these assertions, they go through plenty of personal accounts and statistics on the reduction of tax rates on high-income earners, corporate dividends, and capital gains; the dwindling of manufacturing jobs, mostly due to purported free trade policies; the loss of pension funds; and the deregulation of the trucking, airline, and financial industries. And, all one needs to do is see these statistics to know something has gone horribly wrong for the middle class.In part because I was largely ignorant on this topic, I found the authors' treatment of free trade policies to be the most enlightening portion of the book. They do a good job explaining how policy after policy—under Republican and Democratic Administrations—has only served to deepen the trade deficits since the late 1960s and how America's only remaining export surplus comes from civilian aircraft, which may not last long. They also detail how the U.S. won't respond to the illegal subsidization of exports from China like solar panels because of cries of "protectionism" from free trade purists.But, while the book does a solid job showing the harmful effects the policies of the ruling class have on the American middle class, it spends much less time on the ruling elites themselves. The authors do point out that there is no one established institution directing the country. Instead they describe the corporate elites as more of an amorphous group: "Lacking a civic or moral compass, it's a peer group without a purpose beyond its own perpetuation with no mission except to wall in the money within its ranks."What I would have liked to hear more about, though, is a more detailed account of how the ruling class gets its policies implemented. I understand they lobby and contribute enormous amounts to political campaigns, and maybe that's all one needs to know about it, but the book makes it sound incredibly easy to enact extreme policies and manipulate the public into favoring them when I imagine there is at least a little more to it than that.The other area I was disappointed in was the proposed solutions. Like many books of this kind, the authors end with some remedies to restore the middle class. If you've paid much attention to politics or economics or have read a few of these books before, you've most likely heard their solutions: a more progressive tax rate, taxes on Wall Street transactions, raising tariffs on imports from countries who are subsidizing their goods, investing in infrastructure, and reinstating the rule of law. It's not that the solutions are bad either; I agree with them. It's just that I've been hearing them for years, and they don't seem to be going anywhere. So, maybe they serve as nice reminders of what can be done, but I imagine in the future, books like this will continue to have very similar solutions. less

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