by Donald L. Barlett, James B. Steele
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Product Description
Asking the question, "what went wrong," two Pulitzer Prize-winning authors present a sweeping critique of the last two decades of American history, concluding that short-sighted greed in business and government has undermined the American dream. Original.
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Average Customer Review:
1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
 Security loss, 2007-02-24
The basis of this book was a PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER series in 1991. Reader response was overwhelming. The 1980's and our economic circumstances bear resemblance, and so the work remains current.
At one time interest rates, gross national product, gross domestic product, and savings rates meant something. The growth of the middle class has been one of the underpinnings of democracy. A large transfer of wealth is taking place and the middle class is being dismantled. In the 1920's and the 1980's large tax cuts were enacted for the wealthy. There are middle class casualties of the government rule book. Conditions are structural, built into the economy.
In 1976 rules for tax-sheltered manufacturing in United States possessions were created. A great number of pharmaceutical companies moved their plants to Puerto Rico to take advantage of the scheme. Deregulation of the trucking industry, savings and loan industry, the airline industry, and the banking industry has been costly to consumers and workers. The year 1990, (at least until 2001), was the worst year in aviation history. In that year Braniff, Eastern, TWA, Midway and Continental were all in bankruptcy or on the verge of bankruptcy and liquidation. In trucking, cutthroat discounting, price wars, destroyed many companies.
In the mid 1970's there was deregulation fever. The trucking and airline industries were deregulated in the Carter years. Corporate bankruptcies result in the loss of health insurance for employees. The Simplicity Pattern Comapany was hit by corporate raiders. It was bought and sold four times after 1971. So much debt was incurred in the serial acquisitions, (using the concern's own money), that it had to default on its bonds and bank loans. There was weakness because during the 1970's Simplicity was making more money from investments than from pattern sales. It was a stagnating company and a take-over target.
Pension chaos exists in private sector employment. The demise of Studebaker highlighted the lack of a coherent pension system. ERISA was enacted in 1974. Unfortunately in the 1980's over two thousand companies dipped into their pension funds. Also many pension plans were terminated and replaced by uninsured annuities. Underfunding a pension plan may signal a company's distress. Similarly, pension raids may carry the same message.
The authors' recounting of events overtaking actual people illustrates strongly the economic forces at play in this modern regulation-free era.
3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Required reading, 2006-10-08
Any one really reading this book can't help but be angry at the way a small segment of the ultra wealthy control our government and our tax situation for their benefit. Thais has nothing to do with socialism, Marxism, or anything else. The progressive income tax system brought us out of the terrible conditions of the 1930's Carnegie and Mellon era of extreme wealth surrounded by masses of poor Americans. We are now returning to those conditions, the middle class prosperity of the 50's, when most families could buy a house, send their kids to college and take vacations is now replaced with two wage earners in the family, who can just make ends meet while the ultra wealthy have more money then they know what to do with. If you believe in conditions that the feudal kings lived in, this is not the book for you. If you care about others and want to know why things are so messed up in this country, this book will explain it in simple, straight forward, factual manner and you will want to do something about it before the next generation can do nothing.
This should be required reading in every high school and college.
9 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
 A worthless political diatribe, 2004-10-16
This book is a worthless diatribe written from a Maoist/Leninist/Marxist perspective. No one would argue that there are excesses in American business, but these guys are so biased in their writing that the end result looks like it was published in the old Soviet Union. Save your money and your time by avoiding this book.
15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
EYE OPENER, 2004-01-23
This book was bought as one of the text books I needed for my college civics class. Of all the text books I have bought, this is the only one that I read from cover to cover. This book will make you angry with what is allowed to happen to the average American. Most of the incidents that are talked about are not general public knowledge. I don't feel that it is a fatalistic book as other reviewers have indicated. It does bring out some disturbing issues that should not have happened or allowed to happen.
12 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
Outstanding, Still Highly Relevant, Accurate Predictor, 2002-11-09
Tis a usually natural reaction to want to lash out at the bearer of bad news, this book defines the limitations and restrictions that various pressure groups have inflicted on that dysfunctional corporation known as the United States. "America: What Went Wrong" is just as important and relevant today as it was when initally released. America's overall economic situation is much worse today than it was when this book was initially published. This book accurately forecasts the problems America has as it loses its manufacturing base and became a service-oriented society (Wal-Mart supposedly has 700 Chinese factories of its own). Now the multi-national's factories are fleeing Mexico in 2002 for the slave-like workers of China.Unsettling for sure, I challenge you to read this book and don't be surprised if you re-read parts of it as the late 1990s Clinton/Greenspan artificial economic bubble unwinds into a 1930s style worldwide economic depression.
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