by Robert Kuttner
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Product Description
The incomes of most Americans today are static or declining. Tens of millions of workers are newly vulnerable to layoffs and outsourcing. Health care and retirement burdens are increasingly being shifted from employers to individuals. Two-income families find they are working longer hours for lower wages, with decreased social support. As wealth has become more concentrated, the economy has become more recklessly speculative, jeopardizing not only the prospects of ordinary Americans, but the solvency of the entire system. What links these trends, writes Robert Kuttner in this provocative, engaging, and necessary book, is the consolidation of political and economic power by a narrow elite, who blocks the ability of government to restore broad prosperity to the majority of citizens.
Kuttner—one of our most lucid economic critics—explores the roots of these problems and outlines a persuasive, bold alternative. In BusinessWeek, The Boston Globe, and The American Prospect, he has established himself as a prophetic voice connecting economics and politics. Here he demonstrates how our economy has fallen hostage to a casino of financial speculation, creating instability as well as inequality. He debunks alarmist claims about supposed economic hazards, such as Social Security and Medicare, and exposes the genuine dangers: hedge funds and private equity run amok, sub-prime lenders, Wall Street middlemen, and America’s dependence on foreign central banks. He describes how globalization of commerce has been used by business less to promote free trade than to escape the balanced regulation that delivered widespread abundance in the decades after World War II.
While our financial security has weakened under President George W. Bush, Kuttner also faults many Democrats for failing to offer compelling alternatives. Now, with financial markets in crisis and public opinion supporting a more active role for government, he offers a new model of managed capitalism that can deliver security and opportunity, and rekindle democracy as a check on concentrated wealth.
Here is a passionate, articulate naming of the problem and a call for reform. The Squandering of America sets out a path for reclaiming our democratic politics—and our prosperity.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 We have to revive real democracy, 2008-08-28
In this hard-hitting (naming names), but profoundly human book, Robert Kuttner analyses the reasons why the US is very close to losing its democracy, not just by rigged rules and stolen elections, but by the domination of politics by big money, the decline of political participation by ordinary people and the assault on basic constitutional liberties (using foreign threats to undermine freedom at home).
Economics
The squandering of America is the result of the deliberate dismantling of a managed form of capitalism, guaranteeing broadly diffused prosperity, better economic efficiency and higher stability in the system. The dismantling was called free markets and free trade (better dirty free trade, because agricultural products are untouchables).
For R. Kuttner, rightly, free trade sacrifices the general interest for the self-interest of economic elites (`the class solidarity of insiders'). It resulted in a chronic structural trade deficit (making the US totally dependent on foreign banks), a collapse of the US manufacturing grid and the destruction of good wage contracts.
Free markets are not better, because they are in no way reliable for providing (full) employment, decent wages, education, health care, clean air and water, economic stability, safety and the honesty of financial agents.
Finance
Financial deregulation increased inequalities, reduced economic efficiencies and increased economic risks.
Extreme swings in retail gas prices, stealing of pension funds by take-over `artists' or disbursing 250B$ in fees for mutual fund managers between 1997 and 2002 while millions of investors suffered a net loss, can hardly be seen as financial efficiency.
As Robert (!) Triffin in the 1960s correctly predicted the fall of the dollar, Robert Kuttner predicts now a serious decline of the dollar and the general US living standard.
Government policies
The conservative recipe of cutting domestic spending, of hugely increasing military outlays and cutting taxes for the wealthy, diminished vastly opportunities (education), security (jobs, health care) and living standards for the vast majority of the population. The resulting huge budget deficits were to be `solved' by cuts in social spending.
Politics
Money is the prime political currency in the US. Politics are there to serve the money holders, not democracy. The Bush II Administration spent more effort on suppressing voting than on expanding it.
However, the ultimate test of a democracy is whether it is possible to throw out those in power. For R. Kuttner, the answer is YES. Therefore, real democracy should be revived. Mass quiescence is indeed a great convenience and a splendid political success for financial elites.
Robert Kuttner's brilliantly argued book is a must read for all those wanting to understand (and influence) the world we live in.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Clearly written analysis, 2008-07-17
These days, bad economic news is plentiful. But according to economist Robert Kuttner, the future is even bleaker than the numbers suggest. The reason, he says, is that the two major parties have become cheerleaders for laissez-faire, forgetting the lessons of the Great Depression that market failures are widespread. Kuttner argues that financial derivatives, inequitable trade policies, union-busting and economic bubbles have weakened the economy. Wall Street has become enormously powerful, while politicians have been looking the other way. Although the book draws on academic research, it is clearly written and accessible to a broad audience. getAbstract recommends it to political and business leaders, policy makers and citizens concerned about the implications of deterioration in the U.S. political and economic system.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Good Book and reliable seller, 2008-03-29
I am very satisfied with the way the deal was made in purchasing this book. Book arrived in the specified time, price was fantastic and the seller is very reliable and trustworthy.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Managing capitalism and broadening ownership, 2008-03-20
This gets my vote for the best book in the category of "What's Wrong with our Country and How to Fix It." Other books spend the first 300 or so pages describing all that is wrong and then come on like the cavalry with their own formula solution. Not so with Kuttner's book. He makes it clear throughout that the problem is laissez-faire capitalism, manipulated by financial elites, and that the answer is managed capitalism, responsive to a democracy.
The book is a great read for those of us who get all worked up about political economy, populism vs. elitism and the personalities of domestic politics and finance during the last half century. Kuttner has many specific suggestions for improving economic security for those of us who are not wealthy. However, he focuses primarily on increasing wages, benefits and employment security, not on building income from owning capital.
There would be a limit, however, to what the government can do to make managers accountable to shareowners. As shown in the book's chapter, "Wall Street Rules," even the regulatory reforms of the 1930s did not fix the disengagement between individuals and corporate management. There needs to be a different, direct relationship between the ultimate providers of capital and the stewards of that capital.
What government could do is encourage direct ownership of business, through changes in the tax laws and securities laws. Individuals could receive a tax credit for the amount invested, up to an annual limit. (The credit directly reduces taxes by the same amount, in contrast to a deduction, which only reduces taxable income.) Businesses would have to meet corporate governance standards of shareowner rights, director independence and limits on executive power and compensation. Investors would need to meet some basic educational or experience requirements. People who aren't already qualified could take a course through local community colleges or high schools. Interest, dividends and capital gains would be taxed at the going rates, recovering taxes to offset the investment credit.
This would empower individuals to bring the discipline to corporate management that has not come from government regulation. If we had active, informed individual ownership of corporations, the opportunities would be reduced for private equity firms to join with management in buying and reselling a corporation. It may seem like a complex, politically difficult proposal, full of potential objections. But more government rules just mean that lobbyists and lawyers earn big fees finding new ways to do the same old thing.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
The Truth Exposed, 2008-01-18
Great expose of how America has been sold out by the elite politicians and Wall Street financiers.
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