Myths Of Rich And Poor: Why We're Better Off Than We Think - Hardcover

Cox, W. Michael; Alm, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 046504784X ISBN 13: 9780465047840

Publisher: Basic Books, 1999

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

W. Michael Cox is Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas. He is a Senior Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, Professor at Southern Methodist University, an Adjunct Scholar at the CATO Institute, and Vice President of the Association of Private Enterprise Education. He has written for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, been featured in Wired magazine, and has been interviewed on Voice of America, National Public Radio, Fox News, Ziff-Davis Television, among many others. He and Richard Alm write the annual reports for the Federal Reserve, which receive nationwide publicity.

Richard Alm is a business reporter with The Dallas Morning News. He has also worked for U.S. News & World Report and the Arizona Republic.

Review

"Myths of Rich and Poor gets behind the statistics reported on the evening news and quoted during Perot's infomercials to tell the true story of the American economy." -- Franklin Harris, Decatur Daily, AL, march 7, 1999

"Myths of Rich & Poor shoots down innumerable examples of economic nonsense that prevail in the media and in politics. Its authors, W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, deserve a medal for bringing some sanity to a subject where insanity is the norm." -- Thomas Sowell, New York Post, February 3, 1999

"The Myths of Rich and Poor is a clear-eyed, dispassionate analysis of what's good about today and why we should be optimistic about tomorrow. Cox and Alm neatly dissect the myths of the handwringing pessimists who would turn to government before understanding reality." -- Edward H. Crane, President, CATO Institute

"The Myths of Rich and Poor is a fantastic volume. Michael Cox and Rick Alm challenge the Chicken Littles of the world to consider, for a change, the facts. The sky (of opportunities) is not falling at all. Indeed, it is rising." -- Richard B. McKenzie, Author, The Paradox of Progress; Professor, University of California at Irvine

"A superb book! With facts, figures, and logic, Cox and Alm deliver a knockout blow to the prophets of American decline on both right and left." -- Robert Poole, President, Reason Foundation

"Cox and Alm show conclusively that the merchants of doom and gloom are not just wrong, but spectacularly wrong. You really are better off than your parents, and your children will be better off than you." -- Dwight R. Lee, Ramsey Professor of Economics, University of Georgia

"It is refreshing to read a positive account of market activity which so clearly demonstrates how free markets effectively promote the general welfare and sustain human dignity." -- Rev. Robert A. Sirico, President, Acton Institute

"Michael Cox and Richard Alm challenge the conventional wisdom that says we can no longer look forward to a rising standard of living. Using credible data and clear exposition, they make a compelling case that economic dynamism continues to create ever-greater opportunity and prosperity for Americans of all income levels. No honest discussion of the American economy can ignore this book." -- Virginia Postrel, editor, Reason magazine; author, The Future and Its Enemies

"This is not a conservative book or a liberal book: it's the best account I've seen of the real state of the American economy. Times are good--better than they've ever been before--and if we want to understand how to keep them that way we could not do better than to heed what Cox and Alm have to say." -- Lawrence Kudlow, author, American Abundance

...timely, important and refreshing. -- The Wall Street Journal, David R. Henderson

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 046504784X
• ISBN 13: 9780465047840
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272