The End of Affluence: The Causes and Consequences of America's Economic Dilemma - Hardcover

Jeffrey Madrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679436235 ISBN 13: 9780679436232

Publisher: Random House, 1995

Synopsis

Sure to spark controversy, this book, reminiscent of the bestsellers Politics of Rich and Poor and Day of Reckoning, tells the real truth about America's long term economic decline--what caused it, what it has done to Americans, and what Americans should do about it.

About this title

About the Author

An Emmy Award-winning economics reporter for NBC from 1985 to 1993, Jeffrey Madrick was finance editor of Business Week and a columnist for Money and is now editor of Challenge and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. The End of Affluence was selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the Year.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

From the Inside Flap

k controversy, this book, reminiscent of the bestsellers Politics of Rich and Poor and Day of Reckoning, tells the real truth about America's long term economic decline--what caused it, what it has done to Americans, and what Americans should do about it.

Reviews

Disputing with economists who blame declining U.S. living standards on inflation, federal budget deficits, shoddy education or low levels of investment, Madrick views these presumed causes as the consequences of a sharp slowdown in U.S. economic growth since 1973. Smaller annual growth rates, in his often provocative analysis, have translated into lost jobs, stagnating wages, eroding markets, insecure pensions and reduced home-ownership. Former Business Week finance editor and a former NBC economic reporter, Madrick believes that Americans will create a realistic national agenda only when they abandon misplaced optimism by recognizing that slower economic growth may well be permanent and a structural rather than a cyclical phenomenon. Although offering a few concrete proposals, he recommends more investment in plants, equipment and research and development. He sets as top priorities control of health care costs and greater allocations to schools, day care centers and libraries. Author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Madrick has been both an economic reporter for NBC and a financial editor at Business Week. He documents 20 years of slow growth in the U.S. economy, a growth so sluggish that Madrick suggests we have actually lost ground. Given previous rates of growth, Madrick calculates that we have lost $12 billion in production since 1973. Furthermore, he argues that slower economic growth is no longer cyclical but is now structural and permanent and the cause of budget deficits, lower income levels, and a debilitating competition for shrinking resources. Madrick's well-documented analysis is filled with illuminating historical comparisons. He ends with a warning against misplaced optimism that this pattern will right itself and urges that we must revise our expectations. David Rouse

Madrick, the former national economic reporter for NBC and former finance editor for Business Week magazine, believes that the United States has been experiencing economic decline since 1973, with a loss of some $12 trillion in production. This explains our chronic government budget deficits and the stagnant or falling incomes of most Americans. Madrick rejects conventional solutions such as making business more competitive, raising the savings rate, increasing exports, and improving education. In his view, our reduced economic circumstances are structural and permanent. Before searching for a way out, Americans must accept these realities. Madrick's account is adequate, but the essentials of his analysis are "in the air" and have been made more systematically in magazine articles, for example. An optional purchase for large public libraries.?Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., New York
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679436235
• ISBN 13: 9780679436232
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 223