Advice and Dissent: Why America Suffers When Economics and Politics Collide

A bestselling economist tells us what both politicians and economists must learn to fix America's failing economic policies

American economic policy ranks as something between bad and disgraceful. As leading economist Alan S. Blinder argues, a crucial cultural divide separates economic and political civilizations. Economists and politicians often talk -- and act -- at cross purposes: politicians typically seek economists' "advice" only to support preconceived notions, not to learn what economists actually know or believe. Politicians naturally worry about keeping constituents happy and winning elections. Some are devoted to an ideology. Economists sometimes overlook the real human costs of what may seem to be the obviously best policy -- to a calculating machine. In Advice and Dissent, Blinder shows how both sides can shrink the yawning gap between good politics and good economics and encourage the hardheaded but softhearted policies our country so desperately needs.

Alan S. Blinder is the Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, a former member of Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors, and a former vice-chair of the Federal Reserve. The bestselling author of After the Music Stopped, he lives in Princeton, New Jersey.