[URPE] The Confiscation of American Prosperity

Mon Oct 1 21:00:10 MDT 2007

My new book, The Confiscation of American Prosperity, will appear tomorrow.

This book resembles a crime story in four parts. The first part, The 
Plunder, uses the example of the regressive redistribution of income in 
the United States since 1970 -- a redistribution that quantitatively 
dwarfs the Russian or the Chinese Revolutions -- to give a sense of the 
extent of the right wing revolution, which has remade all branches of 
government, the legal system, and perhaps most of all, the way people 
understand their condition in society. In the process, I show how the 
official statistics fail to capture the scope of this revolution, using 
examples such as corporate jets for executives and excessive fees and 
interest rates charged to the poor.

The second part, The Plot, tells the story of the right wing takeover in 
the United States from the perspective of political economy.

The third and most extensive part, Retribution, explains how this right 
wing revolution is laying the foundation for the next Great Depression, 
a cataclysm that will cost everyone dearly, even intended beneficiaries 
of the revolution.

        The final part, The Impotence of the Economics Profession, tells 
the story of the missing cop on the beat the economics profession -- 
showing how we economists have nurtured a trained incapacity for doing 
what should be our most important work, warning about dangerous 
tendencies in the economy and pointing to a better way.

http://www.amazon.com/Confiscation-American-Prosperity-Right-Wing-Depression/dp/0230600468/ref=sr_1_5/103-0846498-1105414?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1175802382&sr=1-5 
<http://www.amazon.com/Confiscation-American-Prosperity-Right-Wing-Depression/dp/0230600468/ref=sr_1_5/103-0846498-1105414?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1175802382&sr=1-5>

Blurbs:

"The Confiscation of American Prosperity is a highly readable work that 
offers equal servings of serious economics and controlled anger. Michael 
Perelman is outraged by 30 years of deepening disparities in the U.S. 
economy, and by the fact most economists either ignore the reality 
before them or worse, provide academic firepower on behalf of a more 
unequal and unstable society. Read Perelman, and prepare to be 
challenged, both intellectually and morally."
--Robert Pollin, Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Political 
Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts-Amherst

"This book gives an original perspective on the changes in the country 
over the last three decades. It documents how the wealthy have managed 
to structure the economy so that they could monopolize the gains from 
growth over this period. It shows how the resulting growth in inequality 
is undermining economic stability and productivity growth, creating an 
economy and society that will not be sustainable in the long-run."
--Dean Baker, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research

"Michael Perelman is author of a long series of important works on the 
history and theory of capitalism. In his latest book The Confiscation of 
American Prosperity, he offers an integrated account of economic and 
political developments in the postwar period that could not be more 
timely. Going beyond moral denunciation of the ever-worsening 
distribution of income and wealth, he shows the way in which an 
ascendant far right used the levers of power to counter declining 
profitability, but, in the process of assaulting American living 
standards and further enriching the wealthy, ended up weakening the 
mainsprings of the economy and preparing the ground for devastating 
crisis. This is a story that economic orthodoxy cannot tell but one that 
everyone needs to hear."
--Robert Brenner, Director, Center for Social Theory and Comparative 
History, UCLA

"In this age of ever-increasing concentrations of power and wealth, 
economists have been quick to attribute changes in inequality to factors 
such as globalization and technological change, while paying much less 
attention to the social and political forces that have shaped the 
outcome. With its analysis of the political, economic, and social forces 
behind recent changes in the distribution of power, wealth, and income, 
this book takes important steps to fill this void. Beginning with its 
analysis of the right wing's exploitation of the discontent from the 
unraveling of the Golden Age as a means to promote free-market ideology, 
continuing with its analysis of later efforts to further free-market 
ideology in the political and public arenas, and ending with its 
characterization of where we are now, this book helps us understand how 
we attained the level of inequality we have today, and where we might be 
headed next."
--Mark Thoma, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Oregon

Rather than bother you more details, in case you are not interested, I 
provided more information about the book on my blog:

http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com/2007/10/01/shameless-self-promotion-new-book-announcement/

-----
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901
www.michaelperelman.wordpress.com

-- 

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901
www.michaelperelman.wordpress.com

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