 | The Case for Big Government (New in Paper) Subjects: United States -- Politics and government; Organizational effectiveness -- United States; United States -- Economic policy -- 2001–; Former New York Times economics columnist Madrick takes aim at what he perceives as a dominant American antigovernment ideology with this overly ambitious text. The author's decidedly left-of-center thesis rests on the argument that "active and sizable government" is "essential to growth and prosperity." To make his case, Madrick begins with a too brief history of the relationship between the American government and the economy, from Hamilton and Jefferson's attitude toward laissez-faire economics through Jacob Riis's famous documentation of urban squalor near the turn of the 20th century to the Great Society initiatives of the 1960s. The author details the country's economic problems since the 1970s, despite the relative prosperity of the 1990s. In elaborating these points, Madrick attacks both the right and the left, and he returns consistently to the persistent influence of Milton Friedman on the antigovernment bias in American politics. This well-researched but somewhat formless book concludes with an extensive progressive agenda for redressing the limited influence of American government, covering a wide range of issues, from same-sex marriage to universal pre-k education. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved Jeff Madrick is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times . He is editor of Challenge magazine and senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. |
