The Rich and Famous
(book review follows)
HOW POLITICS WORKS
(This little, tiny story is part of a series, in which I explain to my little daughter how things work.)
Politics works like this: Big People of Big Country buy Big People of Little Country, who, by the way, will be elected in "democratic elections" thanks to big bucks; Big People of Big Country give big loans to Little Country (of course, to buy "made in Big Country"); Big People of Little Country pocket a big chunk and invest it in the Big Country, without ever investing in real development (education, health, the environment, etc); Little People of Little Country work for ever to pay back what they never got; Big People of Little Country thank Big People of Big Country in the name of Little Country, and promise to repay the big debt; and Little People of Little Country get big promises, just like Little People of Big Country. And they lived happily ever after...
(BOOK REVIEW)
Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich
by Kevin Phillips
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Most American conservatives take it as an article of faith that the
less governmental involvement in affairs of the market and pocketbook
the better. The rich do not, whatever they might say--for much of
their wealth comes from the "power and preferment of government." So
writes Kevin Phillips, the accomplished historian and one-time
Washington insider, in this extraordinary survey of plutocracy,
excess, and reform. "Laissez-faire is a pretense," he argues; as the
wealth of the rich has grown, so has its control over government,
making politics a hostage of money. Examining cycles of economic
growth and decline from the founding days of the republic to the
recent collapse of technology stocks, Phillips dispels notions of
trickle-down wealth creation, pricks holes in speculative bubbles, and
decries the ever-increasing "financialization" of the economy--all of
which, he argues, have served to reduce the well-being of ordinary
Americans and government alike. Highly readable for all its charts and
graphs, Phillips's book offers a refreshing--and, of course,
controversial--blend of economic history and social criticism. His
conclusions won't please all readers, but just about everyone who
comes to his pages will feel hackles rising. --Gregory McNamee --
From Publishers Weekly
The influence of money on government is now, more then ever, a hot
political issue. With a grand historical sweep that covers more than
three centuries, Phillips's astute analysis of the effects of wealth
and capital upon democracy is both eye-opening and disturbing. While
his main thrust is an examination of "the increasing reliance of the
American economy on finance," Phillips weaves a far wider, nuanced
tapestry. Carefully building his arguments with telling detail (the
growth of investment capitalism in Elizabethan England was essentially
the result of privateering and piracy) and statistical evidence, he
charts a long, exceptionally complicated history of interplay between
governance and the accumulation of wealth. Explicating
late-20th-century U.S. capitalism, for instance, by drawing
comparisons to the technological advances and ensuing changes in
commerce in the Renaissance, he also discusses how 18th-century
Spanish colonialism is relevant to how "lending power began to
erode... broad prosperity" in 1960s and '70s America. Finding detailed
correspondences between the giddy greediness of America's Gilded Age
(complete with a surprising quote from Walt Whitman "my theory
includes riches and the getting of riches") and the "great technology
mania and bubble of the 1990s," Phillips (The Cousins' War, etc.),
noted NPR political analyst, notes that "the imbalance of wealth and
democracy in the United States is unsustainable," as it was in highly
nationalistic mid-18th-century Holland and late-19th-century Britain
both of which underwent major social and political upheaval from the
middle and underclasses. Lucidly written, scrupulously argued and
culturally wide-ranging, this is an important and deeply original
analysis of U.S. history and economics.
From Booklist
Phillips' The Politics of Rich and Poor (1990) detailed wealth
concentration and policy favoritism under the Reagan administration.
His new book takes a much broader approach by detailing the historical
account of the relationships between politics and wealth in the U.S.
He relates how the disparity between rich and poor correlates with our
propensity for speculative excess and technology manias and the
corruption of government throughout this nation's history. He points
out that real, after-tax income for average workers peaked in the late
1960s, while the amount of wealth concentrated in the upper one
precent has steadily increased. This trend reflects similar boom-time
eras as the Gilded Age (1870-90) and the 1920s. As this gap widens,
Phillips warns that we may be in a late-stage economic period similar
to that of three previous leading economic powers: Britain, the
Netherlands, and the earlier Spanish Hapsburg empire. The figures on
the financial worth of famous American aristocrats through the years
are impressive. David Siegfried
Book Description
For more than thirty years, Kevin Phillips' insight into American
politics and economics has helped to make history as well as record
it. His bestselling books, including The Emerging Republican Majority
(1969) and The Politics of Rich and Poor (1990), have influenced
presidential campaigns and changed the way America sees itself. Widely
acknowledging Phillips as one of the nation's most perceptive
thinkers, reviewers have called him a latter-day Nostradamus and our
"modern Thomas Paine." Now, in the first major book of its kind since
the 1930s, he turns his attention to the United States' history of
great wealth and power, a sweeping cavalcade from the American
Revolution to what he calls "the Second Gilded Age" at the turn of the
twenty-first century.
The Second Gilded Age has been staggering enough in its concentration
of wealth to dwarf the original Gilded Age a hundred years earlier.
However, the tech crash and then the horrible events of September 11,
2001, pointed out that great riches are as vulnerable as they have
ever been. In Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips charts the ongoing
American saga of great wealth–how it has been accumulated, its
shifting sources, and its ups and downs over more than two centuries.
He explores how the rich and politically powerful have frequently
worked together to create or perpetuate privilege, often at the
expense of the national interest and usually at the expense of the
middle and lower classes.
With intriguing chapters on history and bold analysis of present-day
America, Phillips illuminates the dangerous politics that go with
excessive concentration of wealth. Profiling wealthy Americans–from
Astor to Carnegie and Rockefeller to contemporary wealth
holders–Phillips provides fascinating details about the peculiarly
American ways of becoming and staying a multimillionaire. He exposes
the subtle corruption spawned by a money culture and financial power,
evident in economic philosophy, tax favoritism, and selective bailouts
in the name of free enterprise, economic stimulus, and national
security.
Finally, Wealth and Democracy turns to the history of Britain and
other leading world economic powers to examine the symptoms that
signaled their declines–speculative finance, mounting international
debt, record wealth, income polarization, and disgruntled
politics–signs that we recognize in America at the start of the
twenty-first century. In a time of national crisis, Phillips worries
that the growing parallels suggest the tide may already be turning for
us all.
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