American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper

Progress and prosperity in the United States, they demonstrate, have rested in no small measure on a constructive relationship between an effective public authority and dynamic private markets. We are now paying a terrible price for "forgetting this essential truth."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

In this lively, engaging, and persuasive book, Hacker and Pierson explain how much of our health and prosperity rests on what governments have done. American Amnesia will help slow the intellectual pendulum that is currently swinging towards ananarchic libertarianism that threatens more than a century of American progress."--Angus Deaton, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics in 2015

"This is a fascinating and much-needed book. America once invented universal public education and sharply progressive taxation of income and inherited wealth, and has shown to the world that strong government and efficient markets are complementary--not substitutes. But since 1980 a new wave of anti-governmentideology has prospered, and is about to make America more unequal andplutocratic than Europe on the eve of World War I. If you want to understandwhy this great amnesia occurred, and how it can be reversed, read this book!"--Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century

American Amnesia provides chapter and verse on why the public has good reason to be angry..."--The New York Times

If you are curious about why our infrastructure, our roads and bridges and water systems, is falling apart--then read American Amnesia. Curious about why the U.S. spends almost 18 percent of our GDP on medical care, but has health outcomes that are at levels of many developing countries--then read American Amnesia."--Inside Higher Ed

"The best business book of the year on the economy."--Brad DeLong, strategy+business