The end of affluence

For a century and a half, the American economy produced the most prosperous society the world has ever known - and then something happened. Beginning in 1973, the American economy, though it continued to grow, grew far more slowly than it had on average since the Civil War. The most dramatic result of this slowdown is that we have produced $12 trillion less in goods and services over the last twenty years than we would have produced had we maintained our historic high rate of growth.

The results of this decline are everywhere apparent and every American feels them, whether in crumbling city infrastructure and the inadequacies of our national health-care system, or in the frustration of the young, who want to buy houses and support families, and of the old, worried about pensions and medical costs. If the economy had continued to grow at its historic rate, tax revenues would have been so high that there would be no federal deficit today.

In this book, Jeffrey Madrick shows not only the consequences of our economic decline, but the great historic shift that caused it. Madrick avoids the illusions and hypocrisy that accompany the political rhetoric of both parties, and shows that before we can talk intelligently about deficits and federal spending we have to recognize where we are, and how we got there.