Publisher's Synopsis
This book examines the way in which the resurrection of the failed nineteenth century ideology of Free-Market Capitalism led to the financial crisis that began in 2007 and reached its climax in 2008. It shows how a blind faith in the magical powers of free markets to increase prosperity for all inspired the economic policies that increased the concentration of income at the top of the income distribution and decreased the income of the vast majority of the population at the bottom. It also shows how the resulting increase in the concentration of income at the top created a situation in which, in the absence of government intervention, the full utilization of our economic resources can only be achieved in the midst of the kinds of speculative bubbles that lead to financial crises-crises that, in the end, require government intervention to keep the economic system from collapsing.It is argued that if we do not abandon the lower taxes, less government, and deregulation mantra of this failed ideology-the ideology that led us into the depths of the Great Depression in the 1930s as well as into the financial crisis of 2007-2009-our ability to produce will be diminished as our employment problem is solved through the transfer of resources out of those industries that produce for domestic mass markets (our most productive industries) and into those industries that produce for the wealthy few. In addition, our diminished ability to produce through the utilization of mass-production technologies as a result of this transfer portends the stagnation or fall in the standard of living for the vast majority of our population.
