The Politics of Bad Ideas: The Great Tax Cut Delusion and the Decline of Good Government in America

This book by two professors of public policy convincingly demonstrates that supply-side economics and the policies pursued by Republicans and conservatives for the past 30 years have failed and in doing so have badly damaged the U.S. economy and society. Using numerous graphs and charts the authors reach many surprising conclusions: -- cutting taxes produces more government, not less. As they say, the programs funded can be those favored by liberals like social programs and welfare benefits and health care or by conservatives such as prisons, police and the military. But the budgetary implications are the same. This surprising assertion is fully backed up by the data. -- the authors compare the records of the Republicans in the current decade and Democrats in the 1960s and find similarities but one important difference. Both funded wars (in Iraq and Vietnam) and expanded education and health programs but the Democrats funded their programs from taxes while the massive increase in government under George W. Bush has been funded through borrowing. The result is a massive increase in the budget deficit and the national debt which will be borne by future generations. In fact, the authors demonstrated irrefutably that cutting taxes has never led to increased tax revenues as the Reagan and Bush administrations both said they would. They lead only to deficits. -- the data shows the greater the Republican control of Congress the higher the growth of spending. So those "fiscal conservatives" who care about small government have been doing the exact opposite of what they intended. -- Bush is the second biggest-spending president since 1945, second only to Johnson. The two presidents under whom real discretionary spending rose the least were Carter and Clinton. This book sometimes makes for difficult reading, which is its major fault. It's not written in a particularly user-friendly style and the frequent charts and graphs may be off-putting.It's as if the authors were not clear whether they were writing for specialists or a wider audience. If the latter, more care should have been taken to make the book more readable. It's unfortunate the style is so academic because the message needs to penetrate a wider audience. Bottom line: these failed policies have reduced the fiscal solvency of the federal government, eroded middle class living standards, vastly increased income inequality and left millions of Americans facing the greatest danger to their living standards since World War II. They could in future leave the U.S. economy paralyzed by the interest payments needed to finance a massive national debt. Time to wake up, folks!

I have very little policy experience; I read this book for a class on public policy. Having no experience, I found it to be a great help in understanding how we got to the place we are. It traces through the post-WWII years up to current times, detailing how the approach to policymaking has changed over the years. I now have a whole new appreciation for the fiscal state of our country, and if nothing else, this book is valuable to someone who hasn't paid much attention to politics just for that. It's pretty readable for the average person which is very nice; there are only a few spots where it helps to have a background in public administration theory. I chose this book to read because, of those I had to choose from, it seemed the least likely to be hell-bent on bashing Republicans. It did a relatively good job of remaining neutral, but at times the political bent of the authors was clear. I think this is pretty darn good book, and I'm glad I had a class to force me to read it. I gave it 4 stars because a few questions that were left unaswered for me - is everything REALLY only a result of policy, or can fads among the public steer things too?