Boiling Point: Democrats, Republicans, and the Decline of Middle-Class Prosperity

by Kevin Phillips

Book Overview

The author of The Politics of Rich and Poor presents a thoughtful examination of frustration and decline in America's middle class. Reprint. 35,000 first printing; $25,000 ad/promo. Tour. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060975822
• ISBN13: 9780060975821
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 307 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Covers the Transformation of the USA from an industrial-manufacturing powerhouse to a speculator eco

Phillips does a good job of demonstrating why the American middle class was shrinking in the early 1990's.The situation today(2008) has only been exacerbated by 17 years of more of the same-more and more speculation in financial assets and stocks and less and less industrial and manufacturing production.A combination of securitization and banker financed speculation has resulted in an economy where the major growth sector is " financial services ".More and more income is diverted into this speculative sinkhole while less and less is invested in long run physical capital formation that will create jobs and businesses where profits are based on production.The current banker dominated approach to income generation is the manipulation of the financial assets of corporate America-profit without production.It is obvious that the fortunes of the American middle class are tied to an economy primarily based on a strong industrial-manufacturing sector that produces real goods for sale .These fortunes are severely impacted negatively if the currently dominate speculative approach continues.The core of Philips analysis is contained on pp.185-190.Phillips does an excellent job in discussing this issue.The impact on the reader,however,could have been much greater if Phillips had explicitly tied his analysis to the analysis originally presented by Adam Smith in 1776 and restated in advanced form by John Maynard Keynes in 1936 in The General Theory of Employment,Interest, and Money .Unfortunately,Phillips appears to be unaware that Adam Smith had already warned against allowing speculators to take control of an economy by allowing them access to bank loans with which to leverage their debt positions.Smith's conclusion is that savings loaned out to speculators is savings that is " ... wasted and destroyed ".There has never been a more clearcut warning about the dangers of speculation. (See Adam Smith,1776,Modern Library(Cannan)edition of The Wealth of Nations,pp.339-340).I have deducted one star due to this omission.

An Optimist

I reccomend this book highly but I will warn you that Phillips is an optimist. I read this book before I read his "Arrogant Capital" and it strikes me that Phillips is maybe a little too naive in expecting things to improve in America. It is fortunate of course that we in this country have people like Phillips who inform us well so that we can then make informed decisions about what to do in the future. Take me for instance, I have decided to leave America for the next 15 years, or at least I am going to attempt a life abroad. If you read Phillips and Krugman and just about what any other respected journalist or educated government watcher writes, then there is but one inescapable conclusion - viz, America ails with a terminal illness. The microbes of this illness are the K-Street lobbyists and also the Christian Coalition. According to Phillips the demise of the middle class which incidentally is a symptom of the breakdown of governance, started a long time ago, when we did not have Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson running around with their silly diatribes. So, at this late stage in the atrophy, injecting religion into politics is akin to shooting crystal meth into your veins when you are in the last stages of liver cancer. The final nail in the coffin. By the way, I am a born again Christian evangelical.

A Real Eye-opener

Despite being out of print, this is still one of the most useful books any citizen can read. It shows you where your political interests lie and why, for most of us, the U.S. doesn't feel like the world's richest country any more.