Reality Check: The Unreported Good News about America

by Dennis Keegan and David West

Book Overview

Streaming headlines, round-the-clock broadcasts--we live in a world of twenty-four hour news. But lately, most of what we read and hear is either negative, biased, or both. Cutting through the gloomy... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1596985607
• ISBN13: 9781596985605
• Release Date: July 2008
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing
• Length: 245 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Truth Will Out!

In a time when the availability of an unprecedented number of sources does not assure accuracy of information, this fully documented and comprehensive coverage of the key issues bearing upon the state of our Union, fills a crying need. The quality, timeliness and pertinence of this report makes it a must read for all who seek to cut through the morass of politically biased reporting. You really owe it to yourself to read this book before you choose your candidates this fall.

Truth IS Important

Reality Check is a very important book for everyone in this country to read. It does a thorough job of counterbalancing the mythes and lies that are so commonly put forward daily in the news. As well,it is informational and easily readable for anyone who wants to understand basic economics and how they relate to our personal world. Reality Check is definitely worth the time it takes to read!

A realistic view of America as she enters the 21st Century ...

As John Adams famously said, "facts are stubborn things..." The purpose of this piece is to debunk certain items of common knowledge about America as she enters the 21st Century. The traditional mass-media often presents various beliefs more or less as truths, which they support with selectively derived anecdotal evidence. The approach taken in the book is to isolate a common (usually media-driven) belief, and then examine it in light of actual statistical data. The dismayingly common result is that we find that many common notions about America's place in the world are simply wrong. Also by way of disclosure, I went to college with, and was friends with, author Dennis Keegan at UCLA and we both served in the US Army in Germany in the late 1970s. Both of us were tank commanders during that time. For example, during most of the Bush Administation (of which I am no great fan, I state by way of disclosure), the media has incessantly informed the citizenry that the United States is in recession, with dangerously high unemployment, anemic job creation, and an economy that is losing competitiveness to other countries. Only problem is--this is not so. The authors present statistics that show that the US ranks in the top five countries for GDP growth during most of the past eight years (dropping to number 12 during 2007 only, as the unwinding of the mortgage lending and housing bubble takes a toll). Average GDP growth of the American economy also must be viewed, as the authors point out, in light of what it is that is growing--many economies that have higher growth than America are relatively small. Put in context, during the last eight years the growth component alone of the American economy is larger than the *entire* Chinese economy. Similarly, as the authors point out, America's share of global GDP is greater, not less, than it was 12 years ago. This is not an indicator of a country in decline. The authors take on many other media-driven myths, and show that such myths do not withstand scrutiny. For example, the notion that tax cuts only benefit the rich, who are not paying "their fair share" of taxes. Hard to reconcile this with the statistic that 1% of taxpayers pay 40% of all Federal taxes, and 86% of the taxes is paid by the top 25% of wage earners. Put simply, persons of modest means in the United States pay far less of their earnings in taxes, in percentage terms, than those in the top earnings strata. One would not know this from the unending media drumbeat about how tax cuts favor the wealthy. The last example of a debunked media myth that I will mention in this review is the canard that America's industrial base is disappearing. There is no more frequently heard media myth. Problem is, the US exports more manufactured goods than any other country, at least most years. (Further, a lot of European exports constitute trade between relatively small and adjacent European economies; analogous to trade among states in the USA)

Hot Potato Issues Answered

This is an excellent condensed survey - made for ordinary people -- of important economic questions of the day with clear, readable answers. And, just in time for the upcoming presidential campaign. While politics is mostly about impressions, this book has real facts (many quite surprising) which dispel many commonly believed myths. The topics are packaged one-to-a-chapter so you can digest an issue at a time. The authors leave out the more baroque analytics which make economics inaccessible or dry to some people, but they know how to zero-in on the key facts. I found myself repeatedly saying: "I didn't know that!"

A Factual Review

This book provides an unbiased review at the major issues of the past 10 years. Heavily researched and footnoted, it provides a much different picture of the United States than what the media paints. If you would like data rather than opinion on the state of the U.S., this is the book to read.