The Sixteen-Trillion-Dollar Mistake: How the U.S. Bungled Its National Priorities from the New Deal to the Present

By Bruce S. Jansson

Book Overview

Choices about budget priorities are arguably the most important made by the federal government, profoundly affecting the well-being of citizens. Bruce Jansson documents how presidents from FDR to Clinton have made ill-advised choices that wasted trillions of dollars. Going beyond charges of corruption or bureaucratic waste, the book is an eye-opening expos revealing innumerable useless projects (military as well as civilian), unnecessary tax concessions, and the use of interest payments to cover deficit spending, among other costly mistakes. Using Office of Management and Budget projections through 2004, Jansson shows how the madness continues-and how an informed electorate can put an end to it.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 023111432X
• ISBN13: 9780231114325
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 22 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A Unique Gem

Jansson's book brings clarity and insight to a subject that normally glazes our eyes and becomes quickly boring. Whether or not you agree with the specifics of Jansson's analysis, his carefully researched book lays out the underlying choices necessarily made in the annual adoption of the federal budget over the last 70 years. These matters are regularly debated by economists and federal spending policy makers, but little understood by even the most well-informed citizens. Readers of this book will have the knowledge and the tools to do their own analyses of budget debates generally thought to be too arcane for general understanding. Hopefully, it will be widely enough read to raise the level of debate on these important subjects and encourage all informed citizens to participate more knowledgeably in this critical political decision making.

Examines politics, national priorities and federal spending

The United States bungled its national priorities from the New Deal to modern times, making fiscal and tax mistakes which have totaled over 16 trillion dollars from FDR through Clinton. The Sixteen-Trillion Dollar Mistake charts federal waste and how it's harmed this country's plans, providing the first book to examine politics, national priorities and federal spending.

a mix of good and bad

Bruce Jansson is credited for spending 10 years researching "16 trillion dollar mistake" including a large chunk in presidential libraries. This careful research makes the book worth buying. However, the book is unfortuantely inconsistant with respect to what is considered "waste." Jansson will make an excellent point or unearth interesting data only to follow by glaring errors in basic knowledge of economics. This is unfortunate because it there is much good among the bad. (For the record, my own polititical perspective is almost identical to Mr. Janssons', so this is not the issue. He is a liberal by indicts the left and the right in the book.)This would make an excellent resource for economics or business classes where the student would be asked to separate the wheat from the chaff. Fortunately, there is more of the former than the latter thereby earning it 4 stars rather than the 3 stars I'm inclined to rating it.