Volume 39, Number 14 · August 13, 1992
The Morning After
By Benjamin M. Friedman
The Seven Fat Years: And How To Do It Again
by Robert L. Bartley
Free Press, 347 pp., $22.95
The Bankrupting of America: How the Federal Budget Is Impoverishing the Nation
by David P. Calleo
Morrow, 301 pp., $22.00
Today the ability of the American economy to provide rising incomes and expanding job opportunities is in greater doubt, and at greater genuine risk, than at any other time in recent memory. Even during the record-length business expansion that began in 1983 and ended in 1990, growth in US productivity was sluggish and the average American worker's wage failed to keep pace with inflation. The 1990-1991 recession may have been mild in the aggregate—the increase of unemployment to 7.8 percent of the labor force in June does not approach the 10.8 percent unemployment rate in 1982—but it has affected companies and social groups that used to be thought immune from ordinary business downturns. Worse yet, there is little confidence that even after the recession is well behind us our economy will be able to provide a rising standard of living for most of the nation's families. If it cannot, then in the years to come that economic failure will surely threaten the general character of American society, and it will sharply circumscribe the role that this country plays in world affairs.
Review, 6495 words
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