Volume 24, Number 2 · February 17, 1977
Capitalism & Socialism: Declining Returns
By Jason Epstein
WORKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ARTICLE
The Twilight of Capitalism
by Michael Harrington
Simon and Schuster, 446 pp., $10.95
The Unseen Revolution: How Pension Fund Socialism Came to America
by Peter F. Drucker
Harper & Row, 214 pp., $8.95
"The Falling Share of Profits,"
by William D. Nordhaus. in Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, edited by Arthur M. Okun, by George L. Perry
The Brookings Institution, 282 pp., $7.00 (paper)
Equality and Efficiency: The Big Trade-off
by Arthur M. Okun
The Brookings Instituion, 124 pp., $2.95 (paper)
'There is something in the American character,' said Jefferson to his daughter as she struggled with her studies, 'that regards nothing as desperate.' Thus he observed, whether with irony or admiration is unclear, the essence of a religion that would later be called Americanism; a religion that finds nothing tragic in human endeavor, for which evil is always external, for which thoughts are the same as things, and which regards despair as the ultimate sin. So Jefferson anticipated our glory and our folly to the present day as President Carter promises a politics of love and justice, together with a balanced budget, full employment, and a chastened bureaucracy, while Americans by the millions trample the accelerators of their jumbo cars as if the fossilized forests had been as vast as their own zealous optimism.
Review, 5691 words
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