Scan barcode
A review by onii7
American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper by Paul Pierson, Jacob S. Hacker
3.0
American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson is a book that takes a look at America’s prosperity ever since the introduction to bigger government around the 1900’s, coming from a nation where three in ten babies did not even make it to their first birthday. Firstly, it is described as a provocative book in its marketing campaign as it formats itself in such a way where it presents multiple subtitles or microchapters presenting an issue or ongoing effect in the nation, and describes how their main theme and arguments of the book relate to that particular topic. More specifically, the authors introduce the book with these chapters about things like “the great forgetting” of how the start of a more involved government stepping in with regulations allowed us to live more comfortable, healthy, and happy lives; they say that it has literally made us taller as a people. They then relate this ‘great forgetting’ to many different institutions and societal standards that affect the way we live in society today, for example, healthcare, income, inflation, the media, and so on. Personally, I found that organizing the book in this way was straightforward when understanding the author's main arguments as I always knew what they were going to talk about before they started talking about it. In consequence to this, however, there seemed to be repetition in their claims many times over as it seemed like they were throwing many points at you and missing the important points that they should be making.
As for the arguments themselves, although it is agreeable that “free” markets that are left unattended have consistently led to the worsening of access and rights to marginalized groups, I do not actually know how far Hacker and Pierson wish to take the government in this proposed balancing of the economy through this “thumb and fingers” metaphor. Based on this book alone, Hacker’s arguments come off as liberal at its core, not advocating for things like socialized institutions, redistribution of the wealth through taxes, and the abolishment of broken systems that keep capitalism powerful and damaging, but rather, he is proposing for the balancing of capitalism under a government that has more say on its markets, which is essentially what center-right Democratic core policy consists of in their campaign promises (whether they enact them is a different story). Also, Hacker and Pierson make it known that they are graduates from elite universities and are professional, higher-class constituents of pseudo-progressives like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and has contributed to their healthcare policy plans by advocating for things like employers having to insure their employees through their job’s healthcare plan, or regulating existing private plans. Specifically, he supported Hillary's idea of buying into Medicaid at age 50 and over, saying that this could be the next step towards adding Obamacare to the public option (NPR 2016). In my opinion, these are all band-aid solutions that never actually introduce major policy that helps the entirety of the working class directly. Clearly, the authors hesitate on encouraging policies that are popular, universal, and fully-reconstructive like guaranteed Medicare For All or free higher education with the absolute cancellation of student debt. Afterall, the argument for the book is for a mixed-economy, the presence of more controlled capitalism, and therefore the continuous existence of harmful U.S. institutions like the two-party system, insurance corporations, and soon-to-be more trillionaires that all work together to secure a status quo within the nation that solely pushes for the interest of capital over people with this highly praised big government. Naturally, many opportunities of convincing their audience that government regulation and welfare is good are missed because their main ideas are how we “forgot” what made America prosper, when in reality, it has always only been prosperous for a select amount of people.
As for the arguments themselves, although it is agreeable that “free” markets that are left unattended have consistently led to the worsening of access and rights to marginalized groups, I do not actually know how far Hacker and Pierson wish to take the government in this proposed balancing of the economy through this “thumb and fingers” metaphor. Based on this book alone, Hacker’s arguments come off as liberal at its core, not advocating for things like socialized institutions, redistribution of the wealth through taxes, and the abolishment of broken systems that keep capitalism powerful and damaging, but rather, he is proposing for the balancing of capitalism under a government that has more say on its markets, which is essentially what center-right Democratic core policy consists of in their campaign promises (whether they enact them is a different story). Also, Hacker and Pierson make it known that they are graduates from elite universities and are professional, higher-class constituents of pseudo-progressives like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and has contributed to their healthcare policy plans by advocating for things like employers having to insure their employees through their job’s healthcare plan, or regulating existing private plans. Specifically, he supported Hillary's idea of buying into Medicaid at age 50 and over, saying that this could be the next step towards adding Obamacare to the public option (NPR 2016). In my opinion, these are all band-aid solutions that never actually introduce major policy that helps the entirety of the working class directly. Clearly, the authors hesitate on encouraging policies that are popular, universal, and fully-reconstructive like guaranteed Medicare For All or free higher education with the absolute cancellation of student debt. Afterall, the argument for the book is for a mixed-economy, the presence of more controlled capitalism, and therefore the continuous existence of harmful U.S. institutions like the two-party system, insurance corporations, and soon-to-be more trillionaires that all work together to secure a status quo within the nation that solely pushes for the interest of capital over people with this highly praised big government. Naturally, many opportunities of convincing their audience that government regulation and welfare is good are missed because their main ideas are how we “forgot” what made America prosper, when in reality, it has always only been prosperous for a select amount of people.