AMERICA: WHAT WENT WRONG? by Donald L....

AMERICA: WHAT WENT WRONG? by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele (Andrews & McMeel: $6.95, illustrated). Based on a Pulitzer Prize-candidate series of articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “What Went Wrong?” documents the looting of America under the Reagan and Bush administrations. Barlett and Steele argue that the assault on the middle class goes far beyond the current recession, charging that over the last two decades, the federal government has altered its tax laws and economic policies “by design or default--to favor the privileged, the powerful and the influential. At the expense of everyone else.” In 1982, 75% of the workers at companies employing 100 or more people had fully paid health insurance; by 1989, that figure had fallen to 48%; the deregulation of the trucking and airline industries resulted in skyrocketing prices and the loss of more than 200,000 jobs; the deregulation of the savings and loans may ultimately cost American taxpayers half a trillion dollars. But only some taxpayers: The proposed capital-gains tax cut will benefit the 7% of tax filers who earned more than $150 billion from those sources in 1989 (93% of U.S. tax filers had no capital-gains income that year). Barlett and Steele traveled through the country, talking with frightened, hard-working men and women who suddenly found themselves without jobs and, often, insurance and pensions, because their companies had been bought, sold and dismantled by financiers whose speculations make Jay Gould and Hetty Green look like two-bit operators. The billions amassed by Michael Milken and others of his ilk were taken from the salaries, savings and pensions of millions of middle-class Americans. The result: a society in which the top 4% earns as much as the bottom 51%. This important and profoundly disturbing book should be required reading for voters in the upcoming elections.