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Rating: 
Summary: repetitive and long-winded
Review: I wanted a book to use in conjunction with Barbara Ehrenreich to examine modern American society from different viewpoints. I opted for this book, and regretted it. The book contains few new ideas, a much-rehashed thesis, and repetive and circular arguing. The students in my high school, senior level economics class found these flaws without any prompting from me. If repetitive ideas, long-winded prose and turgid structure are you idea of a good read, then this is the book for you.
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Summary: A Not Very Subtle Conservative Manifesto!
Review: If you are a conservative, you will enjoy this book. Samuelson truly believes in the system! If Samuelson spoke with Chomsky: Samuelson: I'm sick of hearing that there are ghettos; I'm tired of listening to people whine about how Washington is a function of corporate interests; stop crying about how the government has systematically squashed the interests of Labor. Things are not perfect and people should stop demanding a free lunch. Chomsky: What about health care? Do you realize we are the richest Country in the World, yet we are one of the only progessive "Democratic" states that doesn't provide some basic level of care to all citizens. Samuelson: If poor people want health care, than they should get jobs dammit! They are not entitled to a free lunch. No free lunch! No free lunch!... Chomsky: Isn't it true that you support a system that created NAFTA, which basically raises domestic unemployemnt, lowers wages and, yes, destroyes the very jobs you are telling poor people to get? Samuelson: I said the system works, it's not perfect. No free lunch! No free lunch! Chomsky: The system is filled with structural injustice: it fixes the betting in favor of corporations and against working Americans . . . and the best you can say is that it's not perfect. By the way, do you own stock in companies that routinely fire hard working Americans in order to raise profit and boost your portfolio. Samuelson: Um, well, um. You see, well. The system works dammit! No free lunch! No free lunch!
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent description of current situation
Review: It is quite easy to enjoy this book. By presenting relevant statistics Samuelson provides logical, however preliminary, conclusions as to why we are disillusioned as a nation. His ideas in regards to the promise of prosperity are particularly interesting. Finally the border of the puzzle has begun to form from the implications inherent in Samuelson's contentions. Most importantly, this book provides a framework full of hypotheses and statistical starting points for future social psychological research.
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Summary: Good read on U.S. economic history in the 20th century
Review: My review is based on the first edition of this book.
I found out about this book when I happened upon an old issue of Newsweek I had kept around, from 1996. Its cover story was an article made up of excerpts from it, and was titled "Great Expectations". I read the article and found Samuelson's analysis just as prescient today as when he wrote it. I wanted to see more of what he had to say, and so I got this book.
I was not disappointed, at least in the analysis department. The book is part economic history, and part sociological/political analysis. He starts with the Great Depression, describing what happened. I'm in my 30s, and I had not heard a detailed history of the Depression in school. Just that the economy was in the dumps for about 10 years, and that tons of people were poor, hungry, and unemployed, and it inspired FDR's New Deal agenda. He fleshes this out some, giving quotes from sources of the time, describing what conditions were like, and how people felt about their predicament and their future. He tries to give a psychological picture of what the Depression did to the people who lived through it. He also provides analysis about what caused the Depression, how the institutions of power groped for a solution to the problem, and that some of what they did worked, and some of it didn't. Interestingly, what he says worked was not necessarily what a lot of people thought fixed the problem.
Then he moves into the post-WW II boom, the world that the Baby Boomer generation grew up in, and the psychological change this caused in people's minds about what was possible. His main thesis is that this period of time, the economic expansion from the end of WW II to the early 1970s, produced an exaggerated, somewhat distorted view of economic expectations. Part of this view was formed by what Samuelson would call mistaken notions of what got us out of the Depression. It was this time period which produced the idea that in the future, each generation would be financially and materially better off than the generation that preceded it. He calls this notion a myth, and proceeds to give his own explanation of why the expansion occurred, why it petered out in the 1970s, and why the notion that each generation would just get richer and richer has not held true. He does not blame government for failing to do its job to "make" things better. In fact he points out that government's attempts to shape the economy were based on flawed policy thinking anyway. He explains that the economy changed over time, more competitors entered the marketplace, and the idea that the entreprenuer was a dying figure in the U.S. economy did not hold true. He gives an alternative view of what has happened: that while incomes and living standards have not rapidly risen for all concerned, products that consumers buy have gotten cheaper, so in effect we've traded our former vision for making things more affordable to more people in the U.S.
He also comments on the politics of the U.S. since WW II. He stresses that while government can do little to shape the economy, public figures, when running for public office, keep saying that they can. He gets into a realm of wishful thinking here. Election after election, the public keeps having this expectation, based on a notion that he contends is not real, that the government can control and shape the economy so that we can have rising wages and higher living standards, and whoever runs for public office keeps pandering to this mistaken view. The problem always occurs that when they get into office, the public realizes that they have not changed the direction of the economy, and so they become disillusioned and angry with the politicians for failing to accomplish something that was never realistic in the first place. He expresses a wish that somehow the public would disabuse themselves of this notion, and the politicians would choose to educate the public, rather than pander to their mistaken notions. It's a nice thought, but it isn't going to happen. Politicians know that it never helps their election chances to tell the public they're wrong.
Where Samuelson falls down is in providing a clear vision about what we as Americans should do, or how we should think, in order to adjust well to the wrenching changes that have shaped the way in which we work and make money. He grasps at some possible things the country could do (policy changes) that would make dealing with this easier, but his suggestions are incoherent. So I give him good marks for analyzing what's happened to us and why, but he comes up short on solutions to the problems that we as workers face. Nevertheless, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is serious about understanding our economy, and why our collective notions about it are not necessarily based in reality.
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Summary: A limited view of 20th Century US society.
Review: Samuelson, an energetic and erudite writer, has a fascinating thesis: Amercian's standard of living has not declined, our expectations of life are unrealistic. With a gifted, if somewhat imaginative use of statistics, he purports to explain our problem as our misplaced expectations to "entitlements". These include a rising standard of living, a prosperous economy, opportunity for all and so forth. We need only realize our limits and everything will be all right. Mr. Samuelson needs to leave his office and conduct his research somewhere beyond the beltway to gain a realistic appreciation of the decline of living standards, and the realities of late 20th Century American society.
Rating:
Summary: repetitive and long-winded
Review: This was one of the most intelligent, original, and colorful books that I have read this year. Most of the author's points are right on the mark. The great mystery of our time for political analysts is the large gap between peoples' evident satisfaction with their own life and their overwhelming disappointment with public life. Mr. Samuelson not only is perceptive enough to point out this overlooked paradox but diagnoses it well. This will be certainly a bold challenge for the next generation of public leaders.
Rating:
Summary: A colorful analysis of American society
Review: This was one of the most intelligent, original, and colorful books that I have read this year. Most of the author's points are right on the mark. The great mystery of our time for political analysts is the large gap between peoples' evident satisfaction with their own life and their overwhelming disappointment with public life. Mr. Samuelson not only is perceptive enough to point out this overlooked paradox but diagnoses it well. This will be certainly a bold challenge for the next generation of public leaders.
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