A Democracy Deflated

By Sam Pizzigati

A review of
The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity, by Robert Kuttner
Alfred A. Knopf. 337 pages.

November 12, 2007

Back two dozen years ago, in the early 1980s, a few astute economists began noticing that something strange was happening to America’s middle class. It was shrinking.

One of those economists, Robert Kuttner, is still working to help Americans understand why. Kuttner now has a new book out, maybe his best yet. 

The years since 1973, Kuttner writes in his new Squandering of America, “have been trying times economically” for most Americans.

“But they have been terrific times,” he notes, “for the top 10 percent, even better for the top 1 percent, and best of all for the superrich.”

These rich, as Kuttner vividly demonstrates in detailed chapters that take us everywhere from corporate boardrooms to the living room of a Presidential candidate, have done what the rich always do: translate their wealth into political power.

The politics that results only addresses the problems that vex the privileged. A democracy, under this pressure, steadily wilts.

“When politics does not deliver for people,” notes Kuttner, “the people give up on politics. Or they see politics as a realm mainly for cultural warfare, for battles over patriotism, or as something for other people.”

Kuttner, over the course of his career, has helped launch two eminently sober pillars of progressive politics, the Economic Policy Institute think tank and the American Prospect magazine. He writes and speaks in measured terms. He has even served a stint as a Business Week columnist. In short, no wild-eyed radical here.

Just a careful but deeply distressed analyst.

“I believe,” Kuttner writes, “that the American economy is in danger not just of increasing economic and financial inequality. It is at risk of a 1929-scale catastrophe.”

“In the mass deprivation of the 1930s,” he adds, “demagogues and dictators abounded. It was a miracle that the Depression delivered Franklin Roosevelt and an energizing of American popular institutions, rather than a home-grown Adolf Hitler.”

Scary stuff. But Kuttner doesn’t want us scared. Or discouraged. He wants us mobilizing for more than “political crumbs.” He wants a more equal America. So will, by the end, this book’s readers.

Sam Pizzigati edits Too Much, the weekly online newsletter on excess and inequality. For updates on inequality-related stats, trends, and books, just check here for a free weekly Too Much subscription.