The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath

Blending economic analysis and historical comparisons, Phillips ( Mediacracy ) proposes that the legacy of Reagan's presidency includes an enormous concentration of wealth at the top, intensifying pain and inequality for the poor, a massive, mounting debt, and foreigners gobbling up large chunks of America. The losers in this economic polarization include women, racial minorities, young people, single-parent families. Phillips demonstrates that deregulation has especially hurt organized labor, poorer city neighborhoods, people in small towns and rural areas. His analysis linking Reaganism to America's global loss of economic power is compelling. While George Bush keeps ``imitating Ike in the 1990s'' and refuses to develop a national strategy, post-Reagan Democrats take the blame for failure to resuscitate liberal economic populism. A stunning refutation of George Gilder's Wealth and Poverty , Phillips's dispassionate report offers no solutions yet zeroes in on key problems. (June)