Political conservatives have long believed that the best government is a small government. But if this were true, noted economist Jeff Madrick argues, the nation would not be experiencing stagnant wages, rising health care costs, increasing unemployment, and concentrations of wealth for a narrow elite. In this perceptive and eye-opening book, Madrick proves that an engaged government--a big government of high taxes and wise regulations--is necessary for the social and economic answers that Americans desperately need in changing times. He shows that the big governments of past eras fostered greatness and prosperity, while weak, laissez-faire governments marked periods of corruption and exploitation. The Case for Big Government considers whether the government can adjust its current policies and set the country right. Madrick explains why politics and economics should go hand in hand; why America benefits when the government actively nourishes economic growth; and why America must reject free market orthodoxy and adopt ambitious government-centered programs. He looks critically at today's politicians--at Republicans seeking to revive nineteenth-century principles, and at Democrats who are abandoning the pioneering efforts of the Great Society. Madrick paints a devastating portrait of the nation's declining social opportunities and how the economy has failed its workers. He looks critically at today's politicians and demonstrates that the government must correct itself to address these serious issues. A practical call to arms, The Case for Big Government asks for innovation, experimentation, and a willingness to fail. The book sets aside ideology and proposes bold steps to ensure the nation's vitality.

The years after World War I have often been seen as an era when Republican presidents and business leaders brought the growth of government in the United States to a sudden and emphatic halt. In When Good Government Meant Big Government, the historian Jesse Tarbert inverts the traditional story by revealing a forgotten effort by business-allied reformers to expand federal power—and how that effort was foiled by Southern Democrats and their political allies. Tarbert traces how a loose-knit coalition of corporate lawyers, bankers, executives, genteel reformers, and philanthropists emerged as the leading proponents of central control and national authority in government during the 1910s and 1920s. Motivated by principles of “good government” and using large national corporations as a model, these elite reformers sought to transform the federal government’s ineffectual executive branch into a modern organization with the capacity to solve national problems. They achieved some success during the presidency of Warren G. Harding, but the elite reformers’ support for federal antilynching legislation confirmed the worries of white Southerners who feared that federal power would pose a threat to white supremacy. Working with others who shared their preference for local control of public administration, Southern Democrats led a backlash that blocked enactment of the elite reformers’ broader vision for a responsive and responsible national government. Offering a novel perspective on politics and policy in the years before the New Deal, this book sheds new light on the roots of the modern American state and uncovers a crucial episode in the long history of racist and antigovernment forces in American life.

Statism denotes any system of big government, a government that gains power at the expense of individual freedom, a government that uses its power to redistribute wealth and regulate the economy. Laissez-faire capitalism, by contrast, is the system of limited government, the system of economic and political freedom. It is a system that has created more wealth and lifted more people out of poverty than any other system. Yet it is relentlessly demonized. We are told that the free market is impractical--prone to crises, depressions, and coercive monopolies. Michael Dahlen dispels these and many other myths. He shows that a laissez-faire capitalist system is not only practical; he shows that it is moral, as it is the only system that recognizes each individual's inalienable right to his own life. A provocative weave of history, philosophy, and political economy, Ending Big Government: The Essential Case for Capitalism and Freedom, shows that capitalism is incontestably superior to statism.

Our current government is failing us - the poor most dramatically. Global market forces of information and capital are destroying the old top-down politics. If present trends are allowed to continue, America will stumble into a grim Cyber Future of community breakdown and spiraling inequality - a real-life nightmare reminiscent of the fiction of William Gibson. But James Pinkerton offers hope that we can yet create a prosperous, tolerant, and compassionate society for the next century. Radically streamlined government must be part of the answer, but such transformation must be balanced by a new paradigm of choice, empowerment, inclusiveness, and decentralization that leads to a new spirit of communitarian healing at the grassroots. Pinkerton brings his practical experience in electoral politics to a sharp yet constructive critique of both parties. He warns the rampaging Republicans against culture-war jihads, but he counsels Democrats that they are doomed if they can't break their Faustian bargain with bureaucracy. And if both parties fail, he adds, some new third-party political configuration is inevitable. On the eve of the 1996 elections, no book could be more timely than What Comes Next.

The must-read summary of Jeff Madrick's book: “The Case for Big Government”. This complete summary of "The Case for Big Government" by Jeff Madrick, a renowned economist, presents his argument in favour of a big government of high taxes and wise regulations, which in the apst has fostered greatness and prosperity. He demonstrates that political conservatives are wrong about favouring a small government and returning to 19th-century principles, while left-wing politicians are gradually abandoning the efforts of the Great Society, and that neither of these things will be economically or socially beneficial. Added-value of this summary: • Save time • Understand the economic and social benefits of a larger government • Expand your knowledge of American politics and society To learn more, read "The Case for Big Government" and discover the differences of opinion surrounding government size, and how big governments are ultimately both economically and socially preferable.

This text chronicles the growth of local, state and federal government over the last 100 years and explains this growth by arguing that public and social acceptance (even demand for) government intervention has allowed for a strong government role at all levels of the economy.

Although common wisdom and much scholarship assume that "big government" gained its foothold in the United States under the auspices of the New Deal during the Great Depression, in fact it was the Second World War that accomplished this feat. Indeed, as the federal government mobilized for war it grew tenfold, quickly dwarfing the New Deal's welfare programs. Warfare State shows how the federal government vastly expanded its influence over American society during World War II. Equally important, it looks at how and why Americans adapted to this expansion of authority. Through mass participation in military service, war work, rationing, price control, income taxation, and the war bond program, ordinary Americans learned to live with the warfare state. They accepted these new obligations because the government encouraged all citizens to think of themselves as personally connected to the battle front, linking their every action to the fate of the combat soldier. As they worked for the American Soldier, Americans habituated themselves to the authority of the government. Citizens made their own counter-claims on the state-particularly in the case of industrial workers, women, African Americans, and most of all, the soldiers. Their demands for fuller citizenship offer important insights into the relationship between citizen morale, the uses of patriotism, and the legitimacy of the state in wartime. World War II forged a new bond between citizens, nation, and government. Warfare State tells the story of this dramatic transformation in American life.