The Importance of the 1970s � The Baseline Scenario

The Importance of the 1970s � The Baseline Scenario: "It isn’t often that I read two books in a row that both cite Alexis de Tocqueville, probably my favorite Social Studies 10 author (although he was far from my favorite at the time). In Third World America, Arianna Huffington cited Tocqueville’s observation that democracy should promote the interests of “the greatest possible number”; as I pointed out, this is clearly no longer true in America (if it ever was).�In Winner-Take-All Politics,* Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson explain why.

In 13 Bankers, Simon and I argue that the key forces behind the transformation of the financial sector and the resulting financial crisis were political, not simply economic. To this argument, at least two good questions spring to mind: Why finance? And why then? Hacker and Pierson have good answers to both of these questions. Their answer to the latter question is better than (though not inconsistent with) the answer we gave in our book."