![]() Dobbs fervently points his finger at “Corporate America” as having become excessively powerful, to the extent that no other social group or institution-not labor unions, churches, universities, or even the federal government-can seriously challenge its agenda. Lou Dobbs, the Republican-turned-populist CNN television personality, is outraged by many of the same things as Hartmann. Certainly, the insurance companies and other special interests that fought fiercely against Clinton’s health plan did not view him as an ally in maintaining their privileged position. Equally unfocused is his lumping together of Bill Clinton with President Reagan and the two President Bushes as those who brought America into a “new Robber Baron Era” (p. households, a social designation so expansive that it can have little usefulness for discriminating among the needs and interests of different economic groups. By this definition, Hartmann has encompassed all but approximately the top 5 percent of U.S. ![]() The net worth of those who earn less than $150,000 per year (which includes everybody from the working poor to the highest end of the most well-off of the middle class) is down by 0.6 percent” (pp. Hartmann never pins down exactly who he means by the “middle class.” In one passage he notes that “middle-class income has stopped growing. Yet even for a reader sympathetic to its thesis, the author’s panoramic method can be worryingly imprecise. Much of this book’s narrative power comes from its broad sweep-across different policy issues, political trends, and economic realities. Of the two groups, Hartmann believes that the latter, whose members include Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. The “true believer cons” are those with a blind faith in free markets and “corporatocracy,” or “the view that an economic aristocracy benefits the working class because wealth will ‘trickle down’ from above to below” (p. The “predator cons” are greedy economic actors who push social policies and exercise private influence with a goal of generating tremendous profits, the public interest be damned. Rather, he casts blame on two groups of conservatives who are “conning” America while “screwing” the middle class. Hartmann argues that these changes are anything but random or unintended. His list of concerns includes increasing levels of health care uninsurance and underinsurance declining value of the minimum wage lack of a vigorous union movement weakening of private pension plans attempts to privatize Social Security the growing gap between the very rich and other social groups and an inadequate public education system coupled with soaring college costs. With this personal case study as backdrop, Hartmann devotes the rest of his book to cataloguing the erosion, or outright disappearance, of a large number of financial rewards and social protections that were pivotal to the security of his father’s generation. And because he belonged to a union that bargained for a strong health plan for its workers and retirees, he had the insurance coverage he needed when faced with a terminal diagnosis of mesothelioma in his later years. His paycheck, substantial enough to support a family with four sons, was supplemented by good vacation and pension benefits. A veteran of World War II, Carl Hartmann found his way into the steel and machine industry, where he remained for the next forty-five years of his working life. Sounding a theme of nostalgia that echoes through all titles discussed here, Thom Hartmann begins engagingly with the story of his father, Carl. The first book in this trio of closely related offerings was written by a liberal radio talk-show host whose program is syndicated on the Air America network. The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement and How You Can Fight Back by Jacob Hacker (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 240 pp., $26 ![]()
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