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We Are Better Than This
Book

We Are Better Than This

How Government Should Spend Our Money

Edward D. Kleinbard
Oxford UP, 2014

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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative

Recommendation

Professor Edward D. Kleinbard offers a comprehensive, bold and authoritative look at the role of government spending and what it means in shaping values in a democratic society. This rare scholarly analysis covers the fascinating but complex world of public policy, taxation and federal spending and its impact on American democracy. Kleinbard refutes enthusiasm about free-market capitalism by showing the economic benefits of social welfare and progressive taxation. Calling on his extensive experience running a nonpartisan US Congressional tax office, he compares the social and fiscal successes that other developed nations have achieved to the failures of US policy and politics. He focuses on the busy intersection of politics, social insurance, taxation and ideology. His incisive analysis, buttressed by 80 charts and tables, is hardly easy reading, but it proves highly rewarding. While always politically neutral, getAbstract recommends Kleinbard’s formidable treatise to anyone concerned about taxation and government spending.

Take-Aways

  • Implementing socially effective fiscal policy – how a country manages the processes of taxation and government spending – proves an ongoing test for every democracy.
  • Government is best suited to provide certain services, such as insurance, education and infrastructure investments.
  • Malnutrition costs the US at least $167 billion annually in lost productivity and avoidable medical expenses, among other penalties.

About the Author

Edward D. Kleinbard teaches law and business at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law. He served as chief of staff of the US Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s nonpartisan tax information resource.

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