Reviews for The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics

The average rating for The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-03-30 00:00:00 Laura Johnson This is the book to read if you want to understand supply-side economics. Well, perhaps you could read Wanniski's "The Way The World Works", but you might come away from that book assuming that supply-side economics actually works the way its proponents say it does. Jonathan Chait absolutely thoroughly demolishes the intellectual underpinnings of supply-side economics, and provides a coherent and plausible account of how a theory that was proposed by people like Wanniski with no economics credentials at all was adopted enthusiastically by large swaths of the DC political class on both sides of the aisle. The upshot is this: if you propose a theory, no matter how ludicrous, that says that we'll all be better off if taxes on rich people are lowered, there are a lot of rich people who will be interested in hearing more. Whole think tanks have been created with the express purpose of creating plausible-sounding reasons to cut taxes on rich people. It doesn't matter that cutting taxes for rich people has not in fact delivered the economic benefits that supply-siders promise. As long as there are suckers willing to vote for lower taxes on rich people, there will be rich people willing to fund new papers, conferences, and fellowships all about how high taxes on rich people are stifling progress. It's mildly depressing that there really isn't much else driving supply-side economics and yet it's been a remarkably durable ideology. But that's politics for you. This book is a great read, albeit pretty much guaranteed to raise your cynicism about politics.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-10-21 00:00:00 Ilia Cladadakis Great Read Whether or not this book leans left will be for each individual reader to decide. I found this book incredibly interesting in its explanation and analysis of how the American economy has been hijacked by Republican supply side economic theory. This is a clear, cogent presentation of the author's argument and is a must read for everyone who wonders how this theory has survived in spite of its utter failure over the past thirty years.