Dead Men Ruling

A personal note to you, my readers and friends.

My latest book, Dead Men Ruling, is in many ways the most important that I have ever written. I try not only to diagnose the disease that underlies so many of our economic and political problems today, but also to attack the wrong-headed notion that we live in an age of austerity and limited possibility.

Consider: the gross domestic product per household is $141,000 today and is projected, even with slower growth, to reach $168,000 in 10 years. Over that same period under Republican and Democratic budgets alike, government at all levels is likely to increase spending and tax subsidies from $55,000 to around $65,000 per household. Our budget may be terribly allocated, and the way we tax and spend can be quite inequitable, but do these numbers suggest a nation that must continue to turn its back to the ocean of possibilities that lie right at our feet?

I hope you will read Dead Men Ruling. Even more, I hope that you recommend it to friends and elected officials who want to move beyond yesteryear’s stale debates toward a 21st-century agenda—particularly when it comes to promoting opportunity and mobility, prioritizing children and their future, and creating a government that can be both effective and lean.

If you cover the news, are organizing an event, or have a group interested in the book, I can help. Please contact me.

Because I make no money on the book, my motivation is purely aspirational. I strongly believe that the country is at an inevitable turning point, requiring honest leadership. Though it will take time, together we can make that turn well.

At DeadMenRuling.com, you can order copies directly and find many related recommendations, videos, and interviews. As a Government We Deserve reader, you can use discount code KCD4. Or you can use various book venders (including Amazon).

To tease your interest a bit further, I include the preface below.

PREFACE

Low or zero growth in employment… inadequate funds to pay future Social Security and Medicare bills…declining rates of investment… cuts in funding for education and children’s programs…arbitrary sequesters or cutbacks in good and bad programs alike… underfunded pension plans…bankrupt cities…threats not to pay our nation’s debts… inability to reach political compromise…political parties with no real vision for 21st century government.

I’ve come to a strong belief that these and a whole host of seemingly separable economic and political problems are symptoms of a common disease, one unique to our time and shared widely throughout the developed world. Unless that disease and the history of how it spread over time is understood, it’s easy to fall prey to believing in simple but ineffective nostrums, hoping that a cure lies merely in switching political parties or reducing the deficit, expanding our favorite program, or hunkering down to protect it. My first purpose in writing this book is to accurately diagnose that disease so we can attack it at its roots

But my fonder hope is that we reawaken to the extraordinary possibilities that lay right at our feet and restore the American can-do spirit that has prevailed over most of our history. Despite the despairing claims of many, we no more live in an age of austerity than did Americans at the turn into the 20th century with the demise of the frontier. Conditions are ripe to advance opportunity in ways never before possible, including doing for children and the young in this century what the 20th did for senior citizens, yet without abandoning those earlier gains. Recognizing this extraordinary but checked potential is also the secret to breaking the political logjam that, as I will show, was created largely by now dead (and retired) men.

 

 



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