Silent Depression: The Fate of the American Dream

Peterson, economist and author of Transfer Spending, Taxes, and the American Welfare State , posits that America has been in the bitter grasp of an unrelenting, silent ``depression'' since 1973. This economic metamorphosis, a ``serious and long-lasting deterioration in the basic economic fortunes for large numbers of American families,'' triggered pronounced increases in poverty and deindustrialization and a sustained erosion of the American dream. Peterson's observations on the loss of manufacturing jobs, poverty, education, the infrastructure and the emergence of ever greater economic inequalities are perceptive. ``Far-reaching changes in the structure of the economy--changes that are both a cause and a consequence of the silent depression--have sharpened the difference between classes in America.'' This exemplary study is a significant contribution to economics. (Jan.)