Cover -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Introduction -- Part I - Welfare Statism -- Chapter 1: Is More Economic Equality Better? -- Chapter 2: The Welfare State: Promising Protection in an Age of Anxiety -- Chapter 3: Nineteen Neglected Consequences of Income Redistribution -- Part II - Our Glorious Leaders -- Chapter 4: The Mythology of Roosevelt and the New Deal -- Chapter 5: Public Choice and Political Leadership -- Chapter 6: Bolingbroke, Nixon, and the Rest of them -- Chapter 7: What Professor Stiglitz Learned in Washington -- Chapter 8: Great Presidents? -- Part III - Despotism, Soft and Hard -- Chapter 9: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration: A Billy Club is not a Substitute for Eyeglasses -- Chapter 10: Regulatory Harmonization: A Sweet-Sounding, Dangerous Development -- Chapter 11: Puritanism, Paternalism, and Power -- Chapter 12: We're all Sick, and Government must Heal us -- Chapter 13: Lock ‚'Em Up! -- Chapter 14: Government Protects us? -- Chapter 15: Coercion is not a Societal Constant -- Part IV - Economic Disgraces -- Chapter 16: Official Economic Statistics: The Emperor's Clothes are Dirty -- Chapter 17: A Tale of Two Labor Markets -- Chapter 18: Death and Taxes -- Chapter 19: A Carnival of Taxation -- Chapter 20: Unmitigated Mercantilism -- Chapter 21: Results of a Fifty-Year Experiment in Political Economy -- Chapter 22: Results of Another Fifty-Year Experiment in Political Economy -- Chapter 23: Pity the Poor Japanese -- Part V - The Political Economy of Crisis -- Chapter 24: War and Leviathan in Twentieth-Century America: Conscription as the Keystone -- Chapter 25: Crisis and Quasi-Corporatist Policymaking: The U.S. Case in Historical Perspective -- Chapter 26: The Normal Constitution Versus the Crisis Constitution -- Chapter 27: The Myth of War Prosperity.

Chapter 28: To Deal with a Crisis: Government Program or Free Market? -- Chapter 29: Beware the Pork Hawk: In Pursuit of Reelection, Congress Sells Out the Nation's Defense -- Chapter 30: The Cold War is Over, but U.S. Preparation for it Continues -- Part VI - Retreat of the State? -- Chapter 31: Leviathan at Bay? (As Viewed in 1991) -- Chapter 32: Escaping Leviathan? -- Chapter 33: The Era of Big Government is not Over -- Part VII - Review of the Troops -- Chapter 34: The Bloody Hinge of American History -- Chapter 35: The Rise of Big Business in America -- Chapter 36: Origins of the Corporate Liberal State -- Chapter 37: When Ideological Worlds Collide: Reflections on Kraditor's Radical Persuasion -- Chapter 38: On Ackerman's Justification of Irregular Constitutional Change: Is Any Vice you Get Away with a Virtue? -- Chapter 39: The So-Called Third Way -- Chapter 40: Thank God for the Nation State? -- Index -- About the Author -- Acknowledgments -- About the Independent Institute -- Independent Studies in Political Economy -- Back Cover.

An unflinching critical analysis of government is contained in this work, which distills complex economic and political issues for the layperson. Combining an economist's analytical scrutiny with an historian's respect for empirical evidence, the book attacks the data on which governments base their economic management and their responses to an ongoing stream of crises. Among the topics discussed are domestic economic busts, foreign wars, welfare programs such as social security, the arts of political leadership, the intrusive efforts of governments to protect people from themselves, and the mismanagement of the economy. Though focused on U.S. government actions, the book also makes revealing comparisons with similar government actions abroad and in China, Japan, and Western Europe. This book furthers the disscussions in Higgs' bestseller Crisis and Leviathan.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.