The U.S. economy made impressive gains in the 20th century, but this progress makes it easy to forget a harsh reality: Americans were the victims of disastrous government policies that cost trillions of dollars in wasted resources, created mass unemployment, and kept millions of people in poverty who otherwise would have participated in the nation’s growing prosperity.
A complete dissection of the 10 most egregious economic blunders of the past century, this work provides the key lessons to help in avoiding such policy mistakes in the future. The Terrible 10 notes that, unlike the private sector, when the governance of the federal government fails, the role and scope of government is usually increased and that politicians from both parties tend to favor short-run benefits for friends while imposing costs on current and later generations. With issues and blame divided equally among Democrats and Republicans, this work stands as a highly readable history of how government economic blunders affect everyone.
“From Prohibition and Smoot-Hawley to Ethanol and Fannie Mae, a century of governmental economic fiascos mounts to a vertiginous climax of decades of deficits in Burton Abrams' wise and uproarious The Terrible 10. A must-read for muddled millennials, U.S. Senators, high school teachers, Federal Reserve governors, and all lovers of liberal follies and conservative crony capitalism.”
“The Terrible 10 is a book that’s both delightful and therapeutic. In wry and stylish prose Burton Abrams describes all the symptoms of what happens when the disease of government infects the body of the marketplace. And Abrams has the macro-economic cure. Legislators need to cut down on the saturated fat of entitlements, start doing more exercise of regulatory restraint, and consume less ideological junk food. The Terrible 10 will help us restore the balance of our economy’s health away from politics and toward liberty.”
“The Terrible 10 clearly and superbly identifies and discusses in detail the ten worst government policy disasters of the past ten decades. The book is a delight to read, interweaving economics and politics with history and not shying away from the naming of names. Each disaster resulted from unrealistic objectives, ignorance, near-sightedness, the abuse of power, and/or special-interest group manipulation, and the book provides much needed lessons for the future.”
“The Terrible 10 is an incisive historical book using both benefit-cost and distributional analyses to identify the 20th century's worst policy consequences. From Prohibition to environmental regulation to macroeconomic policy, Burton Abrams couples engaging narrative with evidence and economic analysis to illuminate the large costs of economic policy mistakes. He also identifies some of the causes and incentives underlying these outcomes. Can we learn from this history and avoid making such policy mistakes in the future?”
