Rating: 
Summary: Economic jibberish
Review: I am amused by the disparity of reviews on Wealth & Democracy. Interesting too is the disparity and contradictions of some of the reviewers themselves.For example one reviewer says (referring to Phillips) "And He's a Republcan!" then goes on to say that Phillips is a republican but of the old school (Nixon's school I presume??)Then another one goes on to say that it is wrong to pilfer (and I AGREE on this one point-pilfering) because it causes excess losses to their employer(no mention though that it is theft) which could lead to job losses, lack of pay raises and extra costs imposed on their employer etc but goes on to say that it's okay to load their employers down with additional taxes! There are certaintly a lot of charts, but how accurate is it? A new millionaire is created every 60 seconds. I didn't see that mentioned anywhere in "Wealth & Democracy" and certaintly those millionaires won't become wealthy by reading books like "Wealth & Democracy".As another reviewer very accurately stated; "The US Constitutio states equality of opportunity BUT not equality of results. Equality of results only occurs in communist countries. Consequently evybody has nothing"If you guys are so much against the wealthy, go somewhere else. It's as simple as that.I also hear people complaining about the rich. One person said; 'Why doesn't Bill Gates use some of his vast fortune to help the poor." I wonder if this person is aware that Bill Gates donates 1 billion dollars every year to charity.How much do these complainers give to charity? My guess---not much.I am giving Wealth & Democracy 1 star as a required field only. Sub stars would be more appropiate. This is the land of the free, the home of the brave. There is money to be mined if you'll go after it.
Rating: 
Summary: A Textbook on Economic History
Review: I find it surprising that so many other reviewers are harping about biased writing - the book is well researched and thick with references and supporting evidence. It lays out a well documented, literate, historically important discussion of the nature of how wealth is acquired and grows, what events redistribute it and how, the effects of wealth concetration on an economy, and perils of shifting economic footing from real production to one based on financial instruments.I wonder if some of the other reviewers read more than the dust jacket. My only criticism is that the book is at times too academic. The lenghty construction of evidence to lead to a particular point will turn off the casual reader. However, those who are skeptical by nature will appreciate the careful attention to detail in building a historical case for a particular conclusion. Too me, his focus on the perils of using financial instruments as the engine of economic growth to the sacrafice of real production is the most important point in the book. The system of debts and investments leaves an economy vulnerable to disruption in a way that real production does not. This should give everyone reason to pause. All in all, I rank this book drier than something like "How the Scots Invented the Modern World" (which has a number of important linkages with this book), but perhaps more important in understanding our current state of being.
Rating:
Summary: Facts & Data ... Add Up To Troubling Times
Review: Like another recent reader from Seattle, I've just started the book ... I picked it up because the author was featured in Sunday's Seattle Times op-ed section. [I may change the star rating after completion] As some others have said, much of it is dry reading. There are extensive charts, facts and data. I am annoyed that there are citations (notes) at the end of the book -- with numbers for each -- but the cite does not appear in the text [like this]. This is "economics" in that Phillips examines Money and Wealth. This is not "economics" in the sense of collegiate econ101 (I have a master's degree in economics). As someone who once-upon-a-time worshiped Any Rand and the "free-market" ... I have evolved to become a skeptic. I no longer believe that the philosophical prerequisites for "free market" economics exist (if they ever did - and if you don't know what I'm referencing and think you believe in "the free-market" I suggest you do some reading). The book suggests that wealth breeds both more wealth and _political access_ ... and that technological innovations (munitions, railroads, autos, aerospace, mass production, pharmaecuticals, computers/internet, etc) are aided and abbetted by the hand of government ... and, while they _may_ serve to create new wealth, it seems that more often "wealth" becomes entrenched wealth. If the following data don't cause you consternation -- then save your pocketbook (and aspirin!) and forgo this book: -- begin dry facts --
1870: top 1% of Americans own/control ~20% of the country wealth
1912: top 1% of Americans own/control 56.4% of the country wealth
1971: top 1% of Americans own/control 25% of the country's wealth
1976: top 1% of Americans own/control <20% of the country wealth
1999: top 1% -- to classify, you'd have > $3 million in assets/wealth
2001: top 1% of Americans own/control 47% of the country wealth
[they own/control more wealth than the bottom 95% combined] Business Week's annual review of executive compensation, America's 365 largest companies:
--1980, the disparity between the highest-paid workers and their employees was 42 to one.
-- Today, the ratio exceeds 500 to one ('today' being 2001, I believe, from Gates et al, below) Inflation-adjusted median household net worth fell from $54,600 in 1989 to $49,900 in 1997. [Haven't seen recent data, but with the stock market crash, I'm guessing it hasn't recovered.] Less than 1% of the population finances more than 80% of all federal elections. -- end dry facts -- If the data do cause you consternation, consider adding Phillips book as well as this one by Bill Gate's father to your bookshelf:
Wealth and our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes "Today the levels of inequality in the United States are at their highest point since the 1920s. This is an unusually imprudent time to abolish one of the few taxes that has slowed this buildup of wealth in the hands of a few."
...
Rating:
Summary: Good book
Review: I liked this book because I hate the rich, too! I don't like them because they are rich just by luck. All of them! This book helps justify my hatred of the rich and all things wealthy or successful. I drink lots of coffee and read Chomsky and have long hair and would never sell myself to the corporate power, man! This books tells me I'm right about my suspicions that the government (Republicans only!) are in the pockets of the rich. Status quo, man! The only way the "man" can keep me down is by using these tricks. But, I rated this book low because I didn't like the writing style. But, it made me feel good about hating the rich.
Rating:
Summary: U.S. Constitution says
Review: That everyone has equality of opportunity. BUT no one guarantees equality of results. Only in America can anyone reach their dreams by persistence. Equality of results is only available in communist and socialist countries. Consequently, nobody has anything. Books like Wealth and Democracy is a somewhat biased book/
Rating:
Summary: Read Millionaire Next Door or Rich Dad instead....
Review: That is if you are interested in wealth. The Millionaire Next Door by Drs Stanley and Danko gives an excellent account on how the wealthy really became wealthy in this country (documented date and had nothing to do with Democracy or politics) Wealth and Democracy will appeal to some, albeit those who will never attain any real level of wealth. Rich Dad Poor Dad although different from Millionaire Next Door also deals with how to attain wealth. No doubt the 5 star reviewers for Wealth & Democracy will not find Millionaire Next Door or Rich Dad Poor Dad appealing and would prefer to blame the government for your lack of success. It's all up to you. If you like to read about economics, I recommend Wealth & Democracy, just don't take it too seriously. Then perform an exorcism and read something with value like The Millionaire Next Door, The Millionaire Mind or Rich Dad Poor Dad.
Rating: 
Summary: A Call to Arms
Review: Mr. Phillips has outlined the ills of our times without stooping to namecalling and baseless invective. I cannot open the editorial section of the newspaper or the latest journal without a reference to his book. He knows what is wrong and through copious and well-documented research he has proven his thesis, that the country is increasingly becoming a dichotomy of the haves and have-nots. It is not a perfect work, yet it has the resonance of Paine's "Common Sense" and the power of Marx's "Communist Manifesto". I can only hope that his work will lead to change, but alas, the arch-duke of Greed, the warmongering, G. W. Bush, the mad Ahab of privelege to the rich is at the helm of our poor country. Read this book before any other. If it gets boring, tough, finish it.
Rating:
Summary: Please read Business Week's review!
Review: From the June 10, 2002, _Business Week_, clearly not a bastion of liberal propaganda, comes a glowing review of this book: Kevin Phillips is most often identified in the press as a "Republican strategist" since he once had a consulting and polling firm near Washington. But he's hardly just another GOP spinmeister. In fact, Phillips is a thoughtful analyst and historian. And he gives most card-carrying Republicans severe heartburn by focusing on the "popular resentments" of America's beleaguered middle class and the dangers the party faces by ignoring discontent. To conservative members of the party, Phillips is just fanning the flames of a class warfare which, conventional wisdom holds, will never have much appeal for Americans. Phillips' latest book, his ninth and most ambitious, may finally drive his conservative critics mad, but it can't easily be dismissed. ...
Rating:
Summary: The Party and the Hangover
Review: In a country where it's more important to get out to buy a bigger SUV than it is to get out to vote, it may not be surprising that wealth rules in the land of democracy. People participate even less in politics today than they did in the 1950s, principally because most of us exile ourselves to inward-looking suburban islands and gated communities, too dispersed from each other and the problems of (what's left of) our communities - which we learn about only through the distorted "if it bleeds it leads" local TV news. (I digressed on the decline of community that accompanied the rise of suburbia in my Amazon.com review of "Suburban Nation.") What has wealth to do with democracy, anyway? Everything and nothing, as political and economic commentator Kevin Phillips points out in his incisive and devastating Wealth and Democracy. As the author says in his Preface, this would have been a very different book if it had been written in 1999, before the tech stock collapse and 9/11, rather than in 2002. In ten data-stuffed chapters plus an Afterword, Phillips supports his thesis, poetically summarized by the Goldsmith quote above, that in the modern U.S., laissez-faire "is a pretense. Government power and preferment have been used by the rich, not shunned. As wealth concentration grows, especially near the crest of a drawn-out boom, so has upper-bracket control of politics and its ability to shape its own preferment." In the next 474 pages, Phillips goes on to cover the "political and economic history of U.S. wealth, the U.S. record of speculative finance, the Anglo-Saxon proclivity for technology manias, the overlap between watershed technological innovation and economic inequality, and the connections between wealth concentration and the corruption of politics, government, and public policy." Wealth and Democracy is not a Socialist critique of Capitalism, but rather a Capitalist critique of excess. Phillips seems more in love with democracy than he is in awe of the invisible hand of the marketplace. As he pointed out in a November 13 interview, unregulated Capitalism inevitably leads to abuse of the system. What he takes pains to point out in his book, however, is that this fact is not only not new, the world has seen its pattern followed at least three times before. The tilting of the US economy from production to finance as a source of wealth will spell the end of our economic dominance - just as it spelled the end of the Spanish (1530-1588), Dutch (1600-1702), and British (1815-1914) economic dominance. We're already the world's largest debtor nation. We've had a good run from 1945 to the tech bubble bust in 2001. What happens when our creditors call in their loans? My particular favorites in Wealth and Democracy are Chapter 4, from which I drew for the symptoms of decline, and Part III, about how "American wealth nourished itself on government influence and power - and vice versa." In the four chapters comprising Part II, Phillips explains that corporate socialism has been popular since, oh, 1787. That's when the first Constitutional Convention went on record encouraging industry and "mechanics," promoting fisheries, forges, factories and new technologies. Why do you think patent protection was written into the Constitution? Federal land grants and tariff suspensions on iron subsidized several private fortunes for railroad entrepreneurs: Vanderbilt, Gould, Sage, Harriman, Hill and Astor (who bribed his way to a fur fortune and profited from the state-financed Erie Canal). That of course required steel, which Carnegie, Frick and Phipps supplied. And oil, which JD Rockefeller (the first billionaire), W Rockefeller, Payne, Rogers, Flagler and Harkness supplied. Of course, financing all this speculation and industrial expansion were the moneylenders: JP Morgan, A Mellon, R Mellon, Green, Baker, Stillman and Schiff. And government granting of exclusive franchises only cemented the relationship between state power and private fortune. Eli Whitney was one of the first federal contractors. Samuel Colt profited out of gunmaking during the Civil War. And industry still has their hands out for those fat government contracts. That's how the major fortunes were made in this country. War is always good for business, and for war profiteers, dating back to the Revolution and the Civil War, but continuing through WW I and WW II, on through Korea and Vietnam (technically, the last two were "police actions"). Hey, maybe it's not too late for me to invest in the US-Iraq War? Government subsidy of pharmaceutical research (from penicillin in WW II to 2/3 of all government biomed spending by 1965, with nothing for the public in return), telecommunications ($90 billion spectrum giveaways, with nothing for the public in return), and the development of the Internet (a Defense Department project) are only the most recent fortune-builders... for the private sector. And that doesn't even count the state and local governments subsidizing public works through private contractors - especially stadiums for millionaires, like the ones in my hometown of Baltimore. If there is a cautionary tale in Wealth and Democracy, it is that a U.S. government "concerned with protecting wealth may do so at the expense of democratic procedures and may try to blame terrorism rather than flawed policy for hard times." As we enter the second dip of a W-dip recession, Wealth and Democracy sounds like a book for our time.
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of data
Review: I wonder why most of the other reviewers are so divided and polarized by this book. It simply tries to present the history (and current state) of wealth in America, its relations to politics, and juxtapose with other countries. There are tons of charts and data, and the prose is repetitive. In fact, this is more of a reference book than something fun to read or debate about. If there are any strong opinions in this book, they can easily be disregarded. Once again, the facts and figures are what makes the book worthwhile. Whether the US is on path of decay and decline is a little hard to say, and analogies with 16-th century Holland won't exactly explain. However, that wars are times of wealth redistribution, or that huge wealth tends to be hidden behind trusts, offshore accounts, etc, and only grows with time - these are obvious things which should not tick people off. Or that politicians need campaign contributions, which makes them dependent on wealthy donors. I am not done reading the book, but it's not that fun reading because there are too many data/charts and too little interesting ideas. That's just my own opinion. As you can see, there are enough people on this site that either love or hate this book.
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