Dead Men Ruling: How to Restore Fiscal Freedom and Rescue Our Future - Softcover

Steuerle, C.Eugene

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0870785389 ISBN 13: 9780870785382

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press, 2014

Synopsis

The news coming out of Washington, D.C., and reverberating around the nation increasingly sounds like a broken record: low or zero growth in employment, inadequate funds to pay future Social Security and Medicare obligations, cuts in funding for education and children’s programs, arbitrary sequesters or cutbacks in good and bad programs alike, threats not to pay our nation’s debts, inability to reach political compromise, and political parties with no real vision for twenty-first-century government.

In Dead Men Ruling, C. Eugene Steuerle argues that these seemingly separable economic and political problems are actually symptoms of a common disease, one unique to our time. Despite the despairing claims of many, Steuerle points out that we no more live in an age of austerity than did Americans at the turn into the twentieth century with the demise of the frontier. Recognizing this extraordinary but checked potential is also the secret to breaking the political logjam that - as Steuerle points out - was created largely by now dead (or retired) men.

About this title

About the Author

C. Eugene Steuerle is Richard B. Fisher chair and Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute, and a columnist under the title The Government We Deserve. Among past positions, he has served as deputy assistant secretary of the treasury for tax analysis (1987–89) and president of the National Tax Association (2001–02).

Edition details

• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0870785389
• ISBN 13: 9780870785382
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200