Free Lunch

In a recent broadcast of Fresh Air, Terry Gross interviewed Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter David Cay Johnston about his new book, Free Lunch, which details cases of corporate socialism masquerading as free market economics.

In the interview, Johnston says:

Ronald Reagan... set in motion a vast new experiment in whether reducing the size of government, reducing government regulation, and relying on market solutions would make us wealthier, happier, healthier, and a better country. A generation of time has now passed.... Are you better off than you were a generation ago?

On the surface, we are. We're twice as wealthy as we were then, as a country. But when you look deeper, you find out that no, most of us are worse off.

Incomes for most Americans have stagnated. But for those at the top they've gone through the roof. Growing numbers of people don't have health insurance. Fewer and fewer people have pension plans. More and more people are filing bankruptcy and are in debt.

How did this happen?

In his book, Johnston offers the following explanation of how it happened:

Since the Reagan administration, it's become the unstated policy to create federal laws and regulations that favor the already wealthy and the politically connected.

Money for the basics that make society work — from raking leaves in the park, to highway bridge maintenance — is dwindling, because so much has been diverted to the already rich, through giveaways, tax breaks, and a host of subsidies that range from the explicit to the deeply hidden.

Followup (1/18/2008): David Cay Johnston was interviewed by Bill Moyers.