A Trade-off Between Credit and Welfare

The Land of Too Much: American Abundance and the Paradox of Poverty, by Monica Prasad, presents a simple but powerful hypothesis that addresses three questions: Why does the United States have more poverty than any other developed country? Why did it experience an attack on state intervention starting in the 1980s, known today as the neoliberal revolution? And why did it recently suffer the greatest economic meltdown in seventy-five years?

Monica Prasad is Associate Professor of Sociology and Faculty Fellow in the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

"Prasad’s history leapfrogs from the early New Deal to the 1970s, when economic stagnation led both Republicans and Democrats to deregulate finance to make credit even more available. At this point, we come to the familiar tale of Americans taking on too much debt, leading to speculative bubbles and the 2008 financial meltdown.
"History is where Prasad’s book runs into problems."
Read a review in Finance & Development magazine.

Prasad in the New York Times

Harvard University Press