From the book review:
...The revolution that occurred during this period involved a much more systematic use of direct democracy and eventually gave rise to a triumph for the US middle class. We learn that the revolutionary change was facilitated by a number of populist constitutional changes, the improvement of electronic infrastructure, and a middle class-oriented economic program. In his final paper, David appreciates the merits of his parents and their generation and speculates about what might have happened if they had failed to face the growing social and economic problems of the American political system but not reinventing a participatory democracy.
The novel makes up about 25% of the book while the remaining part is dedicated to a more data-grounded analysis of the major problems of modern American society. It is grim reading and it is probably even grimmer stuff for a reader (like this reviewer) with firm roots in the social-democratic welfare systems of Scandinavia.
According to Dolbeare and Hubbell, the US government today is often a willing captive of the major corporations and banks and the nation's wealthiest people (no wonder they quote Kevin Phillips quite often). How else could it be that approximately 16% of the pretax adjusted family income today is earned by the richest 1% of US families, up from 8% in 1977. If the trend continues, their share will rise to 27% in 2020. At that time 20% of families will receive more than two-thirds of the national income, while the lowest 80% of all families will receive less than 33%!
The authors also present convincing data demonstrating that the US leads the industrialized world in a lot of negative categories like AIDS, murder, rape, percentage of households with handguns, municipal waste in tons per capita, teenage pregnancy etc. . . In 1994 more than 23,000 Americans were assassinated while in Denmark the comparable figure was 55. Adjusted for population size this means that homicide is 12 times more common in the US. The other side of the coin is that Danes pay a high price for safety: 53% of national income is handed over to the tax authorities!
The authors do not share the optimistic philosophy of life of prominent US futurists like the Tofflers or John Naisbitt. In their view, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" of one free market works no miracles in America.
While the nation in general enjoys increasing wealth, the gap between the Haves and the Have-Nots becomes greater. As a consequence, the social ties holding a society together deteriorate even further because there are so few shared values binding citizens together. Billionaires in Beverly Hills and beggars in South central L. A. face completely different problems and live in totally disparate worlds. The only thing unifying them is a geographical proximity. Often they do not even share the same language.
Dolbeare and Hubbel pepper this book with many interesting statements about severe malady that effects the American political economy. Here are a few excerpts: "We wear blinders to avoid seeing the dominance of wealthy elites. . . We refuse to take serious critiques of our basic systems, and we marginalize those who assert them." "We want so much to believe in our system that we accept systematic lying in preference to truth"(p.14). "Ironically, the lower income levels - the very people who stand to gain from governmental services - are the ones who have been discouraged from voting and have withdrawn from the active electorate" (p. 46). "We are moving from at outmoded and unworkable representative system to a transparently manipulative system in which the people have even less control" (p. 78)...
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