The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too
About this audiobook
The cult of the free market—with its dogma of tax cuts, small government, and deregulation—has dominated economic policy talk since the Reagan revolution of nearly thirty years ago, seducing even liberals along the way. But a funny thing happened on the bridge to the twenty-first century: the conservatives themselves have abandoned these principles. In this riveting book, Galbraith first dissects the stale remains of Reaganism and shows why George W. Bush had no choice but to dump them. He then explores the true nature of the Bush regime: a “corporate republic” doing the bidding of the oil, military, pharmaceutical, and media industries; a predator state intent not on reducing government, but on diverting public cash into private hands. In The Predator State, Galbraith shows why our real economy is not a free-market economy, and why it requires policies that transcend, not privilege, the market.
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About the author
James K. Galbraith holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr., Chair in Government/Business Relations at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds degrees from Harvard and Yale. He studied economics as a Marshall scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, and then served on the staff of the US Congress, including as executive director of the Joint Economic Committee. He directs the University of Texas Inequality Project, an informal research group at the LBJ School, is a senior scholar of the Levy Economics Institute, and is chair of Economists for Peace and Security, a global professional association.
William Hughes is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. A professor of political science at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon, he received his doctorate in American politics from the University of California at Davis. He has done voice-over work for radio and film and is also an accomplished jazz guitarist.
