Boiling Point: Democrats, Republicans, and the Decline of Middle-Class Prosperity.

• Author: Fischer, Raymond L.

In Boiling Point, the author describes the economic damage that has assailed America's middle class over the last 30 years, especially the past 15, He details what happened to middle-class disposable income; taxes; home values; earnings; job prospects; services from government; assets and net worth; the safety net of pensions, healthcare, and insurance; and the bright futures children of the middle class once had. He not only presents the economic scenario in great detail and with undeniable facts, but compares the present U.S. situation to what happened to other nations that succumbed to similar economic problems.

Phillips makes it clear that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were not the initial or sole perpetrators of the inequality and polarization that had begun to intensify in the 1970s, when Democratic, Liberal, and Labour regimes governed the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain, respectively. By 1987, the Group of Seven leading economic nations had undergone startling political realignments that fostered aggressive free-market conservatism. The policy changes that ensued - ranging from tax reductions to financial deregulation, regulatory permissiveness, strict treatment of labor, and glorification of the rich - proved to be the elixir for global stock markets, property values, and business opportunities. in the U.S., however, as the 1980s boom crested, rising taxes and other costs excessively decimated much of the nominal gain of the middle class and public services deteriorated. By the late 1980s, the move to limit big government resulted in inattentiveness to public-sector functions, economic fairness, and jobs. The unfettered marketplace soon came to include permissiveness toward securities markets, real estate speculation, and corporate reorganizations that produced a level of speculative tremors and financial jifters unseen since the 1930s.

Surveys indicate an unprecedented decline in middle-income ranks from the days of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon...