Mountains of Debt: Crisis and Change in Renaissance Florence, Victorian Britain, and Postwar America

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Oxford University Press, Nov 29, 1990 - Business & Economics - 256 pages
Like the United States today, Renaissance Florence and Victorian Britain were the richest, most dynamic economic systems of their times. Yet each succumbed to a fiscal crisis brought on by public debt and taxation and eventually fell into long-term economic decline. Now, public debt and taxation dominate the America policy agenda. Must the United States follow the same dismal pattern of fiscal crisis and economic decline? Mountains of Debt argues that it is not too late for the United States to change directions and suggests a comprehensive program for reform of American fiscal institutions that would reduce the deficit problem and at the same time reverse the long-term structural trends that are both the cause and the effect of the fiscal crisis today. Offering proposals for reducing the deficit, this new analysis could alter the current course of the United States economy.

From inside the book

Contents

PROLOGUE
Structural Change and Fiscal Crisis
Death Birth and the Fifth Element
Mountains of Debt and the Heart of Florence
Britain and the Industrial Revolution
The Odious Tax and the Standing Miracle
The American Century and the American Crisis
The Changing Structure of American Government
The New Mountains of Debt
Saddle Points
Changing Directions
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
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