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How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics
Knopf
January 2012
On Sale: January 10, 2012
272 pages
ISBN: 0385535198
EAN: 9780385535199
Kindle: B0050DIX2E
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
One of our most prescient political observers provides a sobering account of how pitched battles over scarce resources will increasingly define American politics in the coming yearsβand how we might avoid, or at least mitigate, the damage from these ideological and economic battles.
In a matter of just three years, a bitter struggle over limited resources has enveloped political discourse at every level in the United States. Fights between haves and have-nots over health care, unemployment benefits, funding for mortgage write-downs, economic stimulus legislationβand, at the local level, over cuts in police protection, garbage collection, and in the number of teachersβhave dominated the debate. Elected officials are being forced to make zero-sum choicesβor worse, choices with no winners.
Resource competition between Democrats and Republicans has left each side determined to protect what it has at the expense of the other. The major issues of the next few yearsβlong-term deficit reduction; entitlement reform, notably of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; major cuts in defense spending; and difficulty in financing a continuation of American international involvementβsuggest that your-gain-is-my-loss politics will inevitably intensify.
 Media BuzzTavis Smiley - February 13, 2012
PBS News Hour - January 26, 2012
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