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In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell expounded on moments when behaviors, trends, or special ideas crossed a threshold and began to spread exponentially. In Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson provided a parable reminding us all that change is inevitable. In his book, Joseph Gorski posits that we are basically at a tipping point that can and should bring about change to something as notoriously rigid and inflexible as the United States Government.
Mr. Gorski’s book is a clarion call to the battlements. He believes that it is time for people to not simply tinker around the edges of government, but to literally shake it by its very foundation and restore what our Constitution actually had in mind, rather than continuing what our mode of government has become. What has it become? In Mr. Gorski’s opinion, it has become a self-perpetuating clique made up of politicians and the highly placed banking elite who are interested only in maintaining power. Why are bankers included? The oft-used phrase “follow the money” seems applicable. Gorski suggests that a holy trinity of establishment pols, senior-level financial executives, and the Federal Reserve Bank are using monetary policy to prolong their rule. In his judgment and his own words, “The Fed is putting the entire economy at stake by running unsustainable deficits and continually adding burdens and unreasonable regulations that limit economic growth.” He bemoans the decision to go off the gold standard and warns that an economic reckoning of immense proportion is on its way. Just as the technology bubble, the housing bubble, and the stock and banking bubble burst, so will the debt bubble if things aren’t turned around quickly.
It’s not all gloom and doom, however. The author proposes that we’re at the very point in time when radical change can come about. For those who think government and huge financial institutions are indeed too big to fail or jail, he reminds us that slavery had gone on for a very long time before it ended and that women’s rights lagged for centuries before that wrong was righted. Here are some of the ways he recommends moving toward Government 2.0: seek a desirable currency other than the dollar; pass an amendment to the Constitution limiting the power and scope of the Federal Government; de-criminalize drugs; privatize Social Security; enact massive tax cuts and more. Gorski provides copious detail on all of the aforementioned recommendations that space here does not allow.
Written in conversational English that keeps financial and economic jargon to a minimum, the author’s concepts and ideas are easy to follow. He uses extensive examples of events and situations throughout America’s history to support his arguments and proposed solutions. You may or may not agree with where he believes the government should be going in the future, but you’ll have no problem understanding why he thinks what he thinks. Gorski’s book is a decidedly different way of envisioning how this country might be run twenty years from now. Readers looking for innovative approaches to address entrenched ways of doing things will likely find this a stimulating read.