Deep Reads: The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth
Sunday, June 13, 2010 at 12:02AM 
Won’t offer a ton of commentary here. The idea is pretty simple: When America has seen rising per capita incomes, it’s a more generous and open and happy and thus inventive place. But when incomes have stagnated or declined, America’s gets awfully nasty, awfully fast—especially toward immigrants.
A timely reminder for today.
Friedman writes well, but he’s an economist, so it can feel like a bit of a wading. When he goes off to other countries, I got bored, but when he kept to American history, it was an eye-opening romp that made sense to me instinctively.
I advise people to read it simply to get that core thought deeply embedded in their thinking, because it reminds us all that we have a great democracy here because we have a great economy—less so the other way around. Our democratic “civilization” is just a few years of stagnating income thick, meaning it does not take that much to strip it away.
Reader Comments (2)
Your take on the causal relationship between the 'goodness' and the 'greatness' of America seems to reverse the wisdom of the fabricated adage [ apparently NOT actually written by Tocqueville: http://www.tocqueville.org/pitney.htm ] that 'America is great BECAUSE she is good'.
Now it would seem you claim the opposite: that America is good - only so long as there is plenty to go around.
However, I suggest a '3rd view'. 'America is ever only so good as serves the purposes of her "interests".'
Is that not the way of base human nature?
I tried reading this book soon after it came out, and dropped it after about 150 pages, because it was such a slog. The base thesis does make a lot of sense, I will agree, and my own limited experience in life seems to bear it out.