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

by Michael Veseth

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195064209
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/29/1990
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.44(w) x 9.56(h) x 1.04(d)

Table of Contents

	Prologue	3
1.	Structural Change and Fiscal Crisis	7
2.	Renaissance Florence: Death, Birth, and the Fifth Element	19
3.	Mountains of Debt and the Heart of Florence	46
4.	Simple Patterns: Britain and the Industrial Revolution	75
5.	The Odious Tax and the Standing Miracle	103
6.	The American Century and the American Crisis	132
7.	The Changing Structure of American Government	153
8.	The New Mountains of Debt	171
9.	Saddle Points	190
10.	Changing Directions	212
	Notes	223
	Bibliography	235
	Index	244