How I Won The War

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Bartley's main error is his narrow focus on a few pet theories and prescriptions and the inevitable special pleading this entails. "The moral of the Seven Fat Years is that economic growth counts," he writes. But the rising tide of '80s-style growth failed to lift all boats as advertised: the rich got bigger yachts, the middle class foundered, and many of the poor went under. The task for the 1990s will be to move beyond the excesses and inequities of the debt decade rather than strive to return to a Golden Age that never existed.