SHARED DERANGEMENTS:

Samuel Gregg has written a thorough and convincing case against the new advocates for interventionist economic policy. The Next American Economy serves as a definitive handbook for refuting the arguments now popular on the left and the right for a more planned or politically managed economy.

Given recent ideological and partisan shifts, Gregg argues, America today faces a choice between the path of free markets or state capitalism. The latter he defines as active state intervention into economic life aiming to shape and direct certain activities "to realize very specific economic and political objectives." The interventionist believes that if we apply just the right incentives from this or that government program (tariffs, subsidies, regulation, or corporate governance requirements) economic life can be guided toward a particular vision of justice or achieve specific outcomes.

With Adam Smith at his side (each chapter save the last begins with an epigraph by the great Scotsman), Gregg makes a negative case--refuting the common arguments made on behalf of neo-mercantilism and industrial policy--and a positive one, presenting the case that the true lover of his country ought to embrace the free economy.

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