Books in Brief

What Went Right in the 1980s, by Richard B. McKenzie (Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 397 pp., $21.95)

IF DEBUNKING the economic myths surrounding the Reagan. years were an industry Richard McKenzie would be CEO of its largest corporation. Here the University of California economist systematically refutes the idea that the U.S. faces decline following a decade of Republican-inspired debt, greed, and excess. Reich, Kuttner, Galbraith, Phillips, and other liberal polemicists are quoted at length, with the author’s rebuttal a model of dispassionate scientific method. On income inequality, for example, Mr. McKenzie takes 65 pages to explain the roles of age, education, family structure, taxes, productivity, price indexes, spending patterns, and welfare benefits on the widening gap. (The statistical charts in this book are themselves worth the

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What Went Right in the 1980s, by Richard B. McKenzie (Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 397 pp., $21.95)

IF DEBUNKING the economic myths surrounding the Reagan. years were an industry Richard McKenzie would be CEO of its largest corporation. Here the University of California economist systematically refutes the idea that the U.S. faces decline following a decade of Republican-inspired debt, greed, and excess. Reich, Kuttner, Galbraith, Phillips, and other liberal polemicists are quoted at length, with the author’s rebuttal a model of dispassionate scientific method. On income inequality, for example, Mr. McKenzie takes 65 pages to explain the roles of age, education, family structure, taxes, productivity, price indexes, spending patterns, and welfare benefits on the widening gap. (The statistical charts in this book are themselves worth the