We live in unsettled times. Political polarization is at record levels with polls showing large numbers of Americans fear a civil war may break out in the near-future. Wages haven’t risen in decades, and economic inequality has soared. Oldsters like me can recall a time when the real wages of laborers, waitresses and groundskeepers rose over time as a consequence of the rising prosperity underlying the American Dream. That ended, and yet America has continued to see rising prosperity as seen on TV shows depicting the opulent homes of elites and the soaring numbers of billionaires, some of whom seem to have achieved their wealth overnight. Yet none of this prosperity seems to trickle down to ordinary people like it used to. And now that it finally has over the last few years, it is accompanied by inflation that must be suppressed by raising interest rates to reduce employment, as well as slow wage growth.

What is going on? How is it the sort of widely-shared prosperity Americans enjoyed during the middle years of the twentieth century stopped happening whilst the prosperity of a narrow elite has soared? Perhaps this outcome underlies the divisions within American society. America in Crisis: Insights from New Social Science Disciplines presents an unbiased, unemotional investigation of what has happened to our society. I present no new ideas, but rather the integrated ideas of academic experts in a variety of fields to produce a rich description of how the post-WWII order of widely-shared prosperity was created, how it was lost and how it might be re-established.

First, American history is analyzed using evolutionary scientist Peter Turchin’s secular cycle lens, which characterizes history in terms of cycles of inequality. Next, cultural evolutionary science is used to develop a model of the last century of American history as an interplay between the economic cultures of stakeholder- and shareholder-capitalism. Which culture is prevalent depends on the economic policies (such as tax rates) that politicians enact. With this, the next thing to investigate is why politicians enact specific policies. Here, Stephen Skowronek’s “Political Time” model is employed to explain the constraints under which politics operate.

Armed with these insights, issues such as race relations and global warming, as well as economic and foreign policy, are analyzed from new perspectives. Finally, some observations as to how to achieve a better future are presented.

Michael Alexander holds a BSc in Chemistry and a PhD in Chemical Engineering and worked as a research scientist for Pfizer Corporation for 33 years. A student of the social sciences for the past 25 years, he has written four previous books on stock market, economic, and political cycles in America.

America in Crisis: Insights from New Social Science Disciplines is available now at a 25% discount. Enter code PROMO25 to redeem.

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