Spoiled Rotten: Affluence, Anxiety, and Social Decay in America

By Arthur Fleisher, Brian Goff, Fleischer Goff

Book Overview

According to commonly repeated reports, wages and personal incomes have stagnated in the U.S. over the last twenty-five years for average Americans. A corollary argument asserts that the combination of flat living standards for the masses and rising standards for a privileged few have created a number of social ills. Spoiled Rotten presents a simple and contradictory argument: properly measured standards of material well-being have grown for practically all U.S. residents over the last twenty-five years, and this fantastic growth is responsible for a variety of negative social consequences.In developing their ideas about wealth and its influence, Goff and Fleisher look for grass-roots explanations. The problems the authors attribute to the growth in wealth include employment issues such as job selection and security, family issues such as illegitimacy and divorce, rising crime trends, educational issues such as sluggish SAT scores, and others. Further, the authors discuss how wealth has allowed Americans to create problems out of thin air, including many of the supposed environmental dangers, health care expenditures, and safety regulation.Given appropriate space are wealth's many beneficial contributions to social issues. These benefits lead into the authors' final analysis in the book: what to do about wealth's negative effects without destroying its positive impacts?

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081333618X
• ISBN13: 9780813336183
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: Westview Press
• Length: 254 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

A fascinating thesis for our society

Goff and Fleischer have put succinctly into words an answer to the question, "What's wrong with America?" In the midst of prosperity and plenty for virtually all Americans, why does it appear that contemporary society is falling apart? Why are there Columbine High Schools and other, equally horrific, events occurring with frightening regularity? On a daily level we see shattered families, young girls raising babies and other disturbing events. The authors argue, persuasively, that it is primarily because we are so prosperous that we are having these ills. One reviewer missed the point entirely-in America, unlike the rest of the world all he has to worry about is getting an apartment, doubtless wonderfully made, fully equipped with all the conveniences and a huge number of true luxuries-cable tv, dvd players, etc. He drives to work in an air conditioned car and works in a pleasant environment. Hello! In this book, they make the point that even the "poverty level" family in America has access to things that are only a dream to the rest of the world. We do not work and slave just to get a mouthful of food for our family, use an open air latrine and sleep in a hovel. This is not about Gen X bashing, it's about the fact that we are spoiled and don't even know it. The great question is-what will we do about it? Get this book.

A dynamic entrance

Messrs Goff and Fleisher eschew the easy answers in analysing the distopia America has created with the unprecedented wealth which currently exists there. Instead, this work overturns the conventional 'wisdom' of politicians and media and asks and answers a series of questions which will become increasingly vital in C21 USA. If you've ever laughed at the idea that money doesn't buy happiness, here is the proof that it really doesn't. SimonF