For a recent review of the Los Angeles Review of Books, Sarah Brouillette discusses Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Fiance by Melinda Cooper. Click here to learn more about the book. Click here to read the full review. An excerpt appears below:

“Cooper’s argument adds to a considerable literature on neoliberalism that studies declining union membership, the diminishing labor share of income, spreading underemployment and contingent work, and deficits that continue to grow despite austerity-era spending levels. What is unique here is her extensive work on the moralization of taxation via the nuclear family, which concentrates wealth in ways that parallel and subtend the privatization of care. Cooper argues that private family wealth has become the preferred form in the United States, supported by a tax regime that is ‘so regressive it must be considered an instrument of wealth generation in the hands of the rich.’ Indeed, the US has witnessed a “resurgence of dynastic wealth” that Cooper suggests is the clearest symptom of the success of the regressive counterrevolution.”