A Nation of Moochers

Sykes (Dumbing Down Our Kids) has produced a determinedly one-sided look at the current American economy, arguing that the population is becoming increasingly dependent on government assistance. While many of the issues he raises are timely and newsworthy (e.g., unnecessary farm subsidies, loss of collective bargaining rights by public workers, the European debt crisis, corporate welfare, bank bailouts), his repetitive and biased viewpoint provides little new information, focusing instead on extreme and perhaps apocryphal examples of people taking advantage of the system, be it loans for education, mortgages, farm subsidies, pensions, or flood insurance. While researched and heavily footnoted, the book is crowded by quotations from the Heritage Foundation, and an entire chapter is devoted to Ayn Rand. No government program is deemed worthy, from free breakfast for school children to financial aid for college students. The only answers are to return to a culture of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and to "restore some of the stigma of mooching." This is a prime example of preaching to the choir. Those who agree with the author will have already heard all these stories; those who disagree will only be infuriated by them.