Book Review: Capitalism Alone and The Myth of American Inequality

As I prepared to read these two books, I had different expectations. I thought Branko Milanovic's Capitalism, Alone would contain some interesting defenses of capitalism, while The Myth of American Inequality by Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund, and John Early would offer an easy and perhaps banal defense of existing inequality. After all, what should I expect from a politician like the ex- senator Gramm, even if he pursued some good policy ideas during and after Ronald Reagan's presidency (when the Texan switched to the Republican side of the Senate aisle)? To my surprise, I found Milanovic's ideas rather banal and too uncritical of the zeitgeist of our times. Gramm et al., on the contrary, present deep and interesting statistical and economic analyses of the trumpeted inequality of American society.