Everybody talks about the economy. Everybody has complaints or recommendations but often nobody knows what they"re talking about. So asserts Eisner in this authoritative analysis of the real and imagined ills of the US economy. The text explains how economic and social progress is, and should be, measured, confronting widespread misconceptions about debt and deficit, government spending and taxes, unemployment and inflation, foreign investment and foreign trade. The author argues that government accounting is fundamentally flawed since it fails to distinguish between current and capital expenditures, as every business firm does. Not only is the deficit, when properly measured, not as large as assumed, but government spending is in fact not high enough. Eisner claims that we are starving this essential public investment, which will advance our productivity now and in the next century. Politicians and private citizens alike fail to understand that what makes sense to the individual, such as not spending and trying to save in case of hard times, may create more costly idle resources in the economy as a whole.