Books about Entitlements from Amazon.com

Every parent needs this book! * Never hear, "It's not fair," or "But I want it" again! * No more giving into your kids demands * Have the courage to say "No" * Stop stealing your child's potential for future happiness * Create the happy family of your dreams

Entitlement...the ruination of a generation

Does your kid expect every new electronic toy and gadget, every new game, every new fashion trend, and when old enough a new car? Are you stealing your child's potential for happiness, respect, appreciation, imagination, and joy?

Entitlement has become an epidemic. Yet parents think they are giving in to this disease out of love for their children. In From Innocence to Entitlement: A Love and Logic Cure for the Tragedy of Entitlement the legendary Jim Fay, and entitlement expert, Dawn Billings, take an in-depth look at the devastation and destruction of entitlement and provide techniques for preventing and curing the problem..
Price: $11.16 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A New York Times Business Book Bestseller


"Shrewd and optimistic . . . [The Good Life and Its Discontents] combines first-rate analysis with persuasive historical, political and sociological insights."
--The New Republic

Today Americans are wealthier, healthier, and live longer than at any previous time in our history. As a society, we have never had it so good. Yet, paradoxically, many of us have never felt so bad. For, as Robert J. Samuelson observes in this visionary book, our country suffers from a national sense of entitlement--a feeling that someone, whether Big Business or Big Government, should guarantee us secure jobs, rising living standards, social harmony, and personal fulfillment.

In The Good Life and Its Discontents, Samuelson, a national columnist for Newsweek and the Washington Post, links our rising expectations with our belief in a post-Cold War vision of an American utopia. Using history, economics, and psychology, he exposes the hubris of economists and corporate managers and indicts a government that promises too much to too many constituencies. Like David Reisman's The Lonely Crowd and John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society, the result is a book that defines its time--and that is sure to shape the national debate for years to come.

"A smart, balanced epitaph for an era--with a few clues for what's ahead."
--Business Week

"Lucid [and] nonsectarian . . . Samuelson traces how the reasonable demand for progress has given way to the excessive demand for perfection."
--The New York Times.
Price: $9.55 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Rich Kid Syndrome, by Steve Wolf, takes an original and eye-opening perspective on modern adolescent behavior, addiction, and family relations Not taking anything away from contemporary psychological or medical understandings of teenage acting-out behaviors, author Wolf boldly goes where few psychologists, sociologists, and drug counselors have gone to acquire a deeper appreciation for why kids misbehave in their teen years. The Rich Kid Syndrome grapples with the threats posed by middle-class culture and the entitlement issues that can manifest in contemporary adolescent conduct. Wolf posits that mental, emotional, and judgmental attitudes stemming from middle-class, “rich kid.” lifestyles give rise to a fertile ground of toxic, acting-out behaviors like drug addiction and improper risk-taking. Written with families in mind, The Rich Kid Syndrome is a must read for parents ready to throw in the towel, and for professionals who end up with more questions than answers..
Price: $14.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Since the original publication of this important and controversial book, it has stirred up business thinkers everywhere Now the landmark work has been updated and expanded (with five all-new chapters) to meet today's continuing challenges to the nation's productivity and morale. "This book offers timely solutions to America's national crisis."--Association Trends..
Price: $2.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"To those who would understand the reasons why Washington does not work, and to those who are seeking clues to end the gridlock for more than a brief spell, this book is a godsend " - David Broder, The Washington Post

An earlier edition of this extraordinarily prescient, elegantly written book created a sensation among Washington and media insiders when it was published more than five years ago under the title `Demosclerosis. In it, Jonathan Rauch, a former correspondent for The Economist and a columnist for National Journal, showed with startling clarity the reasons why America's political system (and, in fact, other political systems as well) was becoming increasingly ineffective. Today, as Rauch's predictions continue to manifest themselves in a national politics of "sound and fury" and little effective legislation, and in increasing voter cynicism, this book has achieved renown as the classic and essential work on why politics and government don't work.

In Government's End, Rauch has completely rewritten and updated his earlier work to reassess his theory, analyze the political stalemate of the last few years, and explain why sweeping reform efforts of the kind led by Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Newt Gingrich aren't the answers. He also looks ahead at what is likely to happen--or not happen--next, and proposes ideas for what we must do to fix the system.

For anyone who cares about the health of American democracy--and indeed of international security--Government's End is a fascinating, disturbing, and vitally important book..
Price: $5.90 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The main focus of this book is on the causation of starvation in general and of famines in particular The author develops the alternative method of analysis--the 'entitlement approach'--concentrating on ownership and exchange, not on food supply. The book also provides a general analysis of the characterization and measurement of poverty. Various approaches used in economics, sociology, and political theory are critically examined. The predominance of distributional issues, including distribution between different occupation groups, links up the problem of conceptualizing poverty with that of analyzing starvation..
Price: $27.85 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In this era of eroding commitment to government sponsored welfare programs, voluntarism and private charity have become the popular, optimistic solutions to poverty and hunger. The resurgence of charity has to be a good thing, doesn't it? No, says sociologist Janet Poppendieck, not when stopgap charitable efforts replace consistent public policy, and poverty continues to grow.

In Sweet Charity?, Poppendieck travels the country to work in soup kitchens and "gleaning" centers, reporting from the frontlines of America's hunger relief programs to assess the effectiveness of these homegrown efforts. We hear from the "clients" who receive meals too small to feed their families; from the enthusiastic volunteers; and from the directors, who wonder if their "successful" programs are in some way perpetuating the problem they are struggling to solve. Hailed as the most significant book on hunger to appear in decades, Sweet Charity? shows how the drive to end poverty has taken a wrong turn with thousands of well-meaning volunteers on board.

"Demonstrates, convincingly, that the growing emphasis on emergency food for the hungry is a Band-Aid that distracts from the fundamental goal of solving poverty." --The New York Times Book Review

"A book that reads . . . refreshingly like the work of a bright friend and good listener who knows a lot about an important topic." --San Francisco Chronicle

"A passionately argued book. . . . Raises difficult questions for [those] who are still outraged by hunger and poverty in the midst of plenty." --San Jose Mercury News

"Magnificent. . . . The most important book on hunger and poverty in America since Michael Harrington's The Other America." --Kirkus Reviews.
Price: $8.91 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Bruckner takes on the culture of copping out in this critique of a recent species of human self-deception: infantilism and victimization, the idea that powerlessness is a virtue without responsibility. This highly insightful essay dissects the culture of dependency and its damaging effects on the moral fiber of society, from corporate welfare to affirmative action. .
Price: $15.48 [Notify me when price goes down.]

No developed nation relies exclusively on the private sector to finance health care for citizens. This book begins by exploring the deficiencies in private health insurance that account for this. It then recounts the history and examines the legal character of America's public health care entitlements - Medicare, Medicaid, and tax subsidies for employment-related health benefits. These programs are increasingly embattled, attacked by those advocating privatization (replacing public with private insurance); individualization (replacing group and community-based insurance with approaches based on individual choice within markets); and devolution (devolving authority over entitlements to state governments and to private entities). Jost critically analyzes this movement toward disentitlement. He also examines the primary models for structuring health care entitlements in other countries - general taxation-funded national health insurance and social insurance - and considers what we can learn from these models. The book concludes by describing what an American entitlement-based health care system could look like, and in particular how the legal characteristics of our entitlement programs could be structured to support the long-term sustainability of these vital programs..
Price: $1.86 [Notify me when price goes down.]