There are many proposals for stimulating economic growth and lowering unemployment, and though they sometimes make full employment a goal, none of them except the plan highlighted in this well-researched book can make it a promise.

John Pierson's Economic Performance Insurance (EPI) plan is his life-long campaign to tackle the New Deal's unsolved problems. He explains that the indignity and physical suffering of the jobless themselves do not have to continue, job discrimination can be combated, and our national income will rise as "nonproduction" declines. The social burden of fighting drugs and crime, closely linked with unemployment, can be substantially lightened, as can the heavy cost of welfare programs of all kinds, along with the extra expense passed on to consumers by business and labor in their efforts to cushion themselves against future recessions.

According to Pierson, "We are in a long pause between the historic New Deal discovery that depressions aren't acts of God and the awareness that serious business-cycle and unemployment problems can be eliminated altogether. The knowledge we now have, and the challenges we face, demand that we bring that pause to an end."