Close your Facebook page and log out of Google. Shut off your TV and pull out the plug too. Be nice and kind; pay your taxes on time. The more you pay, the happier you will be. The ambrosia of altruism shall cure society of its ills and set the economy on course to redemption. This is the way, the truth and the life, proclaims the Gospel according to Sachs.

The financial disaster of 2008 has spawned a universe of books and American economist Jeffrey Sachs? The Price of Civilization: Economics and Ethics After the Fall is the latest in the series. However, unlike most books of the genre, Sachs has the bigger picture in mind?the picture of an America past its prime, thanks partly to the rapid ascent of India and China, but mostly due to its own sins. Published in the US just as Occupy Wall Street protesters descended on Manhattan, The Price of Civilization is around 300 pages of far-left fulmination at politicians, publishers, advertisers, lobbyists, bankers, builders, insurers, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Coal, Big Anything. If the Occupiers ever needed an academic manifesto, here it is.

Sachs, who goes by the appellation of a clinical macro-economist, is well-known for helping governments in Latin America and Eastern Europe combat hyper-inflation and economic disaster. The Price of Civilization is his attempt to diagnose and fix what he feels are America?s social and economic ailments. For someone with ideological leanings as clear as Sachs, the problems are simple, as are the remedies.

Sachs sees villains everywhere the same way Russell Crowe?s neurotic character imagines secret agents everywhere in Ron Howard?s A Beautiful Mind. Not surprisingly, every villain wears a capitalist?s hat. Bankers wreck the economy, insurers inflate treatment costs, pharma companies profit from patents,

doctors overcharge, builders cheat, oil companies pollute, TV channels corrupt, the military-industrial complex wastes billions, companies evade taxes, advertisers lie, internet isolates, lobbyists loot, the Fed blows bubbles, Washington works for Wall Street and politicians cater to the special interests mentioned above. Anyone left? Oh yes, the rich and the super-rich. They have abandoned their responsibilities to society, and must be forced to part with their riches soonest.

The society is not blameless either:

It is guilty of overeating, overspending, overconsumption and over-TV-watching, among multiple addictions.

Sachs, who wrote The End of Poverty and worked on the UN

Millennium Development Goals, bemoans the growing rich-poor gap, demanding immediate wealth transfers from the rich to the poor. How many middle-class Americans care for the widening gap? Sachs asserts they do; however, a Gallup poll released in December shows Americans are less worried about others? riches and are more concerned about the state of the economy.

Income equalities are widely seen as a feature of a market economy. In fact, only 45% in the Gallup poll felt the rich-poor gap should be ?fixed?, while 52% felt so in 1998?a period,

it is widely assumed, when inequalities soared and embittered wide swathes of the population. Sachs also doesn?t take into account views of economists like Arthur Okun, who posited that income gaps are often a function of market efficiency. Efficiency is not enough, asserts Sachs?fairness and sustainability are more important.

The author?s love for the poor fades in comparison with his hate for the rich. Blast-the-rich is a theme which runs through the book, from cover to cover. Despite his protestations that he is no wealth-basher, Sachs foams at the mouth at every mention of ?rich?, ?wealth? and ?money?, which are repeatedly attached to ?greedy?, ?corrupt? and ?unethical?. ?Social responsibility of the rich is something we will keep coming back to,? the author warns in an early chapter, and keeps his word. (For dummies, ?social responsibility of the rich? translates into ?higher tax rates for the wealthy?.)

How did it come to this pass?

Number one on Sachs? hit list is Ronald Reagan, Republican President from 1981 to 1989. The turmoil of 1970s America?the collapse of the gold standard, the oil shock and runaway inflation?fuelled the rise of Reagan as the messiah of small government and free markets. According to Sachs, Reagan?s sins were multiple. He dared to slim the government and worse, he altered the terms of the debate?Reagan?s successors adopted his small-government philosophy, culminating in 1998 when Democrat Bill Clinton asserted that the era of big government was over. Instead of seeing the crisis of 1970s as a series of unfortunate events which required specific counter-measures, Sachs complains American society fell for Reagan?s small government-mantra and never recovered. (Sachs sees the latest crisis as no such aberration but as the ultimate evidence of the failure of free market, which calls for radical social re-engineering.)

The American constitution takes some battering too. First, Sachs feels the two-year election cycle helps

evil forces (mentioned in paragraph two) dominate political campaigns. Second, Sachs feels the American constitution written in 1787 cannot stand today?s tests, though he feels the 2,500-year old calls to ?moderation? (read consumption cuts, less TV, no advertising) by Buddha and Aristotle are perfectly in sync with present times. Third, Sachs faults the representative system of American elections which splits the polity between Republicans and Democrats (both corrupt), cutting out the chances for any third party. A proportional voting system would have perhaps spawned a better party, muses Sachs. Utopia, we are repeatedly told, lies slightly northeast, across the Atlantic, in the Scandinavian welfare economies of Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

After the diagnosis in the first half, The Price of Civilization moves to prescriptions in the second. It is a grab bag of familiar liberal demands: bigger government, infrastructure, education, financial regulation, climate change mitigation, foreign aid, demilitarisation and poverty alleviation. In Sachs? ideal world, government spending will be at least a fourth of national GDP. Where will all the money come from? Won?t all the spending worsen US fiscal deficit? Here?s an interesting point: While his liberal peers like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz blast conservative ?deficit hawks? and encourage deficits to finance stimulus spending (borrowing costs are anyway low, right?), Sachs is a deficit hawk himself, with a difference. Why borrow when you can take it from your own rich guys? The price of civilization, we are told, is higher taxes. Paying taxes makes us happy, Sachs tells us, though he concedes at another point that taxes are unpopular in ?a nation founded on a tax revolt?. For starters, the tax rate on top earners must be raised from 35% to 40% in less than five years. But note that this is only a beginning?there?s scope for raising it further. Then, impose a wealth tax on accumulated money. Tax inherited wealth. Add a federal value-added tax. Tax financial transactions. Tax carbon emissions. You get the drift.

The Price of Civilization was written before the Wall Street Occupiers occupied Zucotti Park. But Sachs was quick to land up at the park and egg on the occupiers, with familiar slogans of 1% vs 99%.

This book makes no attempt at any point to substantiate its allegations?it is received wisdom that the bad guys are bad, so let?s see how to fix them. Again, there is no attempt to see how the book?s prescriptions might work. Without social and

political consensus on taxation, regulation, immigration and climate change either in the US or across the world, radical ideas like Sachs?s usually remain in the realm of far-left fantasy. However, manifestos aren?t meant to explain. In this respect, The Price of Civilization does a good job of preaching to the converted, without explaining its charges or outlining how the dreams may be translated into reality.

The Price of Civilization: Economics and Ethics After the Fall

Jeffrey Sachs

The Bodley Head

R599

Pp 326