Business vs. government: in his book The Big Ripoff, Timothy Carney blows away the deception that Big Business and the government are adversaries and that the government defends the average citizen.(The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money)(Book review)

The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money, by Timothy P. Carney, Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006, 285 pages, hardcover, $24.95. (For ordering information, see the ad on the inside back cover.)

It is probably safe to say that the majority of Americans accept the notion that ours is a free-enterprise economy, based on free-market capitalism. Probably all of us learned in U.S. history class that President Theodore Roosevelt led the progressive campaign against the so-called "robber barons" of Big Business and promoted the passage of federal anti-trust legislation during the early years of the 20th century. We were told that this legislation was necessary in order to prevent the development and perpetuation of monopoly capitalism and all of the evils that would grow from it. As a result, the average American leaves school generally believing that laissez-faire capitalism needs to be restrained and that a benevolent government is working to ensure that consumers, taxpayers, and small entrepreneurs are not being exploited by Big Business.

In his book The Big Ripoff, Timothy Carney makes a very convincing argument that nothing could be further from the truth. As the subtitle suggests, the author blows away the deception that Big Business and the government are in opposition and that the government is on the side of the average citizen. He accomplishes this by way of extensive documentation and persuasive examples.

Although this is Tim Carney's first book, he possesses an impressive background as a freelance investigative reporter, having worked as a reporter at Human Events and written for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, American Spectator, and numerous other newspapers, magazines, and websites.

Veteran political reporter Bob Novak described Mr. Carney as "the best political reporter among the outstanding young men and women who worked for me" over the past 25 years. So impressed is Bob Novak by the revelations in The Big Ripoff that he feels that Tim Carney should be put in the same category as Upton Sinclair, whose book The Jungle allegedly revealed the scandalous goings-on within the meatpacking industry more than a century ago.

However, unlike Upton Sinclair, Tim Carney is no socialist muckraker, for this book is not a novel, but an investigative report that reveals a dirty secret of American politics, namely, how Big Business works with both Republican and Democratic politicians to erode the freedom and economic well-being of consumers, taxpayers, and small businesses. While some critics may charge Mr. Carney with bias, given his background working for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a nonprofit, anti-regulation group, the author correctly asserts at the outset, "My arguments and reporting deserve to be considered on their own merits, even if you have some skepticism about the organizations that have funded my research."

What You Aren't Supposed to Know