Illuminating economic history and sometimes eye-opening about the current situation—however, this version of leftist...
American Prospect co-founder and -editor Kuttner (A Presidency In Peril: The Inside Story of Obama's Promise, Wall Street's Power and the Struggle to Control Our Economic Future, 2010, etc.) critiques the Obama administration's embrace of debt-driven austerity policies and calls for the resumption of postponed financial reforms.
“Only the Republican refusal to entertain any tax increases under any circumstances saved the Democrats from even worse policies—at least so far,” writes the author, who insists that austerity is no match for a deflationary depression in progress. Historical background provides him precedents for such ideas as writing down unpayable debts, like mortgages, and reorganizing insolvent issuing institutions. These approaches were part of America's legacy in the past but are not included in today's policy discussions and are “far outside the political mainstream.” Kuttner believes that public policy must find ways to give relief to private debts that are “depressing demand and holding back recovery.” He asserts that the Federal Reserve has the power to play a direct role in this effort, and he also provides a discussion of the European financial crisis. Framed by intriguing discussions of the development of bankruptcy law from 18th-century English precedents and 19th-century political conflicts between independent farmers and corporate middlemen over credit and money creation, the author's focus on Obama is unsparing: “on the issue of spending cuts, Obama had already given away the game... it was all to clear that the eventual bargain would be fiscally conservative with cuts in Medicare and Social Security.”
Illuminating economic history and sometimes eye-opening about the current situation—however, this version of leftist economics will likely be taken as an ideological counterpoint to rightist free market doctrines, rather than a political solution capable of bringing representatives of different interests together in common purpose.Pub Date: May 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-307-95980-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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