A bracing study not just of Smith’s ideas, but also of how scholars and activists have used (and misused) them.
The iconic economist has become all things to all people over time, from Friedman-esque libertarian to anti-capitalist crusader.
Adam Smith (1723-1790), writes Harvard fellow Liu, was one of the brightest stars of the Scottish Enlightenment, with broad interests that ranged from law and rhetoric to philosophy and economics. Today, scholars are more inclined to link his notion of “moral sentiments”—that is to say, the bonds of social contract that make people want to conduct themselves honestly in business—to developments that he would spell out in The Wealth of Nations. The “invisible hand” evoked therein is one complexity. Another involves what Smith deemed self-interest, which, Liu suggests, does not mean dog-eat-dog but instead something approaching the golden rule: Trade fairly and freely with me, and I will do so with you. Yet his name has been hijacked as “shorthand for the virtues of free markets and the vices of government intervention in economic affairs.” The Founding Fathers put Smith’s ideas to work in constructing federalism precisely because they “appealed to enlightenment sensibilities about how to understand the governing dynamics of man in society.” For reasons of his own, Thomas Jefferson seems to have preferred French economists such as Jean-Baptiste Say, while Smith’s near-contemporary Alexander Hamilton “borrowed Smith’s distinction between ‘dead’ and ‘live’ stock to illustrate how banks did more than circulate precious metals.” Liu argues that Smith’s largely laissez faire attitudes did not mean a complete lack of government intervention, but the Chicago school of economics distorted his message in order to prove that self-interest meant, above all else, the “narrow desire for wealth.” Even if Chicago, the Heritage Foundation, and other right-leaning entities have tried to seize him for their cause, Liu examines the possibility that he may be “closer to the values of the contemporary left”—thus are the many ambiguities in his work.
A bracing study not just of Smith’s ideas, but also of how scholars and activists have used (and misused) them.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-691-20381-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.
Two bestselling authors engage in an enlightening back-and-forth about Jewishness and antisemitism.
Acho, author of Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, and Tishby, author of Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, discuss many of the searing issues for Jews today, delving into whether Jewishness is a religion, culture, ethnicity, or community—or all of the above. As Tishby points out, unlike in Christianity, one can be comfortably atheist and still be considered a Jew. She defines Judaism as a “big tent” religion with four main elements: religion, peoplehood, nationhood, and the idea of tikkun olam (“repairing the world through our actions”). She addresses candidly the hurtful stereotypes about Jews (that they are rich and powerful) that Acho grew up with in Dallas and how Jews internalize these antisemitic judgments. Moreover, Tishby notes, “it is literally impossible to be Jewish and not have any connection with Israel, and I’m not talking about borders or a dot on the map. Judaism…is an indigenous religion.” Acho wonders if one can legitimately criticize “Jewish people and their ideologies” without being antisemitic, and Tishby offers ways to check whether one’s criticism of Jews or Zionism is antisemitic or factually straightforward. The authors also touch on the deteriorating relationship between Black and Jewish Americans, despite their historically close alliance during the civil rights era. “As long as Jewish people get to benefit from appearing white while Black people have to suffer for being Black, there will always be resentment,” notes Acho. “Because the same thing that grants you all access—your skin color—is what grants us pain and punishment in perpetuity.” Finally, the authors underscore the importance of being mutual allies, and they conclude with helpful indexes on vernacular terms and customs.
An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781668057858
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon Element
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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