An earnest but uneven work ultimately undermined by its ending.
A passionate defense of capitalism as the only system that can guarantee individual rights.
In the introduction to this slim volume, Sidhu (They Don’t Kiss in the Movies, 2005) criticizes conservatives and liberals alike, saying he’s searching for an alternative path. He then proceeds to outline an objectivist history of the United States, addressing a wide range of topics that include the Declaration of Independence, slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow laws, religion, poverty and monetary policy. The author rejects the concepts of civil and human rights as superfluous, saying that capitalist democracies already afford individual rights to all citizens. According to Sidhu, unfettered capitalism would set things right and take care of any discrepancies. For example, an employer who refuses to hire a qualified candidate due to some type of discrimination would eventually pay the price due to unsound, illogical business practices; the government, the author says, shouldn’t intervene in such situations. Although his opinions may not please all readers, he maintains clarity and restraint throughout most of the text. However, readers may find the book loses credibility in the seemingly tacked-on final section, “Part Four: Current Events,” written before the elections of 2012, which features an alarming diatribe about President Barack Obama: “I agree with Dinesh D’Souza that his actions are deliberate, meaning that he could be safely accused of trying to destroy the country’s economy.” Even Michelle Obama doesn’t escape criticism: “She can barely contain herself in talking of her slave ancestors in speeches to the black public.” The book also targets other familiar suspects in conspiracy theories involving the Federal Reserve, the United Nations and the Environmental Protection Agency. While criticizing the lack of objectivity in the mainstream media, the book makes the following questionable assertion: “Only the Fox News channel is immune to this partisan behavior.” After this, many readers may have difficulty taking the rest of the book seriously.
An earnest but uneven work ultimately undermined by its ending.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1480901667
Page Count: 90
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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