by Katherine S. Newman & Hella Winston ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 19, 2016
A top-notch, highly accessible contribution to the business and popular economics literature.
Now that the tide of outsourcing employment has begun to turn, the time has come to think about how to reverse chronic unemployment among youth in the United States.
Newman (Sociology/Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst; The Accordion Family: Boomerang Kids, Anxious Parents, and the Private Toll of Global Competition, 2013, etc.) and Winston (Investigative Journalism/Brandeis Univ.; Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels, 2005) note that economic cost structures have changed, as large corporations—e.g., Wal-Mart (which will buy “an additional $250 billion in US-made products over the decade that began in 2013”), General Electric, and Apple—are working to bring jobs back home. But what kinds of jobs will they be, and who is qualified to take them? Well-paying jobs, for workers with the right kinds of skills, remain unfilled even now, but 50 percent of youth are unemployed. Therefore, expansion of technical education must be on the agenda, argue the authors. In the U.S., however, vocational/technical schools are often viewed as inferior to traditional four-year colleges or even a dumping ground for those without futures. The authors compare America's practices with those in Germany and Japan. In Germany, where youth unemployment is 7 percent, there is no such cultural stigma. Corporations, government, and labor all work together to develop curricula and training programs to qualify potential workers, and they offer long-term employment stability and high wages. Newman and Winston point out that America's manufacturing prowess used to be the envy of the world, but the stigma against technical education helped to erode that status. Reviewing America's attempts to establish a consistent framework for vocational and technical training, the authors document the negative consequences of warping youth's ambitions against skilled employment. The upcoming presidential election makes this a vital time to bring these questions, not otherwise addressed in this way, to the fore.
A top-notch, highly accessible contribution to the business and popular economics literature.Pub Date: April 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62779-328-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
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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