Policymakers will welcome this practical guide to overcoming “cultural hangovers” and allowing more Americans to participate...
An optimistic report on ways to harness the power of the digital age to create jobs for Americans.
In this rich compendium of information on new tools “to rework America, to rebuild the American dream,” a bevy of business, technology, and other experts convened by the Markle Foundation explains that the same modern forces that have erased so many American jobs—technological leaps and globalization—can become the basis for a vast expansion of work opportunities. Data and analytics can help develop new jobs, and the Internet can better match employers and middle-skill workers. Novel ways can be found to categorize and credential talent for an increasingly “no-collar” world. Much of the book focuses on the need to overcome old mindsets and habits that dominate the world of work. Online connections are now making possible an explosive growth in commerce, say participants in the “Rework America” initiative. For example, a Brooklyn-based woman now transmits designs digitally to a shoe store in China, which custom-makes shoes with a 3-D printer. As better online platforms are developed, more American sellers will be able to reach foreign buyers. At home, an outdated labor market system fails to match employers and workers when it comes to fast-changing skills and job categories. Too often, companies engage in up-credentialing, requiring college-level skills for jobs, such as entry-level IT positions, that do not require them. On the other hand, college dropouts get little credit for the college work they have completed. Taking a more nuanced view of skill-to-job matching can generate many more needed middle-skills workers, an area expected to be the largest part of all future job growth. Other topics include the need to anticipate new kinds of training needs and find better methods for sharing data.
Policymakers will welcome this practical guide to overcoming “cultural hangovers” and allowing more Americans to participate in the benefits of our networked era.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-393-28513-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
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 readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.
A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.
Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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