Lucid and cogent.
Former Secretary of Labor Reich (Public Policy/Univ. of California, Berkeley; Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life, 2007, etc.) argues that America will not have a sustained economic recovery until the middle class has more buying power.
In this call for reform, the author writes that the increasing concentration of wealth among a small percentage of Americans was the main culprit in the destabilization of the U.S. economy in 2008. For three decades, the wealthy reaped inordinate benefits from a growing economy while middle-class wages stopped climbing. As the rich spent only a fraction of their fortunes (“The sheer magnitude of the task of spending obscene amounts of money can be surprisingly challenging”), they deprived the economy of the multiplier effect of many millions of dollars. Instead of trying to rebalance the distribution of income, the federal government deregulated, privatized and celebrated the idea of free markets. The middle class coped for a time, working longer hours, sending more women into the work force and borrowing as much as possible. Then came the crash. Now, in a period of aftershock, many Americans are moving from distrust to anger over an economy that seems certain to bring high unemployment and lower real wages for years to come. Before their resentments slow economic growth or open the door to demagogues, the author writes, massive structural reforms are needed to reestablish shared prosperity. Reich examines such “practical and doable” reforms as higher taxes on the rich; a “reverse income tax” to supplement the wages of the poor and middle class; a carbon tax on fossil fuels, with revenues going toward wage supplements; more widespread unionization; and strong campaign-finance laws. He notes, however, that it may take another deep recession to spur such action. Reich draws heavily on the thinking of banker and economist Marriner Eccles, who blamed a similar but worse economic trauma—the Great Depression—on the vast accumulation of income in the hands of the wealthy in the ’20s, which siphoned purchasing power away from other Americans.
Lucid and cogent.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-59281-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2010
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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