Reich (Public Policy/Univ. of California; Saving Capitalism, 2015, etc.) takes a note from Adam Smith and runs with it in this spirited defense of the public sphere.
The best economy may be one in which unrestrained trade occurs in keeping with the laws of supply and demand, but it is also one in which human needs are met and externalities such as environmental costs are taken into account. In this new gilded age, writes the author, the common good is often ignored, even if a few interesting things are happening. For one thing, Donald Trump “has at least brought us back to first principles….Trump has got us talking about democracy versus tyranny.” The president and his ilk have also gotten us talking about whether there is such a thing as a social contract or a public domain after all. In this brief but well-argued treatise, Reich contrasts shareholder and stakeholder capitalism, the excesses of the former often explained away by the notion that the executive has a fiduciary obligation to increase returns to shareholders no matter what the cost. “The argument is tautological,” writes the author. “It assumes that investors are the only people worthy of consideration. What about the common good?” The enemies of the common good are countless, from latter-day slumlords to deregulated megabanks and untrammeled hedge funds, all of which disregard the rules society has evolved to keep transactions fair, “tacit rules that can be exploited by people who view them as opportunities for selfish gain rather than as social constraints.” Reich examines the rise of ruleless society as a function of declining trust in social institutions. Against all this, among other things—and now borrowing a page from Sandra Day O’Connor—the author urges a renewal of civic education to enable people “to work with others to separate facts and logic from values and beliefs,” including, one assumes, the belief that it is acceptable to rob the public blind.
Idealistic and stronger in description than prescription, but a provocative essay nonetheless.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-52049-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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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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“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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