A welcome plan from a wealthy man with empathy for the less fortunate.
The founder and general counsel of the nonprofit organization Prosperity Now explains how providing a few thousand dollars to every American family without a current financial cushion could move the entire nation toward economic health.
Friedman, who comes from the Levi Strauss family, focuses on how the outlays to each family could improve housing equality, education opportunities, and small-business entrepreneurship while also constructing a safety net that could rescue the nonwealthy from ruination due to unexpected health care costs or loss of employment. He also distinguishes his proposals from the oft-mentioned universal basic income, which is receiving considerable attention across the political spectrum. Though Friedman presents his prescriptions clearly, the understandably numbers-laden narrative can become overwhelming. Thankfully, the author intersperses each chapter with case studies of nonwealthy individuals who thrived after receiving the “few thousand dollars” during small-scale economic experiments mounted by Prosperity Now and other nonprofits or government agencies—e.g., Minh Tranh, a Vietnamese immigrant who arrived in the U.S. at age 15 speaking no English and is now a successful electrical engineer. Throughout the narrative, the author demonstrates persistence as he addresses myths spread mostly by Republican Party leaders. For instance, Friedman cites evidence that low-income Americans will indeed save money if the money becomes available; they will also spend it on higher education, home ownership, and business opportunities. A small financial windfall provided to the impoverished can decrease psychological depression while increasing positive contributions to society. Friedman argues that prosperity, alternately thought of as “economic well-being,” can become a reality for a much larger proportion of Americans. The book rings with cognitive dissonance, as Friedman pits his optimism about the economic future against the current realities of electoral politics, which seem aimed at increasing income inequality. The author is clearly aware of the dissonance, but he will not give in to discouragement. Sen. Cory Booker, a longtime activist in the area of income inequality, provides the afterword.
A welcome plan from a wealthy man with empathy for the less fortunate.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62097-403-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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
PERSPECTIVES
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
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