A serious, openhanded discussion of contemporary American politics that forgoes specificity.
A comprehensive approach to public policy formulation oriented around the defense of inalienable rights.
The Declaration of Independence famously announces inalienable rights as the natural foundation of civil society and the ultimate limit to governmental authority, but it doesn’t clearly articulate the socio-economic conditions for the equal exercise of those rights. Debut author Public (a nom de plume) argues that the U.S.’s promise of equality has been undermined by a failure to provide equal opportunity, a misstep that rises to a dereliction of duty: “Like many other countries, America has a culture of abuse in which abuses of and threatening attitudes toward inalienable rights seem almost commonplace.” The author catalogs typical abuses that span contemporary political issues, including environmental policy, fiscal management, poverty, immigration, foreign policy, and religious freedom. Public continues a long-standing progressive intellectual tradition in America of focusing on the conditions that allow for the meaningful protection of rights, a departure from a more threadbare version that extends from the British philosopher John Locke. The author avers that rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness logically include the concomitant rights to a “healthful lifestyle” and a “healthful living wage,” which lead, respectively, to single-payer universal health care and minimum annual incomes for the financially disadvantaged. Overall, Public’s public policy analysis—which carefully balances the demands of individual liberty with a proper deference to the common good—makes that liberty both morally defensible and meaningful. The author’s study is admirably bipartisan and free of ideological baggage. For example, despite his avowed personal distaste for guns, he acknowledges the importance of a right to self-defense. Also, he manages to navigate complex policy debates accessibly but empirically, citing statistical evidence when appropriate. However, this brief work far too ambitiously attempts to cover the totality of political conundrums and so has no choice but to often remain hypergeneral and simplistic. For example, there’s virtually no serious discussion of the criteria for a “healthful lifestyle,” but nevertheless, he offers a very specific target for a minimum living wage.
A serious, openhanded discussion of contemporary American politics that forgoes specificity.Pub Date: March 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5320-1045-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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