A provocative, remedy-based perspective on the joint complexities of economic stability and ever expanding technology.
San Francisco–based veteran journalist Hill (Europe’s Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age, 2010) examines the degenerative influences of technology businesses on the national economy.
Despite the massive wealth and innovation flourishing throughout Silicon Valley, there’s also a major downside, writes the author. It lies in the premise of a “sharing economy,” in which participating businesses actively repurpose or outsource formerly full-time positions with project-to-project freelancers and independent contractors who earn reduced salaries with little or no benefits packages. Hill argues that this trend has irreparably damaged the American workforce, making it increasingly impermanent, disposable, and transient. The author writes of personally experiencing this trend himself after being laid off from full-time employment and then having to pay exorbitant health care premiums and payroll tax payments as a freelance writer. There’s a “sheer arrogance of avarice” afoot in the country, Hill writes, and he zeroes in on a selection of popular, lucrative tech companies that have an impact on future economic forecasts. Bolstered by startling statistical data and a generous sampling of real-life profiles, the author supports his theories with examples of apps like short-term home-rental company Airbnb, ridesharing behemoth Uber, and gig-economy brokerage platforms like Upwork and TaskRabbit. They are all contributory, in their own capacities, to disruptive side effects ranging from slumping economic and employment scales to the fissuring of closely knit neighborhoods. Hill’s survey of the movement’s lethal underworld of drugs and crime, robotic automation, and “economic singularity” is equally alarming. Inasmuch as the author emerges as a detractor, he counters his mostly critical text with proactive solutions involving options like all-employee benefits packages, tax deductions, and labor law reform.
A provocative, remedy-based perspective on the joint complexities of economic stability and ever expanding technology.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-07158-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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 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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf