A serious, rigorous contribution to the debate over how to rescue a drowning middle class.
An ambitious book offers a radical proposal to save capitalism by exponentially increasing the number of capitalists.
According to the two debut authors and various politicians, the American middle class is ailing; while wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a plutocratic elite, inequality skyrockets. Chivukula, a New Jersey assemblyman and Democrat, and Musum, a Republican businessman, argue that the crux of the problem is that labor has gradually become severed from capital, and so the vast majority of productivity in the economy is supplied by a disenfranchised class hobbled by an appalling lack of appropriate payment for its efforts. The authors contend that the solution to this problem is to make the economy more inclusive by expanding the private ownership of both small businesses and corporations. This would be largely accomplished by a systematic overhaul of the tax system, which would simultaneously decrease taxes and dismantle various tax barriers to the proliferation of Employee Stock Ownership Plans. Those stock plans permit workers to enjoy the advantages of ownership while avoiding the principal disadvantages: they don’t have to buy this stock with their own wages or front their own property as collateral. The authors repeatedly make clear that this enlargement of the owner class, or the creation of more capitalists, drives their proposal. “Here’s the bottom line: Dramatically accelerate broad based property/capital ownership. Do that by requiring every corporate tax incentive conditioned on having some form of a broad based ownership share plan for their workers. Period.” The authors believe that this approach navigates between the alternatives of ferocious capitalism and ideological socialism. They call this the third way, which is an expression of “economic democracy.” This is not a facile exercise in political idealism: Chivukula and Musum furnish considerable empirical evidence that their strategy will not only work, but also be politically appealing to a broad spectrum of citizens, irrespective of party allegiances. They overstate the manner in which they provide a new alternative to both capitalism and socialism—this is really an intensification of capitalism. They likely also exaggerate the bipartisan allure of their ideas, since many will reject the central role given to the continued health and reliability of the corporate sector. But this remains an impressively ambitious effort to find pragmatic and innovative solutions to problems created and sustained by blinkered partisan commitments.
A serious, rigorous contribution to the debate over how to rescue a drowning middle class.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4942-5460-5
Page Count: 292
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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