Unlikely to sway those for whom the idea of economic inequality is anathema, but a set of arguments worth considering.
Tax the rich? Even out the playing field? Bad idea, writes a famously contrarian financier.
It stands to reason that someone affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute would be inclined to mount a stout defense of the 1 percent, and Conard (Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong, 2012) does not disappoint. Add to this his one-time role at Bain Capital, which he co-founded with Mitt Romney, and the package would seem to be complete. However, the author’s argument, calmly presented, has merits: it is true that, in general, the rich pay more taxes than they consume in government services and that a diverse knowledge economy offers more opportunities for wealth than a low-skilled one—and almost by definition produces inequalities. From these premises, Conard’s policy recommendations do not necessarily follow, and some of them are politically toxic, such as the thought that giving the middle class a tax break is ill-advised. “Successful risk-taking that produces innovation and gradually builds institutional capabilities accelerates growth,” he writes. “A middle-class tax cut will have no such effect.” Some of the author’s suggestions, if impractical, are intriguing—e.g., why not have the rich shoulder the burden of defense spending, since they’re the ones who have the most to defend? The weakest sections of the book are the most formulaic, such as the tired mantra that students should not be rewarded for studying English but should instead be induced to study something “useful,” never mind that many iconic business leaders (Steve Jobs, Bill Gates) have studies in philosophy and the humanities in their quivers. Conard also comes up short on specifics for the education reform that he argues is needed to produce a robust economy, noting weakly instead that “we should be running a multitude of experiments to find solutions that work.”
Unlikely to sway those for whom the idea of economic inequality is anathema, but a set of arguments worth considering.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59523-123-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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