A caustic but balanced attack offers an equitable economic compromise.
A withering critique of the ethical, moral, and fiscal harms of unlimited wealth concentration.
Robeyns, who holds the chair in ethics of institutions at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, proposes to clamp a lid on extreme wealth. She details where to draw the line on how much any individual might possess ($10 million), how to legislate such a wealth cap, and what to do with the billions in new tax earnings that could be employed to vastly better use; she marshals irrefutable evidence to support many of her conclusions. Despite the accusations of anti-capitalist propaganda that conservatives level against this point of view, the author is largely persuasive in locating the many sources of gross inequity and human rights violations linked to obscene wealth. Robeyns describes numerous measures that should be taken by governments in the name of fairness and fiscal justice. Limiting what is often the useless hoarding of inert wealth and trying to achieve a fair outcome for as many people as possible is an exceedingly desirable concept, but it also flies in the face of human nature and the allure of greed. The idea does not seem attainable outside of a perfect society. One suspects that, even within democratic societies, enforcing the limitation (much less elimination) of such financial inequalities would require draconian measures under current circumstances. This is not to say that matters couldn’t be improved to a considerable extent, as Robeyns demonstrates. Still, it’s one thing to theorize in academe, proposing well-thought-out solutions, but quite another to implement them against titanic opposition, which the author freely admits. No absolutist, she’s not against earned wealth, up to a point, but rather unearned or “dirty” money. Yet strategies that work so well in small nations don’t necessarily translate to massive economies.
A caustic but balanced attack offers an equitable economic compromise.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781662601842
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Astra House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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 fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
© Copyright 2025 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.
