In an era of political gridlock, Nader argues, mostly convincingly, that a “left/right alliance” can get the country back on...
Another populist manifesto from the veteran political activist and anti-corporate consumer advocate.
Younger voters might wonder who this author is who has hijacked Bernie Sanders’ message. But it’s a sign of change that ideas that had Nader (Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State, 2014, etc.) branded as a spoiler as a third-party progressive, when he siphoned votes from the left in the close 2000 presidential election, are now common currency in the Sanders campaign. Nader barely mentions his past as a perennial presidential aspirant or pays more than lip service to the Sanders campaign—“Senator Bernie Sanders repeatedly says, ‘They [the small billionaire class] want it all.’ ”—but his message seems very much in tune with the times, in a culture of Occupy and Black Lives Matter. “Changes for a better society often start with the power structures sensing a growing rumble from the people,” writes the author, sensing that growing rumble and signs of hope in issues ranging from homosexual marriage and transgender equality to environmental activism and campaign finance reform. “From the abolition of slavery to the introduction of seat belts,” he writes, “great social gains have been achieved when people mobilize, organize and resist the power of the few.” Despite a false equivalency that seems tone-deaf (slavery and seat belts?), Nader sustains a strong case of grievances against the “power of the plutocracy” and “the present two-party duopoly that ministers to their demands.” In the final chapter, the lengthy “Why Democracy Works,” the author offers a suggestion for “Citizens Summons,” which would summon members of Congress home to hear the grievances of their constituents.
In an era of political gridlock, Nader argues, mostly convincingly, that a “left/right alliance” can get the country back on track.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-87286-705-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: City Lights
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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
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
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