Essential reading to understand the economic state of the nation.
An insightful examination of how neoliberalism created widespread inequality and injustice in America.
The current economic landscape suffers from skyrocketing student debt, predatory lending, and stark income inequality. Baradaran, a law professor specializing in financial regulation and the author of The Color of Money and How the Other Half Banks, shows us how neoliberalism’s emphasis on corporations over people has “augment[ed] the power of corporations and capital over that of national governments,” creating an economic system that everyday citizens (and even lawyers and government officials) cannot navigate effectively. The transformation has unfolded slowly over decades and passed through countless hands, making it difficult to trace. Baradaran builds a carefully sourced, intricate narrative tapestry, moving from neoliberalism’s beginning as political propaganda, which allowed Nixon a seemingly “race-neutral” approach to maintaining the status quo in the wake of the civil rights movements, to the current situation in the U.S., in which seemingly everyone but the top earners grapples with inflation, a lack of affordable health care, and mountains of debt. “Neoliberalism transformed every level of the judicial process, from the courts to the way that laws are made in legislatures to agency rule making,” writes the author. “The result is the society we live in today.” Employing prose that is both accessible and intellectually rich, Baradaran deftly weaves key events in the history of neoliberalism into a complete picture. Using a keen, critical eye, she walks readers through pivotal Supreme Court cases, the dominance of the religious right within modern conservatism, and the removal of usury caps that used to prevent the institution of loans with extreme interest. Rather than a clear, quick power shift, the “quiet coup” has been just that: a series of small, often imperceptible shifts with radical repercussions for legal and economic policy.
Essential reading to understand the economic state of the nation.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9781324091165
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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
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