Left Behinds

The anti-andrewsullivan.com. Or, the Robin Hood (Maid Marian?) of bright pink Blogger blogs.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

The Disposable American

This book looks really good. It's about changes in labor practices over the past 30 years, specifically the undercounted effects of a shift to a corporate culture of mass layoffs. How did long-term job security become a rarity rather than something most middle-class people could count on?

As the Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote, "six (going on seven) successive administrations have failed miserably in protecting the American people from greedy executives, manipulative pension fund managers, leveraged buyouts and plain old bad business practices. In the process, he says, we've gone from a world where job security, benevolent interventionism and management/worker loyalty were taken for granted to a dysfunctional, narcissistic and callous incarnation of pre-Keynesian capitalism. The resulting 'anxious class' now suffers from a host of frightening ills: downward mobility, loss of self-esteem, transgenerational trauma and income volatility, to name a few."

(by the way, in case you noticed, I read the latest issue of Washington Monthly last week and have been meaning to write about it all week, hence all the WM links tonight)

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