Last year I read Matt Taibbi's book Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con that is Breaking America, and it had
my head exploding, both because of the content and the awesome prose
that the gifted Taibbi
uses so well. In it, he does not just document what went wrong in the great recession. He also
makes it very clear why. The gutting of the American economy and the
rigging of its financial games are not accidents. They were planned by those who want to suffocate the rest of this economy and keep the spoils.
The first chapter tears into Alan Greenspan and Objectivism, which makes for fun and enlightening reading. However, my favourite chapters are the one dealing with the mortgage scam and the commodities bubble. This last is very interesting as it highlights how the artificially inflated commodities prices--no thanks to the work of the Fed, Goldman Sachs, and its clones--leading up to the recession received such little press both during and after the fact. This is the first decent treatment about this event that I've read so far, in three years of reading about the recession and its causes. So, if you read only one chapter, let this be it.
Taibbi also explores the strange and alarming phenomenon of cities and municipalities selling off public assets for short-term budget stopgaps in The outsourced highway, and ends with a primer on the mismanagement of healthcare reform in The trillion-dollar band-aid. Both of these issues have also been either underreported or misreported and Taibbi's shedding light on these subjects is not just illuminating but necessary.
To make myself feel better, I read Aftershock by Robert Reich. The liberal themes of fairness he echoes in his work are something I have believed in all my life, and have always had trouble justifying empirically. People may react strongly to Reich and call his ideas socialist, communist, Marxist. But the truth is that there is something profoundly democratic, even republican, about a society that is willing to lift up its least fortunate, even if it means the most fortunate must pay for it with slightly higher taxes. It's not such a far-fetched argument and neither is it alien to humanity's most noble callings.
This is a short book, and that's a good thing. The basic idea is so straightforward and so common-sense that it practically defends itself. However, Reich goes one step further by analysing historical data of trends in American (in)equality and prosperity. Although it's impossible to say that history will indeed rhyme, it's not implausible to suggest that an ever-wider income gulf will result in the election of an economy-destroying regime, which would hurt the rich even more than a fair redistribution of their outsized wealth. Their choice, therefore, is not between higher and lower taxes. The choice is between higher taxes and the ultimate destruction of their source of wealth, which more than anything is global trade. The tide will turn, Reich says, and we must now decide how that will come to pass.
Reich's masterstroke is the last few pages, where he details specific recommendations toward achieving a new wealth balance. The par-for-the-course higher taxes for the wealthy are matched with a reemployment system to replace the unemployment system, school vouchers based on family income, college loans linked to subsequent earnings, medicare for all, and an increased investment in public goods. He also details the realpolitik side of how things could get done, which mostly involves ever-increasing public pressure on private entities and the election of true representatives of the working classes to the halls of power. These sections alone make the book well worth reading.
The writing was good and the theme is of paramount importance to the United States now, but to all countries in general. Like Reich, I hope the people and the powers that be heed this call. Make your teachers read this book.
