Despite being an \u201ceconomic powerhouse,\u201d the United States \u201chas managed to lose much of its manufacturing prowess,\u201d and most low-tech production has taken flight to other countries like China, observes Olsen. We cannot simply accept an economy that runs singularly on services, he asserts. \u201cWe need to make more of our own things.\u201d Much of the problem lies in the tax code, per the author, which seems to punish the average American worker\u2014the linchpin of the nation\u2019s economic competitiveness\u2014and reward risky financial speculation. To remedy the problem, Olsen lucidly proposes a sweeping tax reform plan and suggests adopting a single-payer national health care plan and a \u201cChild Sustenance Assistance Service.\u201d The money to pay for these programs and tax cuts will come from taxing stock market and real estate speculation, the latter of which, according to the author, not only artificially raises housing prices but also destabilizes communities (these are provocative points argued with impressive analytical rigor). Olsen\u2019s approach is free of any partisan rhetoric or ideological axioms; in fact, he roundly criticizes both communism and free-market capitalism as \u201ctoo mechanistic.\u201d At the heart of the book is a stirring paean to the nobility of work and the central significance of the American worker to the economy as a whole. (\u201cA foundational principle of America is that the economy\u2019s very purpose is to serve the needs and aspirations of the American workforce.\u201d) This is a very brief book\u2014well under 100 pages of main text\u2014and such a quick treatment of so many complex issues can\u2019t be decisively persuasive. The author\u2019s discussion of alleviating poverty is particularly vague, and seems to amount to little more than hiring more case managers. However, the true value of this slim volume is that it stimulates further discussion by offering a perspective often neglected\u2014one that places everyday workers, rather than disruptive entrepreneurs, at the top of the nation\u2019s economic hierarchy.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite being an \u201ceconomic powerhouse,\u201d the United States \u201chas managed to lose much of its manufacturing prowess,\u201d and most low-tech production has taken flight to other countries like China, observes Olsen. We cannot simply accept an economy that runs singularly on services, he asserts. \u201cWe need to make more of our own things.\u201d Much of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2525"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}