Feel like you’re running on an economic hamster wheel, powering an economy that benefits only a relative few? Jared Bernstein’s “Crunch” is for you.
So says reviewer Harry Hurt III in A Rock, A Hard Place and an Exit Strategy. Hurt walks through Bernstein’s discussion of the state of today’s median American, who has seen the economy grow pretty well through most of this decade, but not seen an inflation-adjusted increase in pay (in fact, the poverty level is on the rise). Hurt says Bernstein would have us counter the dark side of globalization by pursuing policies like full employment, risk-pools for health insurance and government operation of health care, and more controlled immigration, with education programs for those who become legal residents.
Though he says Bernstein is unabashedly left-leaning and “overly glib,” he concludes that
Mr. Bernstein makes a fairly persuasive case that economics is a tool that can be used to create a society with a far more equitable distribution of wealth and far more secure social safety nets than we have now. As he also notes, it remains to be seen whether our political leaders and government officials will take the initiative to use economics for the greater common good, or simply for the benefit of special interests.
Anybody read Crunch and care to chime in?
