Oren Cass

Oren Cass deserves praise for his advocacy of the social value of work as well as his description of the many problems in our current system. He is, however, weak on the description of remedies. He advocates something called "productive pluralism" which is some kind of utopia where everyone has a great job with good wages. His path to getting there tends to be a recital of the typical conservative, libertarian proposals to abolish regulations, etc. He claims, without any support, that the show more removal of regulations will release a flood of new investment which will create good jobs for everyone. His arm-waving reminded me of the advocates of supply-side economics when they preach that all tax cuts will pay for themselves.

It is worth reading to understand a conservative's view of the problem. show less

If you do not believe that increasing GDP will automatically make everybody well-off and create more jobs despite low-wage competition fro overseas, this book offers an alternative. Likewise, if you do not believe that more spending on social safety nets that seem to lock people into dependency will ever create the self-sufficiency of a good job done well and paid well, you may also want to read this book. Cass is not your usual ideological Conservative. In fact, he is more nearly a radical show more than many on the Left. He is a thoughtful systems thinker who does believe in compassionate action. True, there are moments when his ideology seems to get the better of him, but he quickly pivots. The idea that being productive in any job leads to higher self-worth and that our society which values consumption over all is dysfunctional resonates more than all the Make America Great protectionism or New Socialist give-a-ways. show less

Interesting book from a very conservative perspective that I didn’t always agree with, but I did find to be fair and pretty well argued. He argues that jobs are much more important than we give credit for, on a personal, family, neighborhood, social, and national level. In some funny ways it reminds me of the Marxist valorization of the working class.

I will (probably) get around to writing a real review of this book in the next several days, but suffice it to say this is a compelling indictment of the current American status quo on trade, immigration, welfare, work, markets, and so forth from the perspective of getting American living-wage jobs created... from a conservative standpoint.