{"id":14184,"date":"2024-08-06T21:44:21","date_gmt":"2024-08-07T01:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/?p=14184"},"modified":"2024-12-16T16:17:22","modified_gmt":"2024-12-16T21:17:22","slug":"book-review-the-ends-of-freedom-reclaiming-americas-lost-promise-of-economic-rights-by-mark-paul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/2024\/08\/06\/book-review-the-ends-of-freedom-reclaiming-americas-lost-promise-of-economic-rights-by-mark-paul\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Ends of Freedom: Reclaiming America\u2019s Lost Promise of Economic Rights, by Mark Paul"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>
\n<\/em>University of Chicago Press, 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Trudy Goldberg<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this ambitious, important book–especially for advocates of economic justice\u2014economist Mark Paul \u201coffer[s] a comprehensive prescription that aims to address the problem of persistent economic insecurity in America, one based on an expanded notion of American freedom and grounded in an alternative model of economic thought.\u201d In The Ends of Freedom<\/a>, <\/em>Paul \u201cproposes a new Economic Bill of Rights that is geared to the twenty-first-century economy.\u201d Mark Paul is Assistant Professor at the Bloustein School of Planning & Public Policy, Rutgers University.<\/p>\n

The \u201cright to work\u201d is central to Paul\u2019s new Economic Bill of Rights. Acknowledging that the term has been \u201cco-opted and corrupted by conservatives to mean the ability to evade unions through open-shop workplaces,\u201d Paul intends to rehabilitate the term. His definition: \u201cthe right to a job at a living wage.\u201d The terms Job Guarantee, Full Employment, and Employment Assurance\u2014also at a living wage–convey the same idea–without the conservative corruption.<\/p>\n

American Freedom<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

In the book\u2019s first section, \u201cAmerican Freedom,\u201d Paul makes the case for his 21st<\/sup> Century Economic Bill of Rights\u2014the need for it; the neoliberal, negative freedom policies that have created economic hardship for millions of Americans; and an alternative conception of economic freedom on which his proposed Economic Bill of Rights is based. In the interest of brevity, this review omits Paul\u2019s extensive, impressive documentation of the \u201ccurrent economic challenges faced by Main Street.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neoliberalism has been our reigning economic philosophy since the late 1970s and is responsible for the reversal of one of the important achievements of the New Deal order\u2014growth in national income and concomitant increase in the incomes of people at the bottom half of the income distribution. During the \u201cneoliberalism order\u201d the poorest half of Americans \u201csaw their incomes flatline.\u201d \u201cWhile growth during the period increased incomes in the United States by 61percent on average, that growth bypassed one out of every two Americans\u201d (1980 to 2014).<\/p>\n

Paul writes that \u201cour economic reality, our division into haves and have nots, is the creation of policy makers, or perhaps just the economists on whom they\u2019ve chosen to rely.<\/strong>\u201d U.S. policy has been guided by the author of Capitalism and Freedom, <\/em>Milton Friedman, for whom Freedom is negative–freed from<\/em>, not freedom to<\/em>, and above all, associated with so-called \u201cfree markets\u201d and limited government. Larry Summers, economic advisor to Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, once declared, \u201cWe are all Friedmanites now.\u201d\u00a0 Neoliberalism, however, was more than economic policy and a pro-business agenda.\u00a0 As Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce point out, the movement also “tapped into a resurgence of racism and patriarchal ideas.”[1]<\/p>\n

Paul correctly observes that Democrat Jimmy Carter began neoliberalism with deregulation policies and \u201ccutting government down to size.\u201d The election of Ronald Reagan \u201cwouldn\u2019t be just a Reagan revolution but a Friedman revolution as well.\u201d He would go further than Carter, implementing Friedman\u2019s \u201ctrifecta\u201d: deregulation, cuts to taxes and spending, and labor movement suppression. And the Reagan regime, one adds, would see high unemployment as well. The era of neoliberalism, in addition to severely constraining workers\u2019 freedom, has been marked by significantly slower economic growth than in the Keynesian era.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s Other Freedom<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

The US, writes Paul, has a tradition of positive freedom. That tradition includes Founding Fathers Tom Paine and Alexander Hamilton; two of our greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt; and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.\u00a0 \u00a0Paine, \u201cone of history\u2019s great proponents of liberty, equality, and democracy,\u201d developed \u201cthe powerful idea that political freedom and economic freedom were \u2018mutually interdependent.\u2019\u201d His proposal of universal pensions for the elderly was \u201csetting the groundwork for what was to become Social Security.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drawing on the work of economic historians Christian Parenti and Michael Lind, Paul writes that Hamilton, our First Secretary of the Treasury, saw a strong centralized state as a \u201cbetter guarantor of liberty\u201d than the free market. For Hamilton, the general welfare clause of the Constitution mandated a robust state that would utilize \u201cthe means proper\u201d to deliver freedom from want. Hamilton\u2019s ideas were \u201cside-lined in favor of small-government initiatives during the Jeffersonian Revolution of 1800 that favored a minimalist state.\u201d<\/p>\n

The inauguration of Lincoln \u201cmarked the revival of the American developmental state\u201d — with the enactment of the Homestead Act\u2019s \u201cradical land distribution program\u201d; the Pacific Railroad Act that ceded million acres of land to the railroad companies; and the Morrill Act that \u201chelped create America\u2019s public higher education system.\u201d Although these policies benefited many Americans\u2014and the railroad companies–I note that their effects on Native Americans were disastrous.<\/p>\n

Paul discusses the New Deal response to the Great Depression that \u201claid bare the devastating failures of the laissez-faire order.\u201d He cites Roosevelt\u2019s Commonwealth Club Address, delivered prior to his nomination for the presidency, \u201cin which he spoke of a new \u2018economic declaration of rights\u2019 that would fulfill, once and for all, the Founders\u2019 promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.\u201d \u00a0Paul refers to the well-recognized failure of the New Deal–that despite \u201cmassive infusions of cash,\u201d New Dealers never spent enough to end the Depression\u2014until the exigency of a world war forced them to do so. To gain Americans\u2019 willingness to make the sacrifices necessary for waging a world war, Paul observes, Roosevelt \u201cmade the war about freedom.\u201d In his 1944 message, with full employment achieved by the requisite government spending, Roosevelt proclaimed the landmark Second or Economic Bill of Rights, asserting that political rights had \u201cproved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u201cNecessitous men,\u201d he proclaimed are not \u201cfree men.\u201d<\/p>\n

Included in the panoply of economic freedom proponents, Martin Luther King, Jr. \u201cpivoted from talking about the long denial of civil rights to the long denial of economic rights.\u201d The prior Civil Rights March, however, had already made that connection. It was a March for \u201cJobs and Freedom.\u201d King joined A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, authors of A Freedom Budget for All Americans, <\/em>in emphasizing full employment and assurance of decent and adequate wages. He planned a Poor People\u2019s Campaign–a multiracial march of a million poor people on the Capitol. His speech, \u201cWe Need an Economic Bill of Rights,\u201d drafted in preparation for the Poor People\u2019s Campaign, was never delivered, owing to his tragic assassination.<\/p>\n

A 21st<\/sup> Century Economic Bill of Rights<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

In the wake of the Great Recession, \u201cthe Left began to organize.\u201d Signs of a \u201crevived Left\u201d were Occupy Wall Street, the Fight for $15, Black Lives Matter, Moral Mondays, a revived Poor People\u2019s Campaign\u2026. \u00a0This New Left \u201creinvigorated old conceptions of freedom, including the demand for economic rights.\u201d Also indicative of reviving progressivism was the insurgent 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders who \u201cspoke engagingly of an economic bill of rights\u201d in some campaign speeches and called for rights to housing and health care. However, Paul writes, \u201che backed away from earlier calls for economic rights and justice or a comprehensive vision that tied the individual policies together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The value of an Economic Bill of Rights, Paul emphasizes, is that it is \u201ca unified vision\u2014a north star of economic reform\u2026.\u201d One asks what significance this has for economic justice advocacy–perhaps a unified movement on behalf of the various rights?<\/p>\n

An Economic Bill of Rights for today, however, is not a matter of simply repeating FDR\u2019s pronouncement. Some rights can be deemphasized, such as \u201cfarmers\u2019 rights to a fair income”–which nonetheless should \u201cmost certainly be guaranteed.\u201d Other rights, such as \u201cthe right to a safe and clean environment, are more pressing.\u201d\u00a0 These are the Economic Rights that Paul proposes and justifies: The Right to Employment; The Right to Housing; The Right to an Education; The Right to Health Care; The Right to a Basic Income and Banking; The Right to a Healthy Environment. The Ends of Freedom <\/em>has chapters on each of these rights with impressive documentation of unmet need and consequent hardship along with proposed means of meeting the need or achieving the right.<\/p>\n

Paul wishes he\u2019d given some attention to additional rights, such as the right to unionize. In view of the deep decline in union density since the 1950s; the fact that unionized workers earn higher wages and have more workplace benefits than non-union workers; and the repeated failures of Congress to enact federal legislation to protect collective bargaining rights, I believe it is important to include, \u201cThe Right to Collective Bargaining.\u201d In fact, Paul writes that the Protecting the Right to Organize Act \u201cis languishing in Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Right to Work<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

Full employment requires:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. a commitment from the federal government to run the economy at full capacity <\/em><\/li>\n
  2. a permanent increase in public unionized employment at the local, state, and federal levels<\/em><\/li>\n
  3. a federal job guarantee<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Expanded public employment is a vital component of the employment guarantee. \u201cOne public employment program that could absorb \u201cscores of job-guarantee workers is a CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] reimagined for our rapidly warming world.\u201d\u00a0 To guard against involuntary unemployment, \u201cthe economy needs one final piece: a federal job guarantee.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Paul calls attention to renewed interest in the job guarantee and writes that William Darity, Jr., Darrick Hamilton, and he \u201cestablished just how the program could be organized.\u201d I would add that HR 1000, the Jobs for All Act, pending in Congress from 2013 to 2019, for which the National Jobs for All Network was the chief consultant. At one point, that bill had 60 congressional co-sponsors and the support of over 50\u00a0national and local organizations, including the United Auto Workers. Direct government job creation is the means by which HR 1000 proposed to provide jobs for all who want them Paul\u2019s proposed minimum wage is $15 an hour with an average of $17.50\u2014a sufficient wage so long as the other rights proposed by Paul\u2014to housing, education, health care\u2026are guaranteed.<\/p>\n

    In his 1945 State of the Union Address\u2014when President Roosevelt repeated his call for an Economic Bill of Rights, he referred to the employment guarantee as \u201cthe most fundamental, and one on which the fulfillment of the others in large degree depends.\u201d This, I would point out, was borne out in the Swedish welfare state which was a full employment state. According to the distinguished Swedish sociologist Walter Korpi: \u201cThe full employment policy \u2026 has probably been the most important part of the policy package \u2026. Social policies directed toward decreasing want and improving economic security have of course been valuable but would probably not have been sufficient.\u201d [2]<\/p>\n

    (The commitment to run the economy at full capacity is discussed in the section below, \u201cHow Do We Pay for It?)<\/p>\n

    The Right to Housing<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

    Paul focuses on two aspects of a \u201cHomes Guarantee\u201d: a government commitment to a robust social housing program providing high-quality public housing to whoever wants it and a government-instituted universal rent program \u201cto stabilize the private rental sector and rebalance the power differential between renters and landlords.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The Right to an Education<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

    Paul favors free public education at both ends of the educational age span. He proposes that all four-year colleges and universities as well as public community colleges and trade schools be made free for all. Expansion of the public education system to cover pre-school for three and four-year-olds is important at the other end of the educational age span. And federally-subsidized universal day care is also a prescribed right. Paul observes that while neoliberals consider college an individual investment benefiting only the student, there are benefits to the public as well–\u201ca whole swath of positive externalities.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The Right to Health Care<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

    Despite expanded coverage through Medicare and the Affordable Care Act, over 33 million American are without health care coverage, and another 41 million are \u201cunderinsured\u201d\u2014with such poor-quality insurance that they are unable to afford medical treatment. Yet, the US spends more on health care than any other country\u2014twice the share of GDP and 50 percent more per capita than the next highest spender. Racial differentials in health care coverage and outcomes are another US deficiency.<\/p>\n

    The solution: Medicare for All–nobody left uninsured or uncovered; no copayments or deductibles (in this sense superior to Medicare); comprehensive coverage, including dental, vision, and hearing; and no differential access for particular groups. It would be expensive, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates that such a single-payer system would result in a 5 percent reduction in national health care expenditures on an annual basis while providing quality coverage for the 33 million Americans who are still uninsured and the 41 million underinsured. \u201cDelivered in a Medicare for All-type program, this right would save tens of thousands of lives a year.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The Right to a Basic Income and Banking<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

    This is an innovative proposal. Whereas Full Employment and the Basic Income Guarantee are often seen as either\/or, Paul proposes both. \u201cWith the full slate of economic rights in place, a basic income set at $12,880 annually\u2014or $1,073 a month\u2014would eradicate poverty.\u201d The basic income would be for people 18 and over. To satisfy the aims of a basic income a child allowance must be included. The basic income would be phased out as a Negative Income Tax for adults but not the child allowance.<\/p>\n

    Indicative of how carefully Mark Paul has thought about the lives of poor Americans is his proposal of a banking right. \u201cBeing poor is expensive. Poor people are hit with fines and fees at nearly every turn\u2014for cashing a check, for having too low a balance in their bank accounts\u2026.\u201d Paul proposes a postal bank that could achieve the goal of universal access to financial services.<\/p>\n

    The Right to a Healthy Environment<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u201cWithout a habitable planet, the discussion of economic rights\u2026becomes absurd.\u201d Thus, “the right to a healthy environment is\u2026the most important right of all: it\u2019s the ground from which all other rights\u2026 spring.\u201d Three categories of initiatives are required\u2014green investments, smart climate regulations, and carbon pricing. What does \u201csmart climate regulations\u201d entail–what restrictions on the freedom of individuals and businesses to pollute does Paul envision?<\/p>\n

    The carbon pricing initiative refers to halting negative <\/em>carbon pricing (the tens of billions a year the government spends in subsidizing fossil fuel companies) and making carbon-intensive goods increasingly expensive.The next step is a carbon cap that would limit the number of emissions allowed each year. The government would auction permits which firms would need in order to pollute. Carbon-intensive goods would become increasingly expensive, resulting in decreased demand for them and reduced carbon emissions.\u00a0\u00a0Paul concedes it won\u2019t be easy, one reason being that fossil fuel companies will have to forgo $10 trillion in wealth\u201d in order to \u201cstrand\u201d fossil fuel reserves in the ground.<\/p>\n

    Would this be enough? What about pollution by the U.S. military which is the world\u2019s largest institutional consumer of petroleum and emitter of carbon emissions\u2014accounting for an estimated 5.5% of global emissions and more than three-quarters of the U.S. government\u2019s total emissions (2021)\u2014one of many reasons, including the huge drain on resources, why we need a vibrant peace movement.<\/p>\n

    How Do We Pay for It?<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

    Not unexpectedly, Paul turns to Keynes for an approach to affordability. Do we have the actual resources–“enough nurses, medicines, hospital beds, and MRI machines to make sure every American can get decent health care once they are insured?\u201d And he asks similar questions about the resources to deliver the other proposed rights. His answer to most of these questions is yes. But supply isn\u2019t unlimited, so it\u2019s necessary to ask whether there are real resource constraints or \u201csupply constraints\u201d and how they can be overcome.<\/p>\n

    Paul maintains that the United States can always find the necessary resources to fund its priorities and that it\u2019s \u201ca matter of public and political will.\u201d Such thinking was blasphemy during the reign of neoliberalism, but Paul points to some resurgence of Keynesian thought in response to the 2008 financial crisis and to the growing influence of proponents of modern monetary theory (MMT)\u2014the idea that countries that issue debt in their own currencies, like the U.S., can spend without constraint up to resource limits.<\/p>\n

    Whether we do have the resources sufficient for Paul\u2019s ambitious agenda is an important question. The economy, he holds, is almost always operating below potential resources, including unemployed workers. A federal job guarantee, Paul emphasizes, would be a means of increasing the supply of goods and services needed to fulfill economic rights. \u201cPrice controls,” he observes, \u201care a vital tool for keeping inflation down and inequality in check when supply constraints are present”–and \u201cwere a key feature… of the booming economy during World War II.\u201d<\/p>\n

    One way of addressing the issue of resources is to consider how efficiently we are using current resources. Take the $916 billion defense budget (2023). According to Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA), co-sponsor of the People over Pentagon Act to Reduce Defense Spending Act, \u201ca large portion of these taxpayer dollars are used to pad the pockets of the military industrial complex, fund outdated technology, or are simply mismanaged.\u201d The Act would cut $100 billion from the Defense budget and reallocate the funds to the American people’s most urgent needs.<\/p>\n

    Given the scale of the requisite economic transition, new and higher taxes will be required. One response to the consequent political problem is that if wages rise, housing is affordable, and health care or college education becomes free, political opposition to tax hikes is reduced. Big increases in revenues, Paul points out, could come from a wealth tax, such as those proposed by Senators Warren and Sanders during the 2020 presidential primaries\u2014raising respectively an estimated $210 and $335 billion annually. Besides the huge revenue potential, Paul observes that such wealth taxation would reduce the power of the wealthy to \u201cdistort and degrade the political system.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Paul points to some promising signs for securing economic rights–such as the near capture of the Democratic presidential primary in 2020 by a \u201cself-proclaimed democratic socialist\u201d; the huge Black Lives Matter protests that arose amid the pandemic; and an upsurge in union organizing drives. At the same time, these are \u201cdire times,\u201d with fascism \u201cagain sprouting in America\u201d; the \u201cplanet careening towards disaster\u201d; civil and political rights under attack; \u201cthe courts \u2026 more interested in stripping rights than with strengthening them.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Since The Ends of Freedom<\/a> was published, our times have become more dire. To resist dictatorial forces and inspire our pursuit of economic freedom, we have Mark Paul\u2019s stirring proposal for a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights–grounded in his impressive knowledge of economic and political history, current social problems and their solution, and passionate advocacy of economic freedom.<\/p>\n

    [1]\u00a0 Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce.\u00a0Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World<\/em><\/a>, New York: The New Press, 2023.
    \n[2] Walter Korpi,     The Working Class in Welfare Capitalism: Work, Unions and Politics in Sweden<\/em><\/a>, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974.<\/p>\n

    Trudy Goldberg<\/strong> is Professor Emerita of Social Work and Social Policy at Adelphi University and Chair of NJFAN. She is the author of numerous popular and scholarly works on comparative welfare states focusing on the poverty of women, the New Deal, and the struggle for economic justice.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    University of Chicago Press, 2023. Reviewed by Trudy Goldberg In this ambitious, important book–especially for advocates of economic justice\u2014economist Mark Paul \u201coffer[s] a comprehensive prescription that aims to address the problem of persistent economic insecurity in America, one based on an expanded notion of American freedom and grounded in an alternative model of economic thought.\u201d… Read More Book Review: The Ends of Freedom: Reclaiming America\u2019s Lost Promise of Economic Rights, by Mark Paul<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[45,10,14,143,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-on-income-inequality","category-environment","category-full-employment-history","category-job-guarantee","category-solutions"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14184"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14411,"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14184\/revisions\/14411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}