Illusions of Prosperity: America's Working Families in an Age of Economic Insecurity - Softcover

Blau, Joel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195146069 ISBN 13: 9780195146066

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Faith in the free market--the idea that profit seeking, managed care companies will improve the health care delivery system--has become a hot topic in the public policy debate. But, as Joel Blau demonstrates in this splendid work, so-called "free market" programs have been a dismal failure. Here, he launches a far-reaching assault on the idea that "the market" knows best. He looks at recent reforms in NAFTA, education, job training, welfare, and much more, showing that the new social policies have made matters worse and calling for a stronger, more caring government to counter the debilitating effects of the market. He also urges the development of the broadest possible political alliances to ensure economic security. Sure to raise controversy, this book turns today's conventional wisdom inside out, making a profound case for the importance of a strong government in a world where markets do not have all the answers.

About this title

About the Author

Joel Blau is an Associate Professor, and Director of the Ph.D. Program, at the School of Social Welfare, State University of New York, Stony Brook. He is the author of The Visible Poor: Homelessness in the United States. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

From Library Journal

Blau's uneven polemic asserts that the current "market" approach to social ills helps only the top 20 percent of society while the rest suffer. He proposes increased federal government intervention as the solution, championing national healthcare, vastly expanded day care, stronger unions, and worker participation. Blau (social work, SUNY at Stony Brook), who looks at America through a Western European Socialist lens, feels that as long as business controls hiring and investments, education will not help most Americans. He acknowledges that his views are not in the majority but notes correctly that the pendulum could swing. Liberals may like his ideas; conservatives will cringe. Both will find this a tedious, occasionally condescending readAa lonely call for a return to big-government liberalism that most libraries will find more effectively argued in periodicals like the New Republic or the Nation. Neither lively enough to be called a screed nor convincing enough to be recommended.APatrick J. Brunet, Western Wisconsin Technical Coll. Lib., La Crosse
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0195146069
• ISBN 13: 9780195146066
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288