The End of Work - Hardcover

Rifkin, Jeremy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0874777798 ISBN 13: 9780874777796

Publisher: Tarcher, 1994

Synopsis

An analysis of the potentially catastrophic implications of the growing worldwide unemployment crisis explains how we can avoid economic collapse, create conditions for a new, more humane social order, and redefine the role of the individual in the new society.

About this title

About the Author

Jeremy Rifkin is president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

In this challenging report, social activist Rifkin (Biosphere Politics) contends that worldwide unemployment will increase as new computer-based and communications technologies eliminate tens of millions of jobs in the manufacturing, agricultural and service sectors. He traces the devastating impact of automation on blue-collar, retail and wholesale employees, with a chapter devoted to African Americans. While a small elite of corporate managers and knowledge workers reap the benefits of the high-tech global economy, the middle class continues to shrink and the workplace becomes ever more stressful, according to Rifkin. As the market economy and public sector decline, he forsees the growth of a "third sector"-voluntary and community-based service organizations-that will create new jobs with government support to rebuild decaying neighborhoods and provide social services. To finance this enterprise, he advocates scaling down the military budget, enacting a value-added tax on nonessential goods and services and redirecting federal and state funds to provide a "social wage" in lieu of welfare payments to third-sector workers. 50,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Rifkin is a social activist and environmentalist who has written a number of provocative books. He has most recently gained attention with his Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture (1992), an environmental argument against the cattle industry and eating beef. He now warns of global unemployment due to the technological and information revolutions but suggests that job retraining may be an ill-conceived panacea because the jobs being trained for no longer exist or will not exist in the near future. He describes a workerless "post-market" future and shows how the same technological revolution could be used to foster a new social order in which third sector and community-based organizations take up the tasks of providing basic services and meaningful activity. The alternative, he cautions, is a burgeoning criminal class made up of the marginalized idle. Look for Rifkin to attract attention again. David Rouse

Global unemployment is now at its highest levels since the Great Depression. Rifkin (Biosphere Politics, LJ 5/15/91) argues that the Information Age is the third great Industrial Revolution. A consequence of these technological advances is the rapid decline in employment and purchasing power that could lead to a worldwide economic collapse. Rifkin foresees two possible outcomes: a near workerless world in which people are free, for the first time in history, to pursue a utopian life of leisure; or a world in which unemployment leads to an even further polarization of the economic classes and a decline in living conditions for millions of people. Rifkin presents a highly detailed analysis of the technological developments that have led to the current situation, as well as intriguing, yet alarming, theories of what is to come. Highly recommended for both general and business collections.
Gary W. White, Pennsylvania State Univ., Harrisburg
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Tarcher
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0874777798
• ISBN 13: 9780874777796
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 350