The Common Good

Zusatztext Against the grain of much liberal thinking . . . Reich's proposals would make a good starting point for a new progressive political project. Michael J. Sandel! The New York Times Book Review Very timely . . . Reich's work is an important call for reform that should appeal to a wide audience disaffected with the status quo. Library Journal (starred review) Reich's lucidly defining and empowering call for revitalized civic awarenesscomplete with an enticing list of recommended reading and discussion guideis an ideal catalyst for book-group conversations. Booklist Clear-voiced and accessible. Publishers Weekly Brief but well-argued . . . a provocative essay. Kirkus Informationen zum Autor ROBERT B. REICH is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations and has written fifteen books, including The Work of Nations , Saving Capitalism , Supercapitalism , and Locked in the Cabinet . His articles have appeared in The New Yorker , The Atlantic , The New York Times , The Washington Post , and The Wall Street Journal . He is co-creator of the award-winning documentary Inequality for All and of the Netflix documentary Saving Capitalism , and is co-founder of Inequality Media. He lives in Berkeley and blogs at robertreich.org. Klappentext Robert B. Reich makes a powerful case for the expansion of America's moral imagination. Rooting his argument in common sense and everyday reality, he demonstrates that a common good constitutes the very essence of any society or nation. Societies, he says, undergo virtuous cycles that reinforce the common good as well as vicious cycles that undermine it, one of which America has been experiencing for the past five decades. This process can and must be reversed. But first we need to weigh the moral obligations of citizenship and carefully consider how we relate to honor, shame, patriotism, truth, and the meaning of leadership. Powerful, urgent, and utterly vital, this is a heartfelt missive from one of our foremost political thinkers. Zusammenfassung Robert B. Reich makes a powerful case for the expansion of America's moral imagination. Rooting his argument in common sense and everyday reality! he demonstrates that a common good constitutes the very essence of any society or nation. Societies! he says! undergo virtuous cycles that reinforce the common good as well as vicious cycles that undermine it! one of which America has been experiencing for the past five decades. This process can and must be reversed. But first we need to weigh the moral obligations of citizenship and carefully consider how we relate to honor! shame! patriotism! truth! and the meaning of leadership. Powerful! urgent! and utterly vital! this is a heartfelt missive from one of our foremost political thinkers. ...

Auteur
ROBERT B. REICH is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations and has written fifteen books, including The Work of Nations, Saving Capitalism, Supercapitalism, and Locked in the Cabinet. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. He is co-creator of the award-winning documentary Inequality for All and of the Netflix documentary Saving Capitalism, and is co-founder of Inequality Media. He lives in Berkeley and blogs at robertreich.org.

Texte du rabat

Robert B. Reich makes a powerful case for the expansion of America's moral imagination. Rooting his argument in common sense and everyday reality, he demonstrates that a common good constitutes the very essence of any society or nation. Societies, he says, undergo virtuous cycles that reinforce the common good as well as vicious cycles that undermine it, one of which America has been experiencing for the past five decades. This process can and must be reversed. But first we need to weigh the moral obligations of citizenship and carefully consider how we relate to honor, shame, patriotism, truth, and the meaning of leadership.

Powerful, urgent, and utterly vital, this is a heartfelt missive from one of our foremost political thinkers.

Résumé
Against the grain of much liberal thinking . . . Reich s proposals would make a good starting point for a new progressive political project. Michael J. Sandel, The New York Times Book Review

Very timely . . . Reich s work is an important call for reform that should appeal to a wide audience disaffected with the status quo. Library Journal (starred review)

Reich s lucidly defining and empowering call for revitalized civic awareness complete with an enticing list of recommended reading and discussion guide is an ideal catalyst for book-group conversations. Booklist

Clear-voiced and accessible. Publishers Weekly

Brief but well-argued . . . a provocative essay. Kirkus

Échantillon de lecture
Introduction I was at the impressionable age of fourteen when I heard John F. Kennedy urge us not to ask what America can do for us but what we can do for America. Seven years later I took a job as a summer intern in the Senate office of his brother Robert F. Kennedy. It was not a glamorous job, to say the least. I felt lucky when I was asked to run his signature machine. But I told myself that in a very tiny way I was doing something for the good of the country. That was a half century ago. I wish I could say America is a better place now than it was then. Surely our lives are more convenient. Fifty years ago there were no cash machines or smartphones, and I wrote my first book on a typewriter. As individuals, we are as kind and generous as ever. We volunteer in our communities, donate, and help one another. We pitch in during natural disasters and emergencies. We come to the aid of individuals in need. We are a more inclusive society, in that African Americans, women, and gays have legal rights they didn t have a half century ago. Yet our civic life as citizens in our democ­racy, participants in our economy, managers or employees of companies, and members or leaders of organizations seems to have sharply deteriorated. What we have lost, I think, is a sense of our connectedness to each other and to our ideals the America that John F. Kennedy asked that we contribute to.

Starting in the late 1970s, Americans began talk­ing less about the common good and more about self-aggrandizement. The shift is the hallmark of our era: from the Greatest Generation to the Me Generation, from we re all in it together to you re on your own. In 1977, motivational speaker Robert Ringer wrote a book that reached the top of the New York Times best-seller list enti­tled Looking Out for # 1. It extolled the virtues of selfishness to a wide and enthusiastic audience. The 1987 film Wall Street epitomized the new ethos in the character Gordon Gekko and his signature line, Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

The past five decades have also been marked by growing cynicism and distrust toward all of the basic institutions of American society government, the media, corpora­tions, big banks, police, universities, charities, religious institutions, the professions. There is a wide and pervasive sense that the system as a whole is no longer working as it should. A growing number of Americans feel neglected and powerless. Some are poor, or black or Latino; others are white and have been on a downward economic esca­lator for years. Many in the middle also feel stressed and voiceless. Whether we call ourselves Democrats or Repub­licans, liberals or conservatives, we share many of the same anxieties and feel much of the same distrust. We have nonetheless been cleaved into warring ideological tribes, and tribes within those tribes.…