What do you think?
Rate this book
Wall Street's War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It
Layoffs upend people’s lives, cause enormous stress, and lead to debilitating personal debt. The societal harm caused by mass layoffs has been known for decades. Yet, we do little to stop them. Why? Why do we allow whole communities to be destroyed by corporate decision-makers? Why do we consider mass layoffs a natural, baked-in feature of modern financialized capitalism?
In Wall Street’s War on Workers, Les Leopold, co-founder of the Labor Institute, provides a clear lens with which we can see how healthy corporations in the United States have used mass layoffs and stock buybacks to enrich shareholders at the expense of employees. With detailed research and concise language, Leopold explains why mass layoffs occur and how our current laws and regulations allow companies to turn these layoffs into short-term financial gains.
Original and insightful, Wall Street’s War on Workers places US labor practices in the broader context of our social and political life, examining the impact financial strip-mining and legalized looting are having on party politics, destroying the integrity of democratic institutions. Leopold expertly lays out how the proliferation of opioids coupled with Wall Street’s destruction of jobs in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin have led to widespread mass layoff fatalism. Democrats have unarguably lost the longstanding support of millions of urban and rural workers, and Leopold points out how party leaders have been wrong about the assumption that the white working class is becoming less progressive and motivated to abandon the Democratic Party by reactionary positions on divisive social issues.
With deep analyses, stark examples, and surprisingly simple proactive steps forward, Leopold also asserts
Surviving and thriving in a competitive global economy does not require mass layoffs. A new virulent, financialized version of American capitalism is policy driven. To end mass layoffs, Wall Street’s domination of our economy must end. The accepted “wisdom” about white working-class populism is wrong. Ending stock buybacks and changing corporate officers’ pay structures could eliminate mass layoffs. Mass layoffs are not the result of inevitable economic “laws” or new technologies like artificial intelligence. Both groundbreaking and urgent, Wall Street’s War on Workers not only offers solutions that could halt mass layoffs but also offers new hope for workers everywhere.
PLEASE When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
In Wall Street’s War on Workers, Les Leopold, co-founder of the Labor Institute, provides a clear lens with which we can see how healthy corporations in the United States have used mass layoffs and stock buybacks to enrich shareholders at the expense of employees. With detailed research and concise language, Leopold explains why mass layoffs occur and how our current laws and regulations allow companies to turn these layoffs into short-term financial gains.
Original and insightful, Wall Street’s War on Workers places US labor practices in the broader context of our social and political life, examining the impact financial strip-mining and legalized looting are having on party politics, destroying the integrity of democratic institutions. Leopold expertly lays out how the proliferation of opioids coupled with Wall Street’s destruction of jobs in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin have led to widespread mass layoff fatalism. Democrats have unarguably lost the longstanding support of millions of urban and rural workers, and Leopold points out how party leaders have been wrong about the assumption that the white working class is becoming less progressive and motivated to abandon the Democratic Party by reactionary positions on divisive social issues.
With deep analyses, stark examples, and surprisingly simple proactive steps forward, Leopold also asserts
Surviving and thriving in a competitive global economy does not require mass layoffs. A new virulent, financialized version of American capitalism is policy driven. To end mass layoffs, Wall Street’s domination of our economy must end. The accepted “wisdom” about white working-class populism is wrong. Ending stock buybacks and changing corporate officers’ pay structures could eliminate mass layoffs. Mass layoffs are not the result of inevitable economic “laws” or new technologies like artificial intelligence. Both groundbreaking and urgent, Wall Street’s War on Workers not only offers solutions that could halt mass layoffs but also offers new hope for workers everywhere.
PLEASE When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published February 22, 2024
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
Want to Read
April 10, 2024Looking for the kindle edition of this book.
May 3, 2024
This is the book to read if you want to understand American culture, politics and economic ethos.
As an immigrant I had to often stumble through America's hidden rules and loop through its closed mazes.
I was also a white collar worker who was laid off at the brink of an expensive acquisition.
I knew the answer was greed, but I never understood the why or how. The reasons confused me then and, in fact, continued being a puzzle until I stumbled onto this book.
Must read for workers and students of all shades and backgrounds!
This book is the inspiration for my new blog post as well and I hope to share what I learned with more people.
As an immigrant I had to often stumble through America's hidden rules and loop through its closed mazes.
I was also a white collar worker who was laid off at the brink of an expensive acquisition.
I knew the answer was greed, but I never understood the why or how. The reasons confused me then and, in fact, continued being a puzzle until I stumbled onto this book.
Must read for workers and students of all shades and backgrounds!
This book is the inspiration for my new blog post as well and I hope to share what I learned with more people.
December 19, 2024
Having heard so many good things about this book and having experienced a mass layoff myself, I was excited to read this book. Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed. Yes, Leopold presented some interesting findings about the beliefs of the white working class relative to other demographic groups (based on the GSS and ANES datasets). Using this data, Leopold presented some compelling evidence that much of the recent uptick in right-wing populism is linked to economic insecurity and mass layoffs rather than to an increase in racism / phobias. He also does a good job capturing the psychological states of many of those who went through layoffs.
Unfortunately, this book failed on a lot of basic fronts. Instead of focusing on topics more unexplored for the American audience (e.g. the Works Councils across all of Germany (Leopold practically only focused on Siemens)), Leopold spent much of his time asserting debatable yet undefended assertions. An uncritical retelling of false history (e.g. the crash of '29 causing the great depression), an unwillingness to wrestle seriously with the importance of capital allocation mechanisms (some industries are contracting due to structural causes and should be dispersing dividends or buying back shares so the investors on the other side of those transactions can invest in industries that can actually be productive into the future), and a poor understanding of the direction and level of evidence required to establish causality (many SCMs are assumed with no evidence except for Leopold's intuition) all made this book frustrating to read at times.
In short, Leopold's political orientation is obvious, and he preaches to the choir so fervently that he alienated me (an Independent), and makes me question the validity of some of the more solid-seeming evidence he presented.
Unfortunately, this book failed on a lot of basic fronts. Instead of focusing on topics more unexplored for the American audience (e.g. the Works Councils across all of Germany (Leopold practically only focused on Siemens)), Leopold spent much of his time asserting debatable yet undefended assertions. An uncritical retelling of false history (e.g. the crash of '29 causing the great depression), an unwillingness to wrestle seriously with the importance of capital allocation mechanisms (some industries are contracting due to structural causes and should be dispersing dividends or buying back shares so the investors on the other side of those transactions can invest in industries that can actually be productive into the future), and a poor understanding of the direction and level of evidence required to establish causality (many SCMs are assumed with no evidence except for Leopold's intuition) all made this book frustrating to read at times.
In short, Leopold's political orientation is obvious, and he preaches to the choir so fervently that he alienated me (an Independent), and makes me question the validity of some of the more solid-seeming evidence he presented.
July 22, 2024
This was a hard read. Oftentimes books which preach progressive or left-wing values compare them vis-a-vis the conservative position, but Les Leopold takes aim at the Democratic Party in its entirety, and focuses on the moderate wing, the segment which I most sympathize with. It was a quick read (another one of those that could have been a long Atlantic piece), but it was a valuable education. The author uses his experience at Oberlin College, one of the most liberal institutions in the country, to break down how the power of Wall Street is destroying the working class, and more importantly how it goes unaddressed as it causes so much pain. The book can be split into two parts:
-First: Why has the White Working Class turned against the Democratic party in such a dramatic fashion, and how much of the shift is due to "cultural" reasons (religious, culture war, social preferences, etc...).
-Second: Identifying the causes of Mass Layoffs (a distinct term explained in the book) and proposed solutions.
I'll provide some summary and thoughts on each part.
Part I: The White Working Class and the Democratic Party
In the aftermath of the 2016 election there were countless "man in a Waffle House"-type stories that ran in the major news publications and magazines. These stories attempted to explain to their cosmopolitan readers that it wasn't racial bigotry or cultural backlash that caused Trump, but rather a deep distrust in the system and firsthand experience with financial devastation. These takes were very in vogue and even launched some political careers (see JD Vance and Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis). But as the Trump win turned into years of culture-war battles the belief that this was just economic insecurity lost cache. The author here decides to skip the interviews and examine studies, surveys, and data to determine if those "white working class" people were bigots. SPOILER ALERT: Turns out, the shift in beliefs was far more to the left than the right and support the initial interviews and narratives in 2017. These are people who have been left behind by the cosmopolitan elites and Wall Street raiders since the Reagan revolution. The author makes a compelling case that these voters have experienced immense financial difficulty which was caused by two parties (1) Wall Street's greed, and (2) Political inaction by (primarily) Democrats.
Part II: Wall Street's War
Why did the Rust Belt rust? Why did West Virginia fall victim to opiates? Why did Bed Bath & Beyond go under? Why did Carrier stay in Indianapolis? These questions more or less come down to the Reagan administration's decision to legalize the practice of stock buybacks in 1982. This, in combination with the growing business environment consensus following the Powell Memorandum in 1971 began to chip away at the implicit agreement between workers and shareholders that there should be some focus on the common good, and not merely (as Friedman posits) that the shareholder is everything. The author provides examples of how life could have been different over the past 50 years and then goes on to suggest a few policy prescriptions, I'll list my favorites below:
- End stock buybacks
- Place workers / public representatives on Boards
- Create state-level public banks (explicitly for the purposes of managing public dollars so that private institutions are not profiting off of state dollars, this could also be accomplished through new operating agreements with specific private banks)
- Limit corporate debt (this is my day job...maximizing it at least, so this one hit home but I agree that there should be more government intervention on excessive debt loads, especially when taken out to extract value for shareholders in the form of dividends, buybacks, and LBOs)
The point of the second section is to broadly open the public's eyes to the level of terror and destruction that the single-minded focus on shareholder profits has caused to America. It succeeds in painting a damning picture.
As we approach another Presidential election and both parties compete for the support of the working class it's worth taking a step back and asking what the objective is here. Do we want to maximize profits for the shareholding class with the clear understanding of where those profits come from? Can politicians use their power to pressure public and private companies to employ more Americans and keep jobs here? Is that socialism? Do we care?
4/5 stars. A helpful book that connects a lot of dots I already felt. Not an impressive study in economics or statistics, but a narrative success that forces the reader to come to terms with what capitalism has become in the U.S.
-First: Why has the White Working Class turned against the Democratic party in such a dramatic fashion, and how much of the shift is due to "cultural" reasons (religious, culture war, social preferences, etc...).
-Second: Identifying the causes of Mass Layoffs (a distinct term explained in the book) and proposed solutions.
I'll provide some summary and thoughts on each part.
Part I: The White Working Class and the Democratic Party
In the aftermath of the 2016 election there were countless "man in a Waffle House"-type stories that ran in the major news publications and magazines. These stories attempted to explain to their cosmopolitan readers that it wasn't racial bigotry or cultural backlash that caused Trump, but rather a deep distrust in the system and firsthand experience with financial devastation. These takes were very in vogue and even launched some political careers (see JD Vance and Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis). But as the Trump win turned into years of culture-war battles the belief that this was just economic insecurity lost cache. The author here decides to skip the interviews and examine studies, surveys, and data to determine if those "white working class" people were bigots. SPOILER ALERT: Turns out, the shift in beliefs was far more to the left than the right and support the initial interviews and narratives in 2017. These are people who have been left behind by the cosmopolitan elites and Wall Street raiders since the Reagan revolution. The author makes a compelling case that these voters have experienced immense financial difficulty which was caused by two parties (1) Wall Street's greed, and (2) Political inaction by (primarily) Democrats.
Part II: Wall Street's War
Why did the Rust Belt rust? Why did West Virginia fall victim to opiates? Why did Bed Bath & Beyond go under? Why did Carrier stay in Indianapolis? These questions more or less come down to the Reagan administration's decision to legalize the practice of stock buybacks in 1982. This, in combination with the growing business environment consensus following the Powell Memorandum in 1971 began to chip away at the implicit agreement between workers and shareholders that there should be some focus on the common good, and not merely (as Friedman posits) that the shareholder is everything. The author provides examples of how life could have been different over the past 50 years and then goes on to suggest a few policy prescriptions, I'll list my favorites below:
- End stock buybacks
- Place workers / public representatives on Boards
- Create state-level public banks (explicitly for the purposes of managing public dollars so that private institutions are not profiting off of state dollars, this could also be accomplished through new operating agreements with specific private banks)
- Limit corporate debt (this is my day job...maximizing it at least, so this one hit home but I agree that there should be more government intervention on excessive debt loads, especially when taken out to extract value for shareholders in the form of dividends, buybacks, and LBOs)
The point of the second section is to broadly open the public's eyes to the level of terror and destruction that the single-minded focus on shareholder profits has caused to America. It succeeds in painting a damning picture.
As we approach another Presidential election and both parties compete for the support of the working class it's worth taking a step back and asking what the objective is here. Do we want to maximize profits for the shareholding class with the clear understanding of where those profits come from? Can politicians use their power to pressure public and private companies to employ more Americans and keep jobs here? Is that socialism? Do we care?
4/5 stars. A helpful book that connects a lot of dots I already felt. Not an impressive study in economics or statistics, but a narrative success that forces the reader to come to terms with what capitalism has become in the U.S.
May 5, 2024
This was an interesting book about mass layoffs and the harm they've caused economically, politically, and personally. I love when a book challenges my beliefs, and this book certainly accomplished that.
Leopold makes an interesting case that technological advancement and automation don't typically lead to mass layoffs, as most people believe—that stance is so common, I would almost call it common knowledge. Except the author believes it's not true. There's no historical basis for those fears, and often they're pointed at by politicians as a convenient scapegoat so they don't have to contend with the corporate greed that has captured both major political parties in America.
Instead, he argues, it's stock buybacks and leveraged buyouts that lead to the most layoffs. I'm no expert, but the reasoning behind why stock buybacks are harmful makes sense to me. Company executives are beholden to shareholders to increase stock price, so they often spend the company's profits on buying up shares to artificially increase those prices. Pressure to do so when margins are slim leads companies to begin laying off employees to free up cash so they can buy back more stocks. This practice was considered a form of stock manipulation until regulations were loosened under the Reagan administration.
Some of the solutions the author presents are interesting as well. In Germany, some companies have "co-determination" wherein worker or union representatives must hold a number of seats in the board. This gives those representatives more power to negotiate in favor of labor when decisions are being made that may affect workers. The book includes a case study where Siemens employees in Germany were able to prevent forced layoffs of thousands of jobs while at the same time in the US there was nothing workers could do to stop it.
In the end, the author argues for a progressive populist movement, citing the fact that neither of the major political parties in the US do anything to stop mass layoffs (they see it as an inevitable cost of doing business; there is no alternative) and the fact that urban and rural workers are more aligned on social issues than our current political atmosphere would have you believe.
The book definitely got me thinking, increasing my sympathy toward those who have been left behind by current economic policies. I appreciated that it did more to shed light on rural working class people and humanize them rather than demonizing them like so many people do these days. The book would be worth reading for those chapters alone, in my opinion.
Leopold makes an interesting case that technological advancement and automation don't typically lead to mass layoffs, as most people believe—that stance is so common, I would almost call it common knowledge. Except the author believes it's not true. There's no historical basis for those fears, and often they're pointed at by politicians as a convenient scapegoat so they don't have to contend with the corporate greed that has captured both major political parties in America.
Instead, he argues, it's stock buybacks and leveraged buyouts that lead to the most layoffs. I'm no expert, but the reasoning behind why stock buybacks are harmful makes sense to me. Company executives are beholden to shareholders to increase stock price, so they often spend the company's profits on buying up shares to artificially increase those prices. Pressure to do so when margins are slim leads companies to begin laying off employees to free up cash so they can buy back more stocks. This practice was considered a form of stock manipulation until regulations were loosened under the Reagan administration.
Some of the solutions the author presents are interesting as well. In Germany, some companies have "co-determination" wherein worker or union representatives must hold a number of seats in the board. This gives those representatives more power to negotiate in favor of labor when decisions are being made that may affect workers. The book includes a case study where Siemens employees in Germany were able to prevent forced layoffs of thousands of jobs while at the same time in the US there was nothing workers could do to stop it.
In the end, the author argues for a progressive populist movement, citing the fact that neither of the major political parties in the US do anything to stop mass layoffs (they see it as an inevitable cost of doing business; there is no alternative) and the fact that urban and rural workers are more aligned on social issues than our current political atmosphere would have you believe.
The book definitely got me thinking, increasing my sympathy toward those who have been left behind by current economic policies. I appreciated that it did more to shed light on rural working class people and humanize them rather than demonizing them like so many people do these days. The book would be worth reading for those chapters alone, in my opinion.
May 10, 2024
This is the antidote to the "saving democracy" and how it's the white rural people that are the threat. NYT columnist Paul Krugman, like the authors of White, Rural Rage did no research requiring him and them to get off their butts and go out and talk to people in rural America.
Leopold's analysis is multi-layered, thoughtful, full of recent research, and his own observations as a scholar and the co-founder of The Labor Institute. He offers some ideas (rare these days in the loyalty of MSM to Biden's official B.S. Especially helpful is the idea of "co-determination" as in Germany where workers or union representatives have seats on a company's board. The book includes a case study where Siemens employees in Germany were able to prevent forced layoffs of thousands of jobs while at the same time in the US there was nothing workers could do to stop it.
I especially appreciate Leopold's plug for a progressive populist movement, reminding us that neither of the major political parties in the US does anything to stop mass layoffs. He also points out that urban and rural workers are more aligned on social issues than our current political atmosphere would have you believe.
My only quibble (actually a disappointment) in the book was Leopold's calling J6 an Insurrection. I think we've had enough evidence offered and more leaked to rule out that term. And his statement about all that whining about voter fraud. We've seen enough coming out of Georgia alone to stop calling it a lie that Trumpers like to spread.
I'm interested in what The Labor Institute is up to and hope that it's as good as Leopold's word and his writing and his gathering of data, not the usual scare tactics that are swirling about us now. He offers readers a deep look into the lives and challenges of American workers, especially in rural areas. I believe rural workers would like to have democracy back just like so many of us who have been told otherwise.
Leopold's analysis is multi-layered, thoughtful, full of recent research, and his own observations as a scholar and the co-founder of The Labor Institute. He offers some ideas (rare these days in the loyalty of MSM to Biden's official B.S. Especially helpful is the idea of "co-determination" as in Germany where workers or union representatives have seats on a company's board. The book includes a case study where Siemens employees in Germany were able to prevent forced layoffs of thousands of jobs while at the same time in the US there was nothing workers could do to stop it.
I especially appreciate Leopold's plug for a progressive populist movement, reminding us that neither of the major political parties in the US does anything to stop mass layoffs. He also points out that urban and rural workers are more aligned on social issues than our current political atmosphere would have you believe.
My only quibble (actually a disappointment) in the book was Leopold's calling J6 an Insurrection. I think we've had enough evidence offered and more leaked to rule out that term. And his statement about all that whining about voter fraud. We've seen enough coming out of Georgia alone to stop calling it a lie that Trumpers like to spread.
I'm interested in what The Labor Institute is up to and hope that it's as good as Leopold's word and his writing and his gathering of data, not the usual scare tactics that are swirling about us now. He offers readers a deep look into the lives and challenges of American workers, especially in rural areas. I believe rural workers would like to have democracy back just like so many of us who have been told otherwise.
May 14, 2025
The overall message of this book was very insightful and gave an interesting look into the context of the current political climate. I would recommend this especially to younger people who don’t have the lived-through experience of Reagan’s impact on American economic policy and culture to inform their understanding of the present day.
The analysis of the white working class’s opinions on social issues felt like it may have been somewhat misleading though and made me question whether this was on purpose or not. The focus on people who answered strongly agree/disagree and the neglect of those who selected the middle options made me question the author’s conclusions somewhat because of this missing information.
I feel like it also would have been helpful to include more discussion of what the working class/middle class/upper class distinction means in American culture. There were some mentions of small business owners and the class status of adjunct faculty and grad students, but I think it would have been very relevant and timely to discuss other people who don’t fall into the definitions laid out in the book. This could include the status of people who have degrees but now work in a different field, those who can fall back on generational wealth after being laid off, and people who choose to be contingent workers over stable employment for various reasons.
The majority of the book was very well written and compelling, but considering its short length I believe it would have benefitted from being slightly longer and delving deeper into some topics.
The analysis of the white working class’s opinions on social issues felt like it may have been somewhat misleading though and made me question whether this was on purpose or not. The focus on people who answered strongly agree/disagree and the neglect of those who selected the middle options made me question the author’s conclusions somewhat because of this missing information.
I feel like it also would have been helpful to include more discussion of what the working class/middle class/upper class distinction means in American culture. There were some mentions of small business owners and the class status of adjunct faculty and grad students, but I think it would have been very relevant and timely to discuss other people who don’t fall into the definitions laid out in the book. This could include the status of people who have degrees but now work in a different field, those who can fall back on generational wealth after being laid off, and people who choose to be contingent workers over stable employment for various reasons.
The majority of the book was very well written and compelling, but considering its short length I believe it would have benefitted from being slightly longer and delving deeper into some topics.
May 3, 2024
My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an advance reader copy.
Remember Occupy Wall Street? Remember "the one percent"? Remember all that stuff? Just ten years ago, those words and phrases were on everybody's lips. Since then it's all been forgotten---but not by Les Leopold, who has written an important and timely book. What makes it timely is that this is a presidential election year, and we MUST focus on how big business has thrown American workers to the wolves. This book is a handbook and essential reading for anyone, activist or ordinary citizen, who is still interested in this vital issue.
Leopold delves into how mass layoffs upturn lives, ruin entire communities, and make a mockery of the so-called American Dream. The "greed is good" and "shareholders come first" ideology must come to an end, and Leopold delves in to how that must happen.
In one vital segment of the book, he lays waste to myths about the white working class, challenging negative stereotypes. That's the most important part of the book in my opinion. "Wall Street's War on Workers" is going to cause quite a stir! And hopefully it will result in effective change.
Remember Occupy Wall Street? Remember "the one percent"? Remember all that stuff? Just ten years ago, those words and phrases were on everybody's lips. Since then it's all been forgotten---but not by Les Leopold, who has written an important and timely book. What makes it timely is that this is a presidential election year, and we MUST focus on how big business has thrown American workers to the wolves. This book is a handbook and essential reading for anyone, activist or ordinary citizen, who is still interested in this vital issue.
Leopold delves into how mass layoffs upturn lives, ruin entire communities, and make a mockery of the so-called American Dream. The "greed is good" and "shareholders come first" ideology must come to an end, and Leopold delves in to how that must happen.
In one vital segment of the book, he lays waste to myths about the white working class, challenging negative stereotypes. That's the most important part of the book in my opinion. "Wall Street's War on Workers" is going to cause quite a stir! And hopefully it will result in effective change.
August 5, 2025
I fell that this book offers a short but very interesting perspective on the causes and solutions for mass layoffs and it lays the bulk of the blame on the corporate focus on profits, stock buy backs and leveraged buy outs above everything else. Much to my surprise, rather than painting the Democrats as the good guys, the author makes the strong point that they often either do nothing, or join the Republicans in gutting the working class. One point the author makes that I completely agree with is that stock buy backs (legalized in 1982 by Reagan - thanks Ronnie!) have been pivotal in making the rich richer, exploding corporate pay (in the form of stock grants instead of salary and bonus) and triggering mass layoffs as corporations engage in financial engineering rather than reinvesting profits in newer and better products and developing their employees. I felt that this book explained many of the political and economic trends of the last 60 years in a way that made a greatl deal of sense to me. I'd recommend this book if you want a very different perspective on what's gone wrong economically and politically in the US and how to fix it.
July 27, 2024
This has been characterized as the rebuttal to "Rural White Rage" but I do not find that to be an accurate evaluation. The 2 books do not overlap completely in the populations they are describing & rather than invalidating arguments from the other, they arrive at more or less complimentary conclusions.War on Workers is more about deunionization which never has been a largely rural phenomenon. Taken together, these 2 books do much to detail the decline of the middle class over the years since the Reagan revolution.
September 2, 2024
Big take away: mass layoffs did not used to be the norm and have huge impacts on lifetime earnings of middle and working class Americans. Thought provoking as society searches for improved structures in which all are given an opportunity to thrive.
October 11, 2024
Picked up this book as I'm no fan of Wall Street and unchecked crony capitalism. It started off good, but this book is beyond idiotic. I didn't know anything about the author until after I was finished. Hardddddddcore socialist. I mean he called Bernie Sanders too right wing.
October 25, 2024
Decent read
November 9, 2025
Thought-provoking book on how our employment environment got to where we are today.
April 17, 2026
Really want to discuss this w people. So fascinating the hypothesis about working whites voting for trump due to mass layoffs not isms.
May 10, 2024
Fantastic book and extremely relevant to today’s political climate. An important read that won’t get the readership it should get, but us ordinary people- we should read it and absorb it.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews