The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America

by Oren Cass

Issues in the current society we live in are the direct consequence of a decades-long economic consensus that prioritized increasing consumption―regardless of the costs to American workers, their families, and their communities. Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency focused attention on the depth of the nation’s challenges, yet while everyone agrees something must change, the Left’s insistence on still more government spending and the Right’s faith in still more economic growth are recipes for repeating the mistakes of the past. In this groundbreaking re-evaluation of American society, economics, and public policy, Oren Cass challenges our basic assumptions about what prosperity means and where it comes from to reveal how we lost our way. The good news is that we can still turn things around―if the nation’s proverbial elites are willing to put the American worker’s interests first. The renewal of work in America demands new answers to these questions. If we reinforce their vital role, workers supporting strong families and communities can provide the foundation for a thriving, self-sufficient society that offers opportunity to all.

Genres: Economics, Politics, Nonfiction, Business, History, Sociology, Audiobook

ebook

First published November 13, 2018

Reviews

[Amora · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book for the most part but I had to give it three stars because of the author’s attacks on free-trade. His chapter on free-trade has been criticized by economists because he relies on controversial research that has been under criticism. That being said, this book is still full of data and facts that changed my perspective. The chapters I especially liked were the chapters on healthcare and on the environment. Oren Cass makes the case that we should not just focus on economic growth but also the condition of workers.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have often complained that human flourishing cannot consist of increases in GDP that permit us all to buy more cheap Chinese crap every year. Oren Cass has arrived to say exactly why that is, and what we should focus on instead. He also adds important related thoughts, including very specific and reality-based policy recommendations. Thus, in many ways, this book completes my circle of thoughts on political economy, providing the basis for an economic program in opposition to the modern verities of both Left and Right.

Aside from that I agree with the author, I’m a good person to review "The Once and Future Worker" because unlike the vast majority of people who will read this book, I actually employ people in working-class jobs—hundreds of people. I have also worked as a blue-collar worker myself (finish carpentry), which further sets me apart from the eggheads who write and read books like this. And let’s be honest—Cass is an egghead, and he writes like one. Nobody will give this book an award for its sparkling prose. But that doesn’t make it less interesting.

Cass’s core datum is what is often noted, but just as often ignored, by our ruling classes—that all the increases in GDP in the past forty years have not changed workers’ wages, the median of which (in real terms) has basically stayed still. His concern is not the trendy worry that such stagnation leads to support for Trump (who appears almost nowhere in this book), nor that inequality as such is bad (though Cass thinks that too). Rather, it is that workers with good jobs and good wages are the bedrock requirement for strong families and communities, and only with strong families and communities is long-term economic prosperity and societal flourishing possible. It is therefore not a substitute for good jobs for all workers to instead maximize GDP through societally destructive methods and then hand out cash to unemployed workers to “make them whole”—because neither they, nor we, are in fact made whole by such balance sheet maneuvers.

Cass offers a fresh way of looking at this, by directly rejecting the metaphor of the “economic pie.” That pie is treated by both Republicans and Democrats as the summum bonum of all government policy, when the reality is that pie omits many economic and social elements critical to society. This obsessive focus on “economic piety” (get it?) results in part from the error of prioritizing consumption over production. While naturally consumption and production are closely related, making consumption society’s sole end results in the denigration of producers, and thus of workers. “Most of the activities and achievements that give life purpose and meaning are, whether in the economic sphere or not, fundamentally acts of production.” Another way of saying this, though Cass does not go quite so far, at least explicitly, is that we are capable of being happy if we are productive yet very poor, and much more likely happy than if we are unproductive yet are still able to buy more cheap Chinese crap every year. Cass’s plan, in opposition to “economic piety,” is “productive pluralism”—creating ”the economic and social conditions in which people of diverse abilities, priorities, and geographies, pursuing varied life paths, can form self-sufficient families and become contributors to their communities.” Productive pluralism will lead to human flourishing, genuine opportunity tailored to individual needs, and if done right, to a healthier and stronger overall economy over time, one that leads to sustainable growth through increased productivity.

We have triple the GDP we did in 1975 (though not triple per capita), and among much of society, we have broken families, destroyed communities, dependent people, and rampant suicide and addition. Per capita GDP therefore is not an accurate measure of prosperity. In many ways, Cass is reacting to the portrait of parts of America shown in J. D. Vance’s "Hillbilly Elegy" and Charles Murray’s "Coming Apart"—but he is showing a path out. Cass does not go into great detail about what constitutes a strong family. But it’s clear enough what he means—a two-parent family where the income that, ideally, one parent earns can comfortably support the whole family over decades in the place they live, including children, without government assistance. That family should be based on the obligation to provide and the obligation not to be a burden on society; responsibility is key. Such families, it is indisputable, produce the best outcomes for children, for the parents, and for the communities of which they have always formed the backbone. And it’s good jobs at good wages that makes such families possible. Moreover, increasing such families will erode dependence on the welfare state, and will diminish the contempt in which workers are held by the professional-managerial elite (I think Cass is wrong about that, though—the contempt comes from class hatred, not economic difference).

Republicans are wrong because efficient markets only maximize GDP, and that is far from enough. Democrats are wrong because their policies, while claiming to help workers, actually cater to a coalition whose interests do not lie with workers, and therefore their “solutions” are no solutions at all. What Cass wants to do is define our social goal with precision, then implement non-partisan policies that achieve that goal, knowing, of course, that everything has costs and benefits. His goal is a stronger labor market, that leads to a stronger society. By “labor” or “workers” he means not the small slice of professional-managerial elite who dominate the national conversation and politics, but, roughly, the “working class.” He doesn’t define that, but it’s apparently roughly coterminous with Joan Williams’s definition in White Working Class, the middle 55% or so of families by income, and without a college degree. His purpose is to lift up and renew the lives of that large group of people, accepting that will not be free, even for those people.

Cass rejects the idea that automation will effectively eliminate workers. He correctly identifies that if the prophets of automation are correct, productive pluralism is a fool’s errand. But he says all the indicators show no movement at all to workers losing their jobs to automation. Instead, to the extent automation grows significantly, it will mostly just make workers more productive, not obsolete, thereby increasing output with the same number of workers. This truth is masked by that output has been held basically constant for some time—if it were allowed to increase, the same number of workers would be employed, just to produce more. Recent GDP increases, in other words, have not come from increased output. Increasing output by each worker is practically the definition of economic progress. (This line of thought is a variation on Say’s Law.) Automation is not a phase change; citing Robert Gordon, Cass notes that even the fantastic technological advances of the late Industrial Revolution never powered output increases greater than 2.5 percent per year. Everything takes time. Plus, a great many jobs simply can’t be automated, whatever boosters like Elon Musk may say. Therefore, automation is not actually an existential threat to workers’ jobs, and may in fact benefit them hugely.

I agree with this analysis from personal experience. As I have discussed elsewhere, neither strong artificial intelligence nor things like true driverless cars are ever going to arrive, if “ever” means in my children’s lifetimes. Six years ago I spent quite a bit of money trying to design robots to perform the industrial functions around which my business revolves (basically, putting liquids into bottles). It did not work. The simple fact is that for my business, which involves a wide range of constantly changing form factors, people in combination with “dumb” machines is an infinitely superior solution—and it always will be. My industry will never be any more automated than it is. For similar operations that have fewer form factors, the same is true—for a long time, there has already been more automation in those types of operations, but again, it is “dumb,” with minor incremental improvements over time, and making it smart would add nothing at all. True, other industrial processes may be susceptible to automation. For example, we tend to think of car manufacturing—but their production has been automated for decades, and Cass cites “experts” who tell us that among the most automatable jobs “are tour guides, real estate agents, and fashion models,” along with school bus drivers. My conclusion is that this is all vaporware, and it’ll never arrive at all, since it’s based on the same defective magical thinking as driverless cars. But if it does, Cass is probably right that the impact will not be disastrous at all for workers, and he’s also probably right that a more likely technological future is more jobs for workers from jobs in new industries like additive manufacturing (i.e., “3D printing”).

Cass also defines “work.” It is labor activities that are actually productive, and known and felt by the worker to be productive. Substitutes are not acceptable. Cass has no patience with Andrew Yang, tech entrepreneur and pusher of the “universal basic income”—the idea government should pay all people for existing, wholly disconnecting consumption from production, because automation is going to take all their jobs, and that video games are an excellent preparation for, and if necessary substitute for, work. Cass holds that productive work is meaningful to the worker because it allows him to provide and offers him a role, in his family and in his community, which set of roles and actions creates the building blocks of society. It does not matter if his job is considered a “dead-end” job by the professional-managerial elite. To make those jobs exist and to make them available, social policies should encourage domestic industrial growth through regulatory reform, adopt specific worker-friendly education policies, limit immigration and unbridled cross-border trade, both expand and modify collective bargaining, and change tax policy. Each of these five areas Cass addresses in turn.

First up is growth-killing regulation, with a focus on environmental regulation, where he attacks the fantasies of benefits and ignoring of costs that drive regulations that kill enormous numbers of good jobs. He points out that just because past environmental regulation was beneficial, it does not follow that more is still needed, and will always be needed. Mostly, he blames Congress, not regulators. In truth, the blame is really shared, since the administrative state is a law unto itself, and further shared with the federal courts, who often collude with left-wing plaintiffs to avoid not just the democratic process, but the regulatory process, through consent decrees imposing new regulations. Cass is right, though, that only Congress can fix the problem, through mechanisms like revising the Clean Air Act to eliminate new source review (making it extremely difficult to build new facilities, but allowing older facilities to continue operating), and streamlining NEPA (requiring environmental impact reviews), mandating real cost/benefit analysis along with a regulatory budget that limits the total costs imposable across the entire government, and forbidding new rules to be issued after final rules are issued under any given statute (instead of permitting, as we have now, completely new rules to be issued under fifty-year-old laws).

Next is education. I had no idea that only about twenty-five percent of America’s young workers have a college degree. No other industrialized country follows America’s system of pushing all young people into a college degree from which they often receive little benefit (and is often socially destructive). Instead, they use tracking of students in early high school (disfavored here for a long time on grounds that it was anti-egalitarian, and totally eliminated forty years ago); in other countries, up to seventy percent of high school students are on vocational or apprenticeship tracks, often in cooperation with local industry. Cass points out that the innumerable charts braying that those with college degrees make more money over their careers say nothing about causation. He also points out that the trillions of money we have thrown at education have produced a grand total of zero additional achievement. The goal should not be college as an abstraction, but the right track that allows each student to get the right job, in order to be able to support a family while contributing to and building society. In most cases, this will be technical or vocational education. (I suspect that Cass thinks, or would think if he allowed himself to be honest, that such tracking would necessarily result in different tracks for men and women, but he does not address that question.) He notes that the huge subsidies we give to college (the federal government spends eight times the amount on college funding that it does on vocational funding) are handouts to the employers of the professional-managerial elite.

Cass then turns to borders. Unsurprisingly, he calls for sharply restricting admitting unskilled immigrants and for privileging skilled immigrants. He rejects that there are many jobs Americans simply won’t do. As far as illegal immigrants currently in the country, he suggests a LIFO approach—last, in, first out. If you just got here, you get kicked out right now. If you have been here for five years, you get a work permit for some years. Longer than ten years, you get ten years of work, and a path to citizenship. Then Cass cues up global trade. He goes through an analysis not dissimilar to Clyde Prestowitz’s in "The Betrayal of American Prosperity." Cass’s key point is that free trade isn’t good for us in the long term if trade is imbalanced in type (exchanging electronics from China for our garbage, the same example on which Prestowitz focuses) or funded with debt. Those imbalances with key trading partners result largely from the deliberate intervention by foreign governments to achieve specific strategic objectives benefitting their countries in the long term. We have no such policies at all. “The trade war has already started, but only one side is fighting.” This imbalanced trade reduces our productive capacity, encourages a focus on consumption, and erodes our future relative ability to trade on good terms. And it harms American workers—who, to be sure, are also consumers, but their being able to buy more cheap Chinese crap does not offset the erosion in their wages, their stability, and their communities.

That said, the solution isn’t tariffs, which are a crude and easily politically distorted device, nor should we get rid of agreements like NAFTA, which are mostly beneficial to workers. Nor does Cass really endorse the mercantilist policies found in many other countries (which I, on the contrary, think would be a good idea, but not in the current American ship-of-fools political dispensation). Many of the other policies Cass advocates in his book, including vocational education and regulatory reform, he thinks would also help here, along with others specific to this area, such as greatly expanded government funding for R&D in manufacturing. That’s carrot; stick should also be applied, in the form of punishing trade-discriminating countries by denying student visas (read: China, whose students flood American universities), denying medical technology, and denying access to capital markets, as well as prohibiting any imports tied to stolen intellectual property, and blocking or taxing Chinese acquisition of private assets in the United States. Cass has little patience for claims that free flow of capital is some form of wonderful benefit, and in any case, as with all these policy prescriptions, he is more than happy to trade off some drag on GDP for an economy with real strength, and workers who can contribute to a better society.

Next is unions. Cass thinks that regulatory costs, applied with a broad brush by government functionaries ignorant of workers’ real needs, often harm the ability to offer good jobs—but the goals of regulation, such as worker safety, are often sound. But as with new environmental regulations being issued using as authority fifty-year-old laws, the National Labor Relations Act is past its use-by date. The solution is to allow workers to collectively bargain with employers—not through traditional unions, which are wholly corrupt and, since most of the old goals of workers such as safety were achieved long ago, spend their days demanding “destructive work rules, circuitous grievance procedures, and counterproductive seniority systems.” Moreover, they are merely a tool of the Democratic Party (ninety-seven percent of political donations from unions go there), not advocates for actual workers. Workers know that unions as constituted now don’t actually represent their interests, which is why union membership has dropped so sharply and is still dropping. (Cass only addresses private employee unions, not government employee unions. This is probably because for the most part government employees are not workers in the sense Cass uses at all; they are parasites, and in any case unions of government employees should be totally forbidden, for reasons I have laid out elsewhere.) Instead, we should have “co-ops,” partially on the German model, and also integrated with the vocational/apprenticeship model that Cass recommends when discussing education. The co-op can tailor workplace conditions more precisely, including by negotiating certain terms of workplace regulation. It would be forbidden from engaging in political advocacy. Such alternative collectively bargaining arrangements are currently illegal under the NLRA, so again, Congressional action would be needed.

Cass caps his analysis with offering generally applicable prescriptions, mostly relating to tax policy. Rather than encouraging domestic investment through narrowly tailored subsidies like the Wisconsin Foxconn plant, or cutting corporate taxes to encourage investments, which acts as a bludgeon with much of its benefits not accruing to workers, we should encourage hiring by offering companies large direct tax credits for each worker employed. Most of all, though, we should simply offer a wage subsidy—government payments that increase worker pay without increasing employer expense, thereby encouraging employment. This is most efficient and least distorting solution. Sure, it’s redistribution. So what?

I’m a member, or rather my company is a member, of our local Chamber of Commerce. That’s only because we get 10% off health insurance that way. Otherwise, I hate their guts. Every time they say something, I cringe, because their view is the same “economic piety” that Cass attacks. I just was never really able to say with specificity what that was wrong (though much else the Chamber says is obviously wrong, like their stupid virtue-signaling advocacy of leftist social demands). Cass has helped me identify the flaws in their thinking. Of course, the problem is that if I went to a Chamber meeting and said all this, they would look at me like I was the problem. They would be completely uncomprehending and just think I was some kind of drunk cretin. That’s the problem—there is no powerful constituency for any of these proposals, or even for any of Cass’s goals. Even if there were, Congress could never bestir itself to adopt any of Cass’s proposals. Which is too bad, but doesn’t make this book any less worthwhile.

[Jason Furman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoughtful, provocative, carefully argued book that made me change my mind on some issues that I thought I’d thought about quite a lot, which is about the best a book can do. Cass agrees with many progressives on the problem (the lack of work for less-skilled workers), proposes some solutions that are not just the standard trickle-down, laissez faire ideas like wage subsidies, but also finds new arguments for a number of old conservative ideas like less environmental regulation. Overall a refreshing take on center right economic policy.

I strongly agree with Cass on the definition of the problem. Cass rejects the Panglossian views of some the people who like to deny the increased economic dysfunctions we are facing. Cass goes through a familiar recitation of the standard data on the slowdown of median income growth, the reduction in absolute mobility, and rising mortality rates. (Cass never uses the word “inequality” but in talking about the gap between mean and median incomes he is talking about the same topic.) The novelty was hearing this from the Manhattan Institute which I associated with the Scott Winship perspective that all these data were flawed and everything was much better than it appeared.

Cass goes one step further, rejecting the emphasis on growth and instead establishing a “working hypothesis” that “a labor market in which workers can support strong families and communities is the central determinant of long-term prosperity and should be the central focus of public policy.” I am sympathetic, in many ways being excluded from the workforce is much worse than income inequality, creating a downward spiral of exclusion for people and communities. But I also think Cass goes too far given the strong correlation between growth and median/bottom income and broader positive effects, many of them documented in, among other places, Ben Friedman’s Moral Consequences of Economic Growth.

This orientation sets him apart from both the “welfarism” that dominates economics by focusing on incomes and income distribution not the jobs and broader meaning Cass focuses on. It also separates him from supply siders and their relentless focus on economic growth over everything else. Some of this makes sense but, again, I think Cass understates the degree to which more money—especially for families with children—improves long-run outcomes in areas like health, education, crime and the labor market.

The second part of Cass’s book focuses on policy issues and in almost every case he evaluates them based on their impact of the employment prospects of less-skilled men. This leads him to be more supportive of manufacturing and less supportive of free trade and immigration than your typical center right conservative or, for that matter, myself.

In other places, it leads him to familiar arguments—like the need for less environmental regulation, a shift from cost-benefit analysis to a regulatory budget, and a lexicographic focus on less-skilled employment over environmental protection. Some of his arguments on the misapplication of cost-benefit analysis ring true but in my view the solution is better cost-benefit analysis not less of it. And he does not acknowledge the ambiguous relationship between environmental protection and employment (e.g., does requiring scrubbers create jobs retrofitting power plants or cost them?)

Cass’s discussion of unions is a mostly one-sided case against them but is followed by a thoughtful set of ideas on alternative work relationships that have much in common with Richard Freeman and what many on the left are thinking about, only in Cass’s case these would be in lieu of standard work protections.

The leading “big idea” in the book is Phelps-style wage subsidies for low wage work, an idea that I think deserves serious consideration although I would pilot it first since it is relatively untested and lends itself to fraud (people and employers can agree to report higher hours worked and thus record lower wages and collect a bigger subsidy).

Finally, the third part of Cass’s book is in many ways the most interesting, covering cultural and community issues that many progressives shy away from, including what Cass perceives as the increased denigration of more blue collar jobs and what this means for images and support for this work.

In the end, I disagree with many of Cass’s recommendations but I’m glad he is in what is mostly the right debate to be having about our economic future.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this based on the glowing recommendation from David Brooks, and perhaps I had my expectations set a bit too high that this was going to be a Totally New and Revolutionary Book full of Super Exciting and Visionary Ideas. It's a really clear and helpful articulation of a generally conservative perspective on our country's current economic situation. He was Mitt Romney's advisor on domestic policy, so that's where he's coming from. He's a principled, reasonable conservative guy with some good ideas. I also listened to several podcasts with him discussing the book, mostly on conservative and right-wing shows, and on some of them the extreme horribleness of the hosts really contrasted with his non-horribleness. He's not hateful or repulsive or dumb. (Hey, I didn't make any comparisons to You Know Who, you just went there on your own.)

The main idea of the book is that GDP is not really the correct or only metric to determine if everything is going ok. Overall the country can be getting richer and more efficient and consuming more stuff, but as is pretty apparent, there can still be quite a bit of suffering and inequality and stress among a significant portion of the population. If people cannot find jobs given their actual skills and abilities that will support their family in a decent standard of living, things are not ok. Work matters, and he thinks we need to evaluate everything based on how well people have that opportunity. "Growing the economic pie" is not enough on its own. (I think that is a different way to say "trickle down" and "rising tide" etc don't work without upsetting his people.)

The most interesting and concrete and well developed idea in the book is the idea of wage subsidies, which are basically the government adding on a few dollars per hour onto every worker's paycheck. This is in contrast to a minimum wage, which is a cost born by employers and passed on to consumers and thus can act as a disincentive to hiring and also a regressive tax on consumers. (Although the data out of Seattle looks less-bad all the time, so I think there's still discussion to be had about that.) A wage subsidy is born by "the taxpayers" which can be whomever we decide to tax, ie could theoretically be rich people and/or big corporations, etc. so isn't necessarily regressive. It also incentivizes work which is a plus. The issue is, of course how to pay for it. His idea is that we are already spending about $20,000 per poor person in aggregate with all our social safety net programs, so take some/most/all of that money and put it into wage subsidies instead. Which of course has big issues that I didn't think he adequately addressed in the book, namely: many beneficiaries of that money cannot work so will be left out of any of the benefit of wage subsidies. As I said, he doesn't seem like a heartless jerk and therefore acknowledges the existence of such people, but doesn't really bridge that gap. If they exist, then programs to help them will still need to exist, and we are definitely not going to get all $20,000 back to dish out in wage subsidies.

Some things I thought were unsatisfying:
1. I thought he just kind of brushed off automation and it's effect on work by stating that people were exaggerating how big a deal it is, la de da. I was completely unconvinced by it and it still seems to me like a potential revolution in the structure of our society. I am not a big fan of UBI, but I would really love to find some alternative that deals with the reality that potentially many people's skills are not going to be needed anymore, and how are we going to deal with that? Yes, the industrial revolution really changed the structure of our economy, and it seemed like it took us about a century to figure out how to deal with it and in the meantime a lot of people went through living hell, and I'd love if we could be more proactive this time.

2. Environmental regulation, he just kind of says maybe we should stop trying to improve things and prioritize jobs above the environment. He picks a few examples that he thinks are ridiculous. I wasn't especially convinced. I mean, yes, there is always that balance between jobs and regulation. But he is kind of vague and just thinks the balance should be more towards jobs. Fine, everyone puts the needle at a different spot. This isn't an especially new or useful idea.

3. Labor unions. He doesn't like them, and explains a completely different way to organize workers that he calls "co-ops" and thinks would be really beneficial and important to workers that honestly sound almost exactly like unions to me. It seems that the main issue he has with unions is the way they are ensconced in our law, which is something that I know almost nothing about so maybe he's right on about that. If we want to call things co-ops instead, fine with me.

4. He thinks we need to get serious about training people for blue-collar jobs and start respecting blue-collar work and quit this failed fantasy about everyone going to college. Right on. The thing I think is interesting about this is I think everyone agrees, but I get the strong sense that the right has this idea that the left disagrees and that this is a partisan idea. From how they talk about it, they get all heated and confrontational about it. I think it must be a talking point of more militant right talk show hosts or something. Is it because the Dirty Jobs guy Mike Rowe is conservative? Yes, by all means, lets train people for work that our society needs and value them for it.

Anyway, I'm glad I read it. It wasn't as different or surprising as I was expecting but I think it's super important to have smart conservatives thinking about ideas and offering possible solutions and I appreciate Cass laying out his ideas in such a readable book.

[Mehrsa · Rating 3 out of 5]

The neoliberal consensus is breaking up finally and there are a lot of books now on the left and on the right proposing solutions for the future and theories for why the last 30 years produced so much inequality and political chaos. This book comes from the center right and though it seems to grapple with some of the failures of the last 30 years, its proposals (except on trade and immigration) just seem to double down on the same tired and failed policies. I honestly cannot take seriously any book that proposes that the EPA should ease up on environmental regulation. Maybe particulate matter is not the main issue, but we are in the midst of a catastrophe. We are beyond cost/benefit analysis. I think the underlying theory of the book is sound and right--people need meaningful work and our policies have not recognized that. We need more state intervention to create healthy labor conditions--even at the risk of free markets. He opposes UBI and other solutions because they do not reward work, but I was turned off by the tenor of the book. It seems to be a big thinking book, but its ideas are so small and uncreative.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title is Worker not the more usual Work. And this is the orientation of this important book. It ties in with the discounting and disdain that the liberal intelligentsia have for the manual working person, now usually a supermarket shelf filler, warehouse packer or delivery van driver. Happy to receive the products but ready to ignore the hard work that has gone into it. At the time of writing, this battle is displayed in Trudeau against the Truckers.

We usually ascribe loss of jobs to the march of technology, to robots and AI. The author points out that it is matter of policy choices that have been and are being made and not an inevitable. An example is environmental targets, already quite high in the US. Liberals want them to be raised. Local people who want jobs would prefer to have a job. They see sufficient or pretty good progress as enough. You do not need to go to perfection, the idea of Zero Carbon, and they personally do not want to lose. We currently have this issue over opening a mine in Cumbria and giving jobs. Massively rising home energy prices and green levies. People matter and so do their livelihoods.

This idea is usually brushed aside but I attend webinars from the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Oxford University Economics Faculty. I am pleased that Labour Market Economists are now beginning to slowly factor in the quality and amount of paid work and to see the trade-offs that this book so well describes.

Representation is a problem. The time of successful manufacturing unions is well past. Then you had large numbers of workers in a single physical setting, going in on a daily basis. Now they are on the road, behind the shelves or stuck in a windowless warehouse, working to a routine without many breaks, with floating populations of temporary workers. It is difficult to get an organisation together that can represent their interests.

[Ron Peters · Rating 3 out of 5]

I periodically like to read a book by a conservative, if it’s getting good press, to see if I (a die-hard progressive) can find any areas of common ground or new ideas. Oren Cass is a pretty good egg; he’s an old-fashioned conservative, not a neocon libertarian. In terms of his values I can align with him on things like his concern for workers and, to some extent, for families (just don’t look too close at what counts or doesn’t count as “family” in his mind). In terms of policies I can also get on-board with some of what he says about education – for example, that it would be good to re-introduce career or vocational tracks into our public-schools. But I can’t come close to agreeing with his recommendations for rolling back the Clean Air Act, or with the fact that climate change never even gets mentioned in this book. Also, his discussion of immigration is framed in the context of “free trade” versus “open borders.” This fits with the basic frame of the book: everything is viewed through the lens of the labour market. I largely agree with his discussion of selecting immigrants who have skills needed in their new country. But he never mentions refugees once, just people looking for better jobs than they can find in their home country. (He also discusses unions, wage subsidies, and people who cannot work.) So, there were some values where I could the mental space to work with his ideas, plus a few specific policies, though I disagreed with most of them. But he writes in a reasonable, mostly balanced manner and strikes me as someone you could have a good debate with, rather than running smack into an ideological brick wall.

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 3 out of 5]

A survey of economic policy proposals for the segment of the right that has recognized the insufficiency of the corporate tax-cutting, GDP growth-idolizing, consumption-prioritizing Reaganite orthodoxy. Proposing a shift in focus from consumption to production, Cass discusses a number of worker-oriented policies that would facilitate the acquisition and maintenance of stable, remunerative, and socially edifying employment by the lower and middle classes.

His suggestions include easing certain successful but increasingly draconian environmental regulations to encourage the growth of the domestic energy sector, the introduction of a “tracking” system in K-12 education that would combine classroom training and paid internships for the majority of students who will not obtain a four-year university degree instead of promoting the idea of “college for all”, curbing the immigration of low-skilled workers and resolving the illegal immigration controversy with a “last in, first out” policy that would summarily deport recent arrivals while allowing more time for those more firmly established in the country to undergo a legal pathway to citizenship or to depart, and a direct wage subsidy that would help equalize the disparity in effective cost between foreign and domestic labor that has typically motivated employers to outsource their workforce.

An interesting read, if a bit wonkish, for those dissatisfied with the prevailing economic consensus.

[Vance Ginn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oren Cass posits that there’s much more to work than just a paycheck. I agree! The value of work provides tangible satisfaction throughout our lives. This sacrifice supports our desires along the way.

Cass builds on this thesis by looking at a number of social and economic factors. The current and future problems of the lack of work in particular jobs and the number of jobs likely displaced by automation give him reason to suggest the rise of voluntary coordination of workers, wage subsidy, better education that meets the latest labor market, limited immigration, improving the welfare system, and more would improve this outlook.

While the book is well-written and there are valid arguments throughout about the state of work today and likely tomorrow, the proposed policy initiatives too often expand government without considering how the government contributes to those problems.

There’s little discussion that we are taxed too much, government spends too much, and there’s too much regulation keeping work from being as valuable and accessible as possible.

My take is that government is the main problem today and could be a continual problem to increasing the marginal returns to valuable work no matter the skill set of an individual if there isn’t a push to reduce the size and scope of government.

I appreciate this book and the thoughtful approach throughout but think it ultimately steers off the course of sound policy to best support human flourishing, which is why I give the book 3 stars. I do recommend that you read it.

[Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cass believes, reasonably, that we should determine economic policy based on how it affects actual working people, rather than just examining overall GDP. This book is a bit wonky, but he makes some excellent points about how we can improve our economy to benefit more people without resorting to the typical, and ultimately harmful, socialist remedies.

I gave this book 4 stars which means it’s highly recommended, but I’d give Charles’ review of the book 5 stars if I could:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Alex O'Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting discussion on the future of work- in a very opaque package.

[Elan Garfias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting to see a book like this come out of the Republican intellectual landscape. While definitely not the anticapitalist opus so many neocons were scared of, it's a far cry from the GOP orthodoxy of just a few years ago. While personally it seems like the first wave of post-trump "populist Republicans" like Rubio and Hawley were mostly posers, the policies and ideological framework espoused in this book do seem like a step in the right direction, more on the order of Nelson Rockefeller or Nixon, the type of republican that hasn't existed since the 80s. Though still singing the market's praises at times, it rejects unqualified GDP as the sole metric for national wellbeing in favor of more holistic approach including robust families and communities. The unrestricted movement of goods and capital championed by the GOP and the open borders logic in vogue in liberal circles both face equal scrutiny as deleterious when not properly checked, so this book gets marks for balance on those issues. The chapter on unions was a bit more complicated. As a lifelong member of one, I can definitely sympathize with some of the complaints around lethargic bureaucracy and patronage, but the good absolutely outweighs the bad beyond question. His solution is for a gradual dealignment from traditional AFL locals in favor of more flexible guilds. I'm immediately skeptical of this one in an age when union density is depressingly low already, but he draws inspiration from the Scandinavian syndical model, which boasts some of the best labor rights in the world so I'm definitely open to hearing more. The chapter on the EPA was unconvincing in my opinion, and while I hate to play generational politics and felt incredibly boomerish. Supporting families and natality adds up to me, and the author is right to call out mainline conservatives for being so uncompromising on abortion while making zero effort to actually support mothers post partum. Lastly, I believe he makes extremely valid points about work and affect, though republicans are often solid on affect without backing it up with sound policy. He defends the work ethic and provider mentality as bedrocks of the nation, things which have come under attack, often by well-meaning PMC and academic types. I am much more sympathetic to antiwork arguments in general, though they are usually grounded in academic rhetoric rather than the labor movement. Perhaps this is an unavoidable ethnic blindspot for me, but as a first generation American I find labor to be an immense source of pride and dignity, a sentiment shared widely in the Hispanic community. On this Cass and I are in perfect agreement, though I also believe standard employment agreements predicated on accruing surplus values for multinationals will always leave something to be desired. Without getting too red in m review, I'll just close by stating why I think this book and the ideas inside can be valuable. It gives those of us outside the GOP a conceptual framework to find some common policy goals, and more importantly I think it might serve to drag a few conservatives away from the neoliberal morass of deregulation and anti-worker policy. Unfettered capitalism is losing the ideological purchase it used to have, even with its most reliable voting blocs. Opportunities abound.

[Andrew Figueiredo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is crucial to the discussion about what a post-Trump Republican agenda could look like, as Ezra Klein noted when he interviewed Oren Cass. Cass challenges both left and right with a conservative populist angle in favor of what he calls "productive pluralism". Defined, this refers to a situation in which people can (and are encouraged to) pursue dignified work in a variety of fields, provide for their families, and contribute to their community (30). Cass rejects the use of traditional numerical prosperity and consumerism as a measuring stick for economic policy, recognizing how community, family, and culture all play a less tangible role in ordering policy, but nonetheless an important one. That's an insight I wish the Democrats and Republicans would take note of.

Following from this and his upholding of work as a high order social good, Cass proposes reforms in various fields to encourage productive pluralism. His solutions expand the government beyond what Ted Cruz types would be comfortable with, but they're still couched in conservative rhetoric that could make them more palatable to Republicans. First, the ones I take little issue with. On trade, Cass is exactly right. Tariffs aren't very prudent, but asymmetric tools are crucial in our arsenal. Additionally, we can't let foreign market distortions find a place in our market, so cracking down on IP theft and unfair advantages other countries take is critical to re-establishing our global competitiveness. On the environment, Cass focuses mainly on pollution policy and how it should be better costed and more adjustable. Not a terrible idea but I wonder how he would address climate change, the elephant in the room.

Next, the fields where he's on the right track but could have proposed a more refined solution. On education, he eschews the regular conservative diet of charter schools and vouchers for more tracking towards vocational education and less of an emphasis on college education. Once again, an idea I can support. That said, he addresses the criticism that tracking might deny deserving poorer students the chance at college by saying that's a problem with the system... and then not addressing how to fix that issue! Maybe universal pre-k but that isn't brought up here. If you're going to point to a deeper problem, maybe at least provide a hint of a deeper solution.

Then there's an area I can't quite wrap my head around. It's ostensibly pro-worker but also guts itself. On labor, I took issue with his solution because it goes in the right direction but not nearly far enough. While I support a more cooperative model like the one Cass backs with a good deal of support, I feel like his solution is a halfway one that would gut organized labor. He makes good points about the inflexibility of the NLRA but operates from a presumption that labor is far more powerful than it actually is. Allowing regulations to be default rules may sound like a pro-flexibility move, but in reality, due to power relations, it could easily become a mess for workers. For that matter, he kind of ignores information asymmetry and proposes barring multiemployer negotiation and implementing a version of Right to Work, elements that undermine the plan to help workers, as Suresh Naidu points out in (this critique ). Other solutions seem more practical and pro-worker, but they're more discussed by the left than the populist right. Why not sectoral bargaining? Why not Lind-like ideas of wage boards? Cass' idea of collective bargaining would weaken the position of workers, even if it represents a step towards a more sustainable model in the long term.

This is most evident in his approach to wage subsidies and welfare. Much more compassionate than many on the right, Cass proposes using wage subsidies to encourage employment by incentivizing both hiring and getting jobs. It's not a bad idea at all, and the benefits he points to make sense. Shifting the cost of employment, supporting communities that lose their tradeable sector, providing some form of redistribution (168). Additionally, it really is a hand up instead of a hand out (as cliche as that is). Actively putting people to work is great for the reasons Cass notes and I'd love to see more research on this plan!

But he also supports it to make welfare>work less attractive. In so doing though, he plays up the level of welfare aid people get and misses some important solutions like expanding housing voucher funding like Joe Biden suggests. Do that many people really stay home and collect checks? This seems like a right-wing talking point that needs more statistical backing for me to take.
Also, granting states full freedom with a lump-sum kind of payment based on population would likely lead to abuses by right-wing state governments. And his attacks on Medicaid are cherry-picked/overly aggressive. There it is again; the deviation that makes me shake my head. Of course, with wage subsidies, there would be some paring back of welfare benefits (just because you need to provide less), but it doesn't require such a radical change as Cass proposes.

A wage subsidy system is indeed a good idea for lifting people out of poverty while encouraging work. As he notes, it would be less paternalistic and bureaucratic. What's not to like about workers getting money in their pockets? But Cass doesn't mention modestly raising the minimum wage simultaneously to prevent employers from cutting their base rate pay in return for subsidization. In fact, he embraces the fact that employers could adjust their pay as Pareto-efficient, ascribing a hell of a lot of benevolence to employers whose power would likely go less checked in his system. He bemoans Seattle's high minimum wage increase but notes that there was little negative effect from the initial increase to $11. Some economists support wage subsidies with a higher minimum wage, but that's not in Cass' plan, leaving a hole I struggle with. Why not support a small increase to ensure that the benefits really do accrue to workers?

I also don't think Cass does enough to propose a fleshed out job creation agenda. Lessening our trade imbalance and "building American advantages" would help create these jobs in the first place, but there's not enough ambition here. Job creation is a crucial step to making wage subsidies work like he wants them to. Investment in infrastructure, use of government procurement, antitrust enforcement, and restraining the excesses of private equity are all pieces missing from this puzzle. To his credit, Cass accommodates many of these ideas at American Compass. They're just not prominent enough in his book, which is still constrained by a marketphilic outlook.

Samuel Hammond of the Niskanen Center got it exactly right when he wrote for The American Conservative that "ideological confusion has carried over into Cass’s vision of post-Trump conservatism, suggesting less of a break with fusionist dogma than advertised". The issue I have with Cass is that he takes great steps towards a new paradigm and then falls just short of an even better solution. Maybe I should cut him some slack; he already gets enough hate from the economic libertarian right and has to operate in the right-of-center realm. Getting funding for American Compass is imperative. But maybe he genuinely doesn't want to take that extra jump. It's not up to me to guess which is the case, but this shortcoming prevents me from giving this book 5 stars. Two steps forward and then a big one back I guess. At the very least, he's starting an important conversation.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

In "The Once and Future Worker" Oren Cass gives a poignant historical survey of work, labor culture and economic policy in the United States and explains how both the left and right have failed all levels of the workforce, but mostly the working class.
Tax-and-spend Democrats AND free-market-at-all-costs Republicans have both done their share to promote policy that ultimately excludes many American workers from the progress enjoyed by the top college-educated income earners.
The serious implications for the economic future of the country depend on everyone -- particularly the younger segments of the workforce -- being willing to rethink what goals should be regarding work and what it truly means to make a good living.
Since the 1960s, well-meaning social and educational programs, such as the "college for all" guiding principal in education, and the ever-expanding number and scope of anti-poverty entitlement programs have had an ever-worsening effect on the percentage of people living below the poverty line.
One of the most telling statistics Cass included in the book is how little economic value a basic high school education has today in terms of its use in supporting a family -- and that it's getting worse.
In the late '70s, a man with no more than a high school diploma could support a family at twice the poverty rate, but now that earning ability can provide no more than 40 percent above the current poverty level.
Where high schools in other countries -- and in the United States two generations ago -- provide career-track curricula starting in middle school or high school, preparing students to enter the workforce with marketable, job-ready skills, higher and higher percentages of today's high school graduates (and those rates have dropped precipitously as well) struggle to make even the most basic ends meet. Staggering percentages of young men remain on Medicaid, living in government subsidized housing than ever before.
Much of the disappearance of the jobs that these young men may have had in the manufacturing sector in a previous generation have disappeared as a result of policy that favors "statistical lives" --- data points crafted by analysts at the EPA and other government agencies -- rather than the actual lives of the people and communities that depended on long-shuttered factories.
Cass makes some very compelling proposals for turning around punishing regulations and helping to empower lower-income earners, such as through wage subsidies, better job training and a re-examination of what priorities matter most with federal policy -- issues such as the health and well-being of foreign workers and environmental regulation, or the health and welfare of domestic workers, their communities and a truly sustainable labor force?
The time has come for all of us to make a reckoning with these questions.

[Jim Milway · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't agree with two of main his main premises - that wages are stagnating (not if you include benefits and use the correct measure for inflation) and production is to be preferred over consumption. And he is very concerned about losing our manufacturing base to unfair trade practices.

Yet, I can agree with many of his remedies for what ails the US economy. Instead of minimum wages, why not provide aware subsidy for low-wage workers? Don't fall for the allure of a guaranteed basic income. Work is a main source of our human dignity and we should not tell people that they can survive without it.

A great work that should be informing the economic agenda of both parties.

[Olivia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this book is a waste of time. It purported to be a « new » approach to labor policy but most of the recommendations were pretty canned conservative or just common sense takes that I doubt anyone disagrees with. The best chapter was the one on free trade: more people should be talking about the downsides to free trade.

Also, for being a lawyer, Oren makes a lot of universal claims that are not backed up with sources. An example is his ire of GDP: GDP is the not the end all be all of macroeconomic policy despite his claims to the contrary. A huge focus of current macroeconomics research is the health, strength, and correct measurement of the labor market, NOT AT ALL regarding its contribution to GDP.

I also think Oren’s critiques of economic analysis were mostly wrong and clearly came from someone who doesn’t really understand economist’s day to day work.

[Anton Golovko Hjälm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Briljant, även om jag inte alltid satt och nickade ivrigt. Cass fokuserar på Amerika främst, men den framför en kritik som är relevant för hela västvärlden; att vi, ekonomer, politiker och medborgare är helt besatta enbart i ändlös konsumtion, till exklusion av allt annat. Mitt enda klagomål är att han ignorerar klimatförändringar, även när han tar upp diverse miljöfrågor.

[Jakub Dovcik · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book that argues for putting 'work' (in fact, mostly meaning manual labour) into the thinking about economic policy in the United States. Oren Cass was Mitt Romney's policy guy and has in recent months become the key (sometimes the only) nerdy voice on the non-Trumpian right to support the use of tariffs as a way to 'bring manufacturing back into the United States'. That is not exactly what this book is fully about, but it is nevertheless interesting enough to read in order to try to make sense of the current economic policy thinking in the United States.

The core of the book is what he calls ‘The Working Hypothesis’ - that work (again, mostly goods-producing, manual labour) and American workers have been overlooked and disregarded in policy thinking over the course of the past half-century (basically since the beginning of the Great Society reforms in the 1960s), in favour of general GDP statistics and growth, which incentivised financialization and non-productive services. It is an argument similar to what a One-Nation Tory in the United Kingdom might argue for - renewal of communities, for a higher value of meaningful work in society and against strong welfare spending. Cass calls for a shift from a focus on consumption to a focus on production, towards what he calls 'productive pluralism': 'the economic and social conditions in which people of diverse abilities, priorities, and geographies, pursuing varied life paths, can form self-sufficient families and become contributors to their communities.'

Cass argues against the argument that well-paying jobs are displaced by automation and instead argues that it’s about policy choices. The main argument for this is the use of statistics of the stagnant share of 'Manufacturing non-supervisory' labour (if workers were to be displaced by automation, he argues that it would lead to more managers in manufacturing, which is not the case). I must say that I do not necessarily share Cass's historical analysis, but do share his scepticism about the future (well, from the perspective of 2018, when this book was written). A lot of the studies about automation of jobs rely on very broad statistics, self-reporting by companies or other approximations that do not actually translate into reality, especially as, which is a point that Cass makes a number of times throughout the book, work has many other functions than just its financially-productive function (think Graeber's Bullshit Jobs theory).

An interesting argument in the book is about social spending in peripheral parts of the economy functioning as de facto 'tradable goods' - the external source of income, outside of the local economy and community. I have observed some issues that he describes in my hometown region, which has limited production of tradeable goods after the local mines were mostly closed or their operations were limited. Spending on healthcare, education and social security is effectively the sole inflow of capital into the local economy.

On the international trade front, Cass argues that trade with 'neo-mercantilist nations' (such as China) is inherently unfair, but tariffs should be the last possible option. Rather, he argues for what we would call in Europe as 'competitiveness policies' - limiting the costs of production and of running the business. 

One example of this is his argument against strong environmental regulations. Cass argues that EPA's calculations of the benefits of regulation and ‘lives saved’ rely on epidemiological studies that are very abstract in nature and mostly rely on decreasing the levels of particulate matter in the atmosphere, which are already much lower than in the early 1970s, when the policy push began. In environmental calculations, too much focus is given to quantifying benefits (that are too theoretical according to Cass), whereas not enough attention is given to the costs of regulations. I am very sceptical about this because one can hardly struggle to find enough media stories about companies struggling under the burden of environmental regulation but it is often quite precisely the 'invisible' costs on the environment - which is why we call them externalities - that are not so visible or do not have their own PR team. 

Constraining environmental activity puts a significant burden on the economic prospects of people in affected areas, especially minorities, which is not taken into account by the environmentalist-oriented social activists' claims that it is often the minority groups who are harmed most by pollution. Cass argues that environmental policies should stick to their original levels and meanings (for instance, not to increase requirements for new businesses or construction sites that the previous operations did not have to comply with) and the trade-off acceptance should be case-specific and not absolute, because distributional impacts (which specific jobs are not created or are cut) matter. 

In education policy, Cass is extremely critical of the outcomes of public education spending (as Conservatives generally are), especially aspiring to put everyone into college, and calls for tracking - the separation of children and students into manual/college tracks instead of a comprehensive system. It is interesting that in some settings (like in British debates for or against grammar schools), I would be willing to support tracking, but the way that Cass makes this argument just makes it a really difficult thing to see as truly the best solution for the problems he identifies. 

This is due to two reasons. Firstly, the skills that 'applied courses' or apprenticeships teach are very limited to the job or sector the company operates in or the way the sector operates and works now. Unlike a more general, higher-order-skills education that establishes a more universal skills base (think understanding how computers operate and knowing some fundamental coding languages rather than being very proficient in Python for data science) makes one much more adaptable to shocks in the labour market (and more universally 'free' in the labour market). Secondly, the 'dual model of education', like in the German-speaking world, relies on a different mode of relationships within the economy (in political economy, they call it 'varieties of capitalism' - liberal market economies versus coordinated market economies. The US is an ideal model for a liberal market economy, with a much more flexible labour market than Germany, where the ties between actors like firms, employees or even banks are much more established. It would be just so difficult to make enough American companies spend enough money and energy on training their future employees.
Cass also advocates for tamed/non-confrontational unions - ‘coops’ - that would also facilitate some social security programs (somewhat similarly as unions have done in past) as well as further training, skills development and productivity increases of workers. A corporate-sceptical part of me wonders how much would these coops actually get done if they were so non-confrontational towards the companies and their managements.

In all of this, Cass effectively calls for a German model of economy (but not really a social-market economy - much less space for social security in his vision). But his main policy idea proposal is for a wage subsidy (mostly mentioning 3 USD per hour for low-income workers). This is meant to somewhat replace minimum wage, because he argues that it makes the question 'who pays?' more transparent, shifting the burden on the side of the government (because he argues that government mandates, such as the minimum wage, have a definite financial cost).

Where I absolutely do not agree with Cass is on social spending related to health and childcare. His arguments against subsidised childcare are, frankly, just absurd. He doesn’t think that paternity leave must entail staying at home - the government should just provide some amount of money, ‘so that people can make their own choices’. I frankly cannot believe someone can make them in good faith, especially with this level of overwhelming amount of data from all around the world on the beneficial impact on children's health, behaviour or even development of the bond between the parents and the children.

I admit I like and find compelling the analysis part about the role of work in economic policy thinking and definitely believe it should be paid more attention. Good and meaningful work should be one of the key motivations of economic policy, but so must be the dignity and well-being of individual, which is why I am very sceptical of Cass's critiques of Medicare and Medicaid, and his calls for flexigrands for state governments. Also the calling for a German model in the US does not work for me, particularly as the German economy is not doing that well itself at the moment, trying to be 'competitive', relegates one to a different league than the countries should be aspiring for in this time.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Author:
Oren Cass, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the former domestic-policy director for the Romney presidential campaign.

National Review's review: (snippets)
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazi...

He says that over the last four decades, growth in gross domestic product has been “solid” but that the family income of the working class has fallen, marriages have collapsed, and opioid deaths have “spiraled,” in large part because the nation’s policymakers focused on having a large GDP, raising living standards, building and maintaining a generous safety net, improving the environment, and ensuring ever bigger and cheaper flat-screen TVs.
Whatever else it has achieved, the economy is “teetering atop eroded foundations, lacking structural integrity, and heading toward collapse.”

The American Interest, Cass claims that workers, their families, and their communities have “no standing” in an economy that emphasizes production to the exclusion of almost everything else.

Cass appears to have written his book, which cuts against the grain of much Republican thinking, to convince us of the flaws in emphasizing low taxes and expanded production.

Cass wrote his book in part to lay out the terms of what he calls his “working hypothesis,” namely that “a labor market in which workers can support strong families and communities is the central determinant of long-term prosperity and should be the central focus of public policy.”

Cass divides the story into three parts:
1) In the first, he expands on his working hypothesis by examining the nature of the labor market and the tools available to change the labor-market outcomes mentioned above;
2)in the second, he explores the policy areas that have the greatest influence on the labor market;
3)in the third, he examines the factors beyond the labor market that influence work and well-being.

the greatest threat to prosperity for the working class has been the growth of an economy that does not provide enough good jobs and therefore does not nurture the development of strong families and communities. Policymakers’ focus on welfare programs — which cost $1 trillion per year now, having grown beyond even the vision of Lyndon Johnson, the author of the War on Poverty —

The wage subsidy that Cass proposes is arguably his most important policy proposal to fight the decline in work and the rise of discouraged workers and families. The goals of a wage subsidy are both to encourage work and to improve the financial status of low- and moderate-income working families. The biggest cash work subsidy now in the federal arsenal is the earned-income tax credit (EITC), which provides working families around $70 billion per year in earnings subsidies.

Although the EITC enjoys nearly universal support among both Republicans and Demo­crats, and although it is one of the nation’s most effective programs in reducing poverty, it has four important limitations. The first is that nearly all its benefits go to families with children. So millions of low- and middle-income working families and individuals, including many who would like to save money for marriage and starting a family, are left out. Second, in nearly all cases, the EITC is paid only once a year, thereby reducing the chance that families can count on a steady stream of income to supplement their earnings, pay bills, and develop the habit of routine saving. Third, because the EITC is paid once a year, its benefits are “opaque” (Cass’s word), usually preventing recipients from understanding where the money comes from. Fourth, the structure of the EITC means that, as workers earn more money, the value of their EITC begins declining at about $19,000 for a married couple with two children. Beyond $19,000, the work-enhancing effects of the EITC decline until they disappear entirely at about $50,000.

Welfare benefits transfer a great deal of money to low-income workers and households, but they do so in a way that discourages work in most income ranges. By contrast, the wage supplement would provide a work in­centive, because more work would mean a larger cash subsidy.

An especially important, if somewhat subtle, effect of the wage subsidy but not of welfare payments is that the subsidy could be designed in such a way that there would be little increase in public spending. The key would be to reduce welfare benefits and use the money to finance a wage subsidy, thereby getting the relatively greater benefits of the subsidy for the same cost as current welfare spending.

When Cass turns to factors beyond the market in the third part of his book, he pulls off the gloves and writes strongly about the serious problems of the welfare state. Besides Charles Murray, I cannot think of an author who more clearly abhors welfare and its effects on markets and adults. The basic problem is also the most obvious — if you give stuff away, many people will not work to maintain their well-being or will work less than they could or should. This moves the working class in entirely the wrong direction. Cass wants an income gap between what people can get from government for not working, or working less, and what they can earn by accepting available jobs, even if they are low-income. If this is the calculus of employment, people will find ways to increase their income through hard work and education, abetted by Cass’s wage subsidy. Cass is bursting with additional ideas about how to achieve this outcome.

This book and its policy proposals mark Oren Cass as one of the nation’s most original and forceful policy think­ers. We should try some of his ideas, beginning with the wage subsidy.













My comments:
This book makes many good points starting with the fact that many of the political discussions are not very effective and have proven not to work for the broad spectrum of workers. For example is has become obvious to me at least that the measure of GDP is not a good measure of the health of our US economy. Nor do I think the discussion of only providing either a tax cut or tax increase are the only choices our politicians have.

Now the problem I see with the book is that most of the solutions are directions seem to be off the table for most of our culture and politicians. For the politicians to change behavior and voting patterns is too risky to their future and frankly their control. On the other side our culture has devolved into a mess of ethics and choices that show no shame. It is not a stigma to not work and get free money. Work itself is not a popular choice. Unless you are a rapper or athlete or president, work is deemed to be demeaning. I personally have heard many folks without shame, talk of "getting their check from the man. "

Again I do not want to diminish some of the author's good points that college is not for everyone and I am not sure it is even good for almost anyone anymore. It definitely sends young people on a path of moral destruction that they are not ready for. I feel the author leaves most of this kind of ethical talk out and probably for good reason, the answers to these kind of problems lie on the religious side and in my mind in the Christian realm more specifically. I am not sure what his religious background is but not displayed in his answers. Some of his conclusions, frankly, to me are way too complicated and thus will never fly.

We need a broad cultural renewal that has more of a protestant work ethic and a system that rewards those who work toward these ends. This requires buy in to a worldview that has others in mind not ourselves, again he voices non of that.

Government can on the other had work to do better and provide the future worker with help. I do see a need for us to control our own countries destiny by boarders and immigration policy and developing at least the critical manufacturing we need in case of global catastrophe or war.

This book does talk of automation but does not view it as an issue for workers. I see this not as accurate as many workers do get put out of work by environmentalism which he quite correctly states costs jobs. The green new deal is a work killer for laborers. It is also not realistic to retrain the coal miner to code. Takes a completely different temperate and skill set. This also leaves out AI and the coming push to destroy human dignity and work itself. We need a human and society focused view to answer the questions technology is already bringing to our door step.

[Todd Davidson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. He argues we do not reward work enough both economically and socially. This insufficient reward to work has led to many social ills; unemployment , depression, poverty.

He then makes a case economic growth and redistribution are not enough to solve these ills. He calls this growth and redistribute strategy “economic piety” (grow the pie, split the pie). I have been, and am, a proponent of what he calls “economic piety” but I found his criticisms of “economic piety” insightful and persuasive.

Since Reagan the conservative economic agenda has been cut taxes and deregulate. That’s fine but we need more ideas. Oren’s work offers a much broader set of policy tools to make work pay and strengthen our families and communities. The books is an infusion of the creative thinking needed in the right of center policy shops.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's a book that attempts to bring together the value of open markets with the need for community. It's a healthy, relevant blend of the local and the international and may well be the best way forward for humanity in an age of globalization and the irrational belief that a world without borders is a good thing.

This books should be 2018's Book of the Year but it's written by an economist and is dry as dust to read, but it is maybe the most important book published in 2018...

A MUST READ for those looking for a middle, rational, and compassionate way through the maze of competing socio-economic theories floating about out there.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

[E · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best public policy books I've read in a long time. It's reassuring, for one thing, just to know that there are people actually doing this sort of spadework. It is clear, principled, ambitious yet realistic. It is conservative but not hidebound.

Cass divides the work into three parts. The chapters are detailed but not overly long. Part 1 deals with the concept of work itself. Cass makes a strong case for its intrinsic value, and also for how it provides self-worth while also serving to build strong communities. This is in strong contrast to those who view it as optional or something to be avoided if possible. He makes an entirely secular case, but he nevertheless tracks closely with those who believe humans were created for work. Part 1 also addresses the decline of work in this country, and the deleterious effects of that decline.

Part 2 is the meat of the book. In five chapters Cass looks at five areas in which policy changes could lead to a greater valuation and pursuit of work. These areas include environmental law, education, immigration, labor law, and wage subsidies. I won't go into great detail, but suffice it to say that if these changes were implemented--even if I don't agree with every last detail--people would be motivated and empowered toward work in a way that would revolutionize both the lower and the middle classes. Everything from strong families to healthy patterns of spending and savings could be potential results.

I'll zero in on one chapter: education. At the end of the day, only 20% of students will end up in a job that requires a college degree that they have earned. For the other 80%, they will either end up in a job that didn't require a degree, or end up with a degree for which they can't find a job, or never make it to college, or drop out after one semester. So why is the goal of public education to get everyone to college? And now it seems that leading liberal politicians want to make it "free" so that everyone gets a college degree sans tuition! Cass wants to introduce "tracking" and vocational efforts in a wholesale way. It cuts against the grain of "you can be anything you want when you grow up," but it's far more sensical. I have no plans to insist my own children go to college; why do we act like it's the end-all and be-all of childrearing?

Part 3 addresses entitlement programs, and how they can be reformed in ways that encourage, rather than discourage, work. Again, lots of common sense that would make a profound impact on work (not to mention the moral implications of what it means to be poor in this country), if only someone would give it a try. Speaking of giving it a try, Cass ends with a strong critique of a plan that many on both sides of the aisle would like to try--universal basic income (UBI). Read these pages to understand why this is a horrible idea. It really comes down to what we want to be as a people; what we want to encourage our children to aspire to.

[Russel Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cass's central hypothesis is that the priorities of both "sides" are misplaced as regards economic and social policy. That is, the right's intellectual embrace of GDP growth, libertarian immigration and trade policy, and free market fundamentalism are as misguided as the left's emphasis on redistributive and ecological justice, as neither expressly encourage and prioritize meaningful work, especially for those in the middle and lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. Cass proposes a wide range of solutions, from wage subsidies to environmental deregulation to cooperatives as a replacement for NLRA unions. These have varying degrees of merit, and certainly some of his characterizations are debatable and even inflammatory. But the book shines in putting its finger on the central sort of malaise and rot that seems apparent in our social and political life. That is, the solutions of both sides have limited resonance with the wider public. Redistributive economics and social security programs are producing second and third order effects that are skewing incentive structures and even the social fabric, while libertarian-inspired approaches to immigration and trade policy are distributing benefits and burdens unevenly. Cass seeks to orient the discuss toward the encouragement of meaningful work, by tailoring trade, immigration policy, education and the social safety net toward the incentivization of the creation of such jobs and the development of the skills necessary for young and working-class Americans to hold them.


There is no guarantee that an approach geared toward "productive pluralism" will fix the myriad social problems that afflict the country right now. However, Cass's book helps open the discussion toward improving a social and economic landscape riven by opioid abuse, disintegrating family life, and eroding community structures. Cass's work, like JD Vance in Hillbilly Elegy, represents another of the right's attempts to reckon with populism and its catalysts while recognizing that the dominant intellectual trends of conservatism from Goldwater forward have proven inadequate.

[T.]

Excerpt at the Atlantic:

Residential mobility is the issue that best captures policy makers’ misunderstanding of prosperity and the social endowments that foster it. The willingness to pack up and move in pursuit of opportunity is part and parcel of the American Dream and a key element of the nation’s economic vitality. Yet, as hardship has increased in recent decades, the share of the population that relocates has declined. If things are so terrible, some economists grumble, why won’t anyone move? They have built elaborate models to show how much higher GDP would be if only people lived where their productivity would be highest.

This gets things backward. Strong families and communities launch people into the world to seek their fortune. Relocation requires deep stores of social capital. Without the skills and habits to access opportunity, failure is likely. Lacking a strong support base, it can be hard to get started. If someone is already dependent on government benefits and a move places those benefits at risk, staying put can seem the better bet. Geographic mobility can’t rescue America from the consequences of its socially unsustainable growth—because lower geographic mobility is one of those consequences....

Relocation tears people away from their communities. If a critical mass relocates, it can decimate the community left behind. The idea that struggling communities should disband themselves is not a return to “how things used to be”; it is an admission of catastrophic failure and a prescription for further disaster. If Americans want to enjoy the fruits of long-term prosperity, including widespread relocation in pursuit of opportunity, they will need to restore its prerequisites..

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/emphasize-production-not-consumption/576625/

[Peter Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Listened to this book through Hoopla.

I’m not sure I picked up all of Cass’ points on my first listen, but he provides many potential solutions to rebuild the importance of work in the United States and to provide a social safety net that provides for those who cannot work, but without incentivizing average people to simply rely on government subsidies for their living. Some of these concrete ideas include: apprenticeship programs, subsidizing wages (rather than redistribution through programs such as EITC), establishing subsidies that encourage work (with a desire of ultimately helping those in a poor situation establish economic independence), and consolidating governmental assistance programs under one umbrella (rather than the overlapping and bureaucratic system we currently have). All of these fall under his overarching idea of “productive pluralism” and ultimately rebuilding and maintaining meaningful work domestically. I think most of his ideas are rather sensible, and I think our county can only benefit from shifting away from the polarizing ends of “increase government welfare (handouts)” and “lower taxes” seen in our current two-party system. From my first impression, it seems that some of Cass’ statements seem a bit too libertarian for my tastes, but most of his comprehensive ideas fall squarely in the postliberal camp (or at least, can find a home with the postliberals).

[Cgallozzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the hard copy of this book.

The premise informs the reader that the US labor market needs to be "tended to" with policies -- different from traditional Kaiserslautern fairs thinking.

Frankly not sure whether this is an honest attempt at a revised thought model for the right - or a Trojan horse.

Against unlimited immigration - depresses wages - has one interesting idea about how to advance the conversation.

Policies need to be introduced to benefit labor - the major sorting a la Germany and the creation of a robus trade school model/several examples South Carolina apprentice programs feeding recruits into BMW - but these are exceptions. The educational model he claims still assumes 100% of the high school children will go to college when less than twenty five percent do.....his solution take money from assisting all people equipped or unequipped to go to college and repurpose for technical and
apprenticeship training.

Hard chapter on Unions.

Interesting chapter on the concept of a wage subsidy paid for by reductions in minimum wage overall?

One idea I wholeheartedly support comes a jacket blurb...

Class core principle a culture of respect for work of all kinds cN help close the gap dividing the two Americas. William Galton, The Brookings Instituion..

Carl Gallozzi

[Jon · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book opens with promise but quickly reveals itself as a pro-corporate argument cloaked in worker-friendly language. Oren Cass seems convinced that what Americans need most is simply to be working—full stop. As the book progresses, his digressions into tariffs and deportation policies feel increasingly out of place, feeling like reluctant chapters for the American First readers. Much of the book ends up focused on deregulation, underpinned by the assumption that fewer regulations will naturally lead to more work.

Ultimately, the book is undermined by Cass’s central belief that work alone is the solution to social and economic challenges. Goodreads summarizes the premise as: “If we reinforce their vital role, workers supporting strong families and communities can provide the foundation for a thriving, self-sufficient society that offers opportunity to all.” But Cass never delivers on this promise. Had he instead clearly stated that this is a book about why work is all people need—and then built a strong case for that thesis—I would have rated it much more favorably. Instead, the book misrepresents its goals and fails to argue for pro-family, pro-community policies.

[David Anthony Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you do not believe that increasing GDP will automatically make everybody well-off and create more jobs despite low-wage competition fro overseas, this book offers an alternative. Likewise, if you do not believe that more spending on social safety nets that seem to lock people into dependency will ever create the self-sufficiency of a good job done well and paid well, you may also want to read this book. Cass is not your usual ideological Conservative. In fact, he is more nearly a radical than many on the Left. He is a thoughtful systems thinker who does believe in compassionate action. True, there are moments when his ideology seems to get the better of him, but he quickly pivots. The idea that being productive in any job leads to higher self-worth and that our society which values consumption over all is dysfunctional resonates more than all the Make America Great protectionism or New Socialist give-a-ways.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyone needs to read this book. It does a great job of looking at the current failures of economic policy with an even hand, shuts down many of the myths that are used to maintain the status quo, and offers workable solutions that begin change with minimal disruption so things can keep functioning rather than tearing it all down and starting over from scratch. "The Once and Future Worker" points out how our current policies have focused on increasing productivity and GDP without taking other factors of societal health and well-being into consideration. By focusing on consumption at the expense of production, the United States has handicapped itself in the global market and fostered a culture that devalues work and self-sufficiency. I can't do this book justice with a summary, but unlike many other books that talk about policy, it doesn't indulge in accusatory finger-pointing, but states the facts and offers potential solutions to rectify these problems. Highly recommended!

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has been on my shelves since 2019; I'm glad I finally got around to it. A provocative, readable, and serious policy work from a "conservative" thinker, who is surely even more out of step with the GOP now than when he wrote it some years ago.

Cass's premise is compellingly stated and well put -- something is wrong but fixable with the position of working families in the United States. His diagnosis is smart and persuasive. The rubber meets the road when it comes to actual policies but he is refreshingly open and heterodox here. His agenda, for me, runs from "this is partisan warfare through other means and a terrible idea" (climate policy, regulatory overreach) to "ok, this is a serious compromise approach" (immigration, labor), to "there are parts of this we should take seriously" (workforce training, safety net reform, trade).

Blurbed by Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance, but who actually believes Republicans would govern like this? No one.