Our Common Wealth: The return of public ownership in the United States

by Thomas M. Hanna

Public ownership is more widespread and popular in the United States than is commonly understood. This book is the most comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the scope and scale of U.S. public ownership, debunking frequent misconceptions about the alleged inefficiency and underperformance of public ownership and arguing that it offers powerful, flexible solutions to current problems of inequality, instability, and unsustainability- explaining why after decades of privatization it is making a comeback, including in the agenda of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party in Britain. Hanna offers a vision of deploying new forms of democratized public ownership broadly, across multiple sectors, as a key ingredient of any next system beyond corporate capitalism. This book is a valuable, extensively researched resource that sets out the past record and future possibilities of public ownership at a time when ever more people are searching for answers.

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 10, 2018

Reviews

[David Sogge · Rating 5 out of 5]

By marshalling facts and arguments about the successes, challenges and popularity of publicly-owned service provision in the USA (with glances at the UK and elsewhere) this book does an important public service by busting myths and signposting ways forward.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our Common Wealth is the most comprehensive conparitive study of public ownership in America. Easy to read, but with a unsurprisingly scholarly level of analysis, this book is the best introduction to public ownership for both academics and laymen.

[Soph Nova · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a highly researched, somewhat wonky, fairly accessible and short introduction to examples and possibilities for public ownership in the US. That’s not an easy balance to strike, and Hanna does it well! I would have liked to see more partisan analysis on the author’s part about what SHOULD be done, and HOW to go about doing it - but that’s probably for another book.