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How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics
A compelling alternative view of the relationship between our politics and our economy.
Throughout America, structural problems are getting worse. Economic inequality is near Gilded Age heights, the healthcare system is a mess, and the climate crisis continues to grow. Yet most ambitious policy proposals that might fix these calamities are dismissed as wastefully expensive by default. From the kitchen table to Congress, debates are punctuated with a familiar refrain: “How are you going to pay for that?”
This question is designed to shut down policy pushes up front, minimizing any interference with the free market. It comes from neoliberalism, an economic ideology that has overtaken both parties. Proponents insist that markets are naturally-occurring and apolitical―and that too much manipulation of the economy will make our society fall apart. Ryan Cooper argues that our society already is falling apart, and the logically preposterous views of neoliberalism are to blame. Most progressives understand this instinctively, but many lack the background knowledge to make effective economic counterarguments.
How Are You Going To Pay For That? is filled with engaging discussions and detailed strategies that policymakers and citizens alike can use to assail even the most entrenched lines of neoliberal logic, and start to undo these long-held misconceptions. Equal parts economic theory, history, and political polemic, this is an essential roadmap for winning the key battles to come.
Throughout America, structural problems are getting worse. Economic inequality is near Gilded Age heights, the healthcare system is a mess, and the climate crisis continues to grow. Yet most ambitious policy proposals that might fix these calamities are dismissed as wastefully expensive by default. From the kitchen table to Congress, debates are punctuated with a familiar refrain: “How are you going to pay for that?”
This question is designed to shut down policy pushes up front, minimizing any interference with the free market. It comes from neoliberalism, an economic ideology that has overtaken both parties. Proponents insist that markets are naturally-occurring and apolitical―and that too much manipulation of the economy will make our society fall apart. Ryan Cooper argues that our society already is falling apart, and the logically preposterous views of neoliberalism are to blame. Most progressives understand this instinctively, but many lack the background knowledge to make effective economic counterarguments.
How Are You Going To Pay For That? is filled with engaging discussions and detailed strategies that policymakers and citizens alike can use to assail even the most entrenched lines of neoliberal logic, and start to undo these long-held misconceptions. Equal parts economic theory, history, and political polemic, this is an essential roadmap for winning the key battles to come.
368 pages, Hardcover
Published January 25, 2022
45 people are currently reading
2043 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
February 7, 2022
The greatest critique of this book is that the ways by which we change to a better, more egalitarian system seem … unattainable in our current political climate. This book looks at economics through a lens of what we’re doing wrong as compared against most other developed nations. It proposes simple, although theoretical, solutions for how to change. The book looks at the broad scope of American economic history in a very dense but understandable way and shows where we went wrong. The book may be too complicated or slow for some readers and too lofty for others, but for others it will be incredibly rewarding. Absolutely a book better read with a friend or book club.
October 11, 2021
The title doesn't really connote what's going on in this book. You go in thinking that this is about deficit hawkery and austerity and the stupidity of long-run budget projections being so predominant in Washington, but really it's an alternative vision for an egalitarian society, with a few nods to broad-based taxation folded in.
Cooper is among our smartest political analysts, and he creates sort of a conversational white paper. Much will be familiar, but it's nice to see fully sketched out.
Cooper is among our smartest political analysts, and he creates sort of a conversational white paper. Much will be familiar, but it's nice to see fully sketched out.
March 27, 2022
Creo que es un fascinante texto sobre diferentes aspectos del tejido social y económico de EEUU.
La primera mitad es una forma introductoria a los diferentes debates económicos de dicho país y también el impacto del covid en su economía.
En lo personal, lo que más me interesó fue la explicación del deficiente sistema de salud estadounidense. Es fascinante porque se dice que las ganancias de cada doctor por operación es de un 80% del precio real. Algo fuera de serie.
Debo decir que es un libro denso porque en cada página se inyecta de mucha información y la lectura no es tan fluida.
Creo que es una opción muy interesante si te gustan estos tipos de textos.
La primera mitad es una forma introductoria a los diferentes debates económicos de dicho país y también el impacto del covid en su economía.
En lo personal, lo que más me interesó fue la explicación del deficiente sistema de salud estadounidense. Es fascinante porque se dice que las ganancias de cada doctor por operación es de un 80% del precio real. Algo fuera de serie.
Debo decir que es un libro denso porque en cada página se inyecta de mucha información y la lectura no es tan fluida.
Creo que es una opción muy interesante si te gustan estos tipos de textos.
March 15, 2022
A good primer to social democratic policy
This is like the umpteenth book I've read like this. It was very good with reasonable and sound ideas to fix American society and politics. We get a nice history of monopolization and neoliberalism through the 20th century and then very tangible and concise solutions involving bolstering the welfare state. I'm pretty convinced we need New Deal-like policy to fix the terrible mess we are in. The question for me is if a technocratic strategy will actually be effective. Given the current political climate, probably not.
This is a good book and a nice primer into these concepts.
This is like the umpteenth book I've read like this. It was very good with reasonable and sound ideas to fix American society and politics. We get a nice history of monopolization and neoliberalism through the 20th century and then very tangible and concise solutions involving bolstering the welfare state. I'm pretty convinced we need New Deal-like policy to fix the terrible mess we are in. The question for me is if a technocratic strategy will actually be effective. Given the current political climate, probably not.
This is a good book and a nice primer into these concepts.
June 23, 2022
Dry but quite informative. Whole lotta graphs. I’m glad I read it in the same way one is glad to eat one’s vegetables.
Borrowing the term from Ursula K. Le Guin, Cooper takes aim at “propertarianism” — the stance that “property rights should be the inalterable foundation of politics” (essentially neo-liberalism, or the belief in the superiority of the free market). His thesis boils down to this: “The economy should serve human needs, not the other way around.”
Cooper argues propertarian thinking is responsible for everything ranging from savings scolds to economic inequality to the mess that is U.S. healthcare to the climate crisis. The book is ultimately a call to rethink our relationship to government and what we can collectively accomplish (e.g., on taxes: “We should think of tax payments not as some burdensome imposition but simply as the way we collectively care for ourselves and each other”).
Reading this after The End of Policing, I thought about how both books are critical of the Establishment Left for capitulating to what is essentially ideological hegemony with the Republican Party. Bill Clinton comes up in both books — his three strikes crime bill and expansion of the war on drugs rightly drew criticism from Alex Vitale, while in this book Cooper takes him to task for his third way triangulation (welfare reform, deregulation, etc.). I’m in the relatively niche target audience of a book like this, but I put it down frustrated that today’s Democratic Party is so in thrall to what Cooper calls “political sadism”: when “American political elites … regard wise policymaking as forcing through unpopular decisions to inflict pain on the citizenry” (see, e.g., Obama’s proposed Grand Bargain when Republicans demanded austerity and played chicken with the debt ceiling). Fresh (younger!) leadership, please.
Borrowing the term from Ursula K. Le Guin, Cooper takes aim at “propertarianism” — the stance that “property rights should be the inalterable foundation of politics” (essentially neo-liberalism, or the belief in the superiority of the free market). His thesis boils down to this: “The economy should serve human needs, not the other way around.”
Cooper argues propertarian thinking is responsible for everything ranging from savings scolds to economic inequality to the mess that is U.S. healthcare to the climate crisis. The book is ultimately a call to rethink our relationship to government and what we can collectively accomplish (e.g., on taxes: “We should think of tax payments not as some burdensome imposition but simply as the way we collectively care for ourselves and each other”).
Reading this after The End of Policing, I thought about how both books are critical of the Establishment Left for capitulating to what is essentially ideological hegemony with the Republican Party. Bill Clinton comes up in both books — his three strikes crime bill and expansion of the war on drugs rightly drew criticism from Alex Vitale, while in this book Cooper takes him to task for his third way triangulation (welfare reform, deregulation, etc.). I’m in the relatively niche target audience of a book like this, but I put it down frustrated that today’s Democratic Party is so in thrall to what Cooper calls “political sadism”: when “American political elites … regard wise policymaking as forcing through unpopular decisions to inflict pain on the citizenry” (see, e.g., Obama’s proposed Grand Bargain when Republicans demanded austerity and played chicken with the debt ceiling). Fresh (younger!) leadership, please.
February 1, 2022
Ryan Cooper lives in my head when he is making critiques of the current system. We’re roughly of the same age and have read a lot of the same books, so when I see him cite two of my favorite books about the failures of post-crash (the 2008 one) policy I know we’re on the same page. The books here are Dayen’s “Chain of Title” and Eisinger’s “The Chickens**t Club,” where the authors cover how there were egregious frauds and crimes but since they were white collar crimes the best we could do was give money to the banks for some reason.
In “How Are You Going to Pay for That?,” Cooper builds up the case for needed reform in the US. He examines a number of other countries that have better and more affordable health care or retirement and shows that making these better in the US are within the realm of the possible. I think I am more pessimistic than Cooper, however. Where we are now is because of a cascade of choices made along the way, and it really feels like for every binary decision our policy makers have faced they chose the one that most benefited the rich and already powerful. That means that our current place with expensive and inefficient health care has a lot of people who have benefited from those decisions. Even worse, these people have inordinate power politically.
It's in this political side where the book is not as strong. Lining up where we are now and then positing a more desirable end point is all well and good, but the projecting in making it happen is incredibly important. This is not just an issue with Cooper’s text but a larger genre issue. You have a call to action here, but the Democrats can’t even pass mild social democratic reforms in states where they control the levers of government. It’s disheartening at the very least because we can all see other countries that do better for their residents and citizens for less than we pay and those who represent us just don’t do anything about that.
Spoiler alert:
The titular question is answered mostly in the form of redistributive taxes. Part of what makes the above, so maddening is that there’s no call for a major paradigm shift. Cooper notes failures of Soviet Communism and makes a wave at the MMT folks and there is one mention of a basic income, but for the most part his solutions are in mimicking existing structures so that the US isn’t 25th on the well-being indicators of the OECD. I personally would advocate for a more thorough rethinking of economic and political order, but again Cooper is more of an optimist than I am though I am highly sympathetic to his critiques.
In “How Are You Going to Pay for That?,” Cooper builds up the case for needed reform in the US. He examines a number of other countries that have better and more affordable health care or retirement and shows that making these better in the US are within the realm of the possible. I think I am more pessimistic than Cooper, however. Where we are now is because of a cascade of choices made along the way, and it really feels like for every binary decision our policy makers have faced they chose the one that most benefited the rich and already powerful. That means that our current place with expensive and inefficient health care has a lot of people who have benefited from those decisions. Even worse, these people have inordinate power politically.
It's in this political side where the book is not as strong. Lining up where we are now and then positing a more desirable end point is all well and good, but the projecting in making it happen is incredibly important. This is not just an issue with Cooper’s text but a larger genre issue. You have a call to action here, but the Democrats can’t even pass mild social democratic reforms in states where they control the levers of government. It’s disheartening at the very least because we can all see other countries that do better for their residents and citizens for less than we pay and those who represent us just don’t do anything about that.
Spoiler alert:
The titular question is answered mostly in the form of redistributive taxes. Part of what makes the above, so maddening is that there’s no call for a major paradigm shift. Cooper notes failures of Soviet Communism and makes a wave at the MMT folks and there is one mention of a basic income, but for the most part his solutions are in mimicking existing structures so that the US isn’t 25th on the well-being indicators of the OECD. I personally would advocate for a more thorough rethinking of economic and political order, but again Cooper is more of an optimist than I am though I am highly sympathetic to his critiques.
May 31, 2023
4.5 ⭐️
I want to thank my fellow Philadelphian for this incredible book! I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the history behind American economic policies and was both disheartened and uplifted by the possibilities outlined in later chapters.
Finishing this book was part 1 in my journey to further understand American policy through reading this year, and I cannot wait to continue.
I want to thank my fellow Philadelphian for this incredible book! I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the history behind American economic policies and was both disheartened and uplifted by the possibilities outlined in later chapters.
Finishing this book was part 1 in my journey to further understand American policy through reading this year, and I cannot wait to continue.
July 8, 2022
If you read what you believe then you might rate this 5 stars. If you won't read what you don't believe you won't read this book and hence rate it 0 stars.
I gave it 2 stars because it is well written. The construct the author uses remains mostly consistent throughout the book. He takes the time to footnote a fair amount of the detail. However, he misses the premise of the book, How Are You Going to Pay for That, by a mile. His solution amounts to "raise taxes" but it's unclear on who and how much.
It's not hard to see why. The author wrote a book report that sews together the writing, thinking and theories of a number of (qualified) people that confirm his belief. He clearly sees what he believes. There is not a pretense of presenting the counterargument and refuting it other than to say capitalism is bad and can explain everything that is wrong in America.
He has no formal training in the fields he is speaking about. While his journalism background may have exposed him to ideas and arguments, it's not adequate to see him synthesize solutions.
Several of his sources are highly controversial, at best, and academically discredited at worst. (I'm mentioning Piketty and Sáez, in particular.) A major flaw in Piketty's work was to compute income inequality in America while ignoring the government subsidies provided to roughly 50% of the population. I bring this up because our author proposes essentially a universal basic income to eliminate income inequality. Thus, he's cherry picking a flawed document to define a problem and then proposes the very mechanism left out of that document to solve it.
That said, he does present some provocative ideas that are new to me, an unschooled observer and participant of the American economic system. His thesis of managing for full employment rather than inflation control is intriguing. (His full employment includes the aforementioned UBI.) By providing everyone with a livable income he posits a smoothing of demand, leading to a less chaotic supply side.
His other idea of creating a national treasures fund that pays citizens a dividend (think Alaska) with it's democratic operational aspects is also intriguing. That could be a means of sharing the wealth, equitably, and more importantly, provide a means of connecting our large citizen base.
It's an interesting read from a journalist. It also provides some insight into the thinking of millennial who has been able to gain proficiency in his craft.
I gave it 2 stars because it is well written. The construct the author uses remains mostly consistent throughout the book. He takes the time to footnote a fair amount of the detail. However, he misses the premise of the book, How Are You Going to Pay for That, by a mile. His solution amounts to "raise taxes" but it's unclear on who and how much.
It's not hard to see why. The author wrote a book report that sews together the writing, thinking and theories of a number of (qualified) people that confirm his belief. He clearly sees what he believes. There is not a pretense of presenting the counterargument and refuting it other than to say capitalism is bad and can explain everything that is wrong in America.
He has no formal training in the fields he is speaking about. While his journalism background may have exposed him to ideas and arguments, it's not adequate to see him synthesize solutions.
Several of his sources are highly controversial, at best, and academically discredited at worst. (I'm mentioning Piketty and Sáez, in particular.) A major flaw in Piketty's work was to compute income inequality in America while ignoring the government subsidies provided to roughly 50% of the population. I bring this up because our author proposes essentially a universal basic income to eliminate income inequality. Thus, he's cherry picking a flawed document to define a problem and then proposes the very mechanism left out of that document to solve it.
That said, he does present some provocative ideas that are new to me, an unschooled observer and participant of the American economic system. His thesis of managing for full employment rather than inflation control is intriguing. (His full employment includes the aforementioned UBI.) By providing everyone with a livable income he posits a smoothing of demand, leading to a less chaotic supply side.
His other idea of creating a national treasures fund that pays citizens a dividend (think Alaska) with it's democratic operational aspects is also intriguing. That could be a means of sharing the wealth, equitably, and more importantly, provide a means of connecting our large citizen base.
It's an interesting read from a journalist. It also provides some insight into the thinking of millennial who has been able to gain proficiency in his craft.
February 5, 2022
How Are You Going to Pay for That? by Ryan Cooper is not the book you think it is. Neither the deficit hawk fighting social spending nor the moderate balance book for some additional government programs, this book describes a theory of economics that integrates the government far more into the market than is normally considered, provides a history of financial thinking in the US, and proposes an agenda that in the US would be described as beyond progressive featuring very significant environmental investment, universal nationalized/single-payer healthcare, and a much greater welfare and wealth redistribution system. Honestly, I don’t feel that I have the economics background to evaluate this book fairly. I don’t expect this book to get much attention because in that area, it does get into some qualitative weeds. The economic history that comprises half of this book uses a quite Marxist lens, though it remains readable. The policy half of this book however is much less thought-through. The author would go on about how getting a massive social spending passed would “simply” require political cooperation from most factions of society and mass movements to do so. Okay buddy if getting that were so simple, the news wouldn’t be so depressing to everyone. He opined optimism about the current administration’s ability to get big social programs passed, though I don’t really get why given the news for the last year again. Then came some comments about how well government functions when they run big departments, which everyone can surely attest to when they had to get absolutely anything done at federal offices which are only open for the barest hours during the working week. In addition, he would often go vague on specifics such as which taxes he would raise to pay for things, ironic based on the title, just saying he’s “not qualified to specify.” This just seemed strange given that he felt so confident speaking about economics and other more seemingly complex topics in the same area. For me, the wild optimism and lack of specifics in key areas made the second half of the book, where the meat of the policy discussion occurred, fall flat for me; this ultimately translated into a disappointment for me overall.
a free e-copy of this book was received through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review
a free e-copy of this book was received through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review
March 8, 2022
Ryan Cooper clearly has no background in finance or economics of any kind. My friend, who's a PHD student at Boise State and identifies as a communist, would make a much more solid argument by doing his research.
Ryan's basis is patently false and unsubstantiated. Not worth the money or time I spent.
Ryan's basis is patently false and unsubstantiated. Not worth the money or time I spent.
August 22, 2022
A very difficult read bc I’m not that smart, but absolutely worthwhile. I shall now wreck havoc on anyone arguing about economics with me in future.
April 26, 2024
This is a book outlines a typical liberal solution to who should pay for all this government spending. Tax the rich!! Not worth the read.
July 20, 2022
This is a solid overview of the, as Cooper terms it, “propertarian” thinking that is rapidly dooming this country. I agree with another review that it isn’t necessarily groundbreaking, but having a contextual (and very recent, this was published in 2022) look at where we are and how we got here is always incredibly useful.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of how it was organized, particularly the final chapter “How To Argue With Propertarians,” (it was BEGGING for subheads and was much shorter than I would’ve liked), which knocked off a star for me. Overall made what can be a daunting subject in economics pretty digestible, though it occasionally gets lost in the weeds. I wouldn’t recommend this necessarily as your first foray into reading about this issue, but you also don’t need to be an expert either (I certainly am not).
I wasn’t the biggest fan of how it was organized, particularly the final chapter “How To Argue With Propertarians,” (it was BEGGING for subheads and was much shorter than I would’ve liked), which knocked off a star for me. Overall made what can be a daunting subject in economics pretty digestible, though it occasionally gets lost in the weeds. I wouldn’t recommend this necessarily as your first foray into reading about this issue, but you also don’t need to be an expert either (I certainly am not).
July 2, 2024
I know staggeringly little about how economies work, and this book left me feeling smarter and with a better understanding of the world. Really got a lot out of this, and it helped clarify some things for me. You're in good hands with Ryan Cooper.
May 27, 2023
A 300-page joker moment; this is undoubtedly the most comprehensive and poignant critique of America's social, political, and economic climates I've ever attempted. Cooper makes it abundantly clear that almost every facet of our society requires considerable overhauling if our future is to be described as anything but bleak.
From a literature perspective, this book may ask too much of its readers, occasionally requiring you to know what schools of thought certain economists subscribed to, who signed what bills, what policy did what, etc., with little context provided. Also, the crux of this book is the detailing of why and how the dismantling and replacement of Propertarianism is essential--an ideology that I believe should be better defined/explained before it is attacked for hundreds of pages (I believe it's synonymous with neoliberalism and/or "the status quo.")
Some potent excerpts:
• The real pain comes from failing to set up any kind of welfare programs and protections… we’ll all pay in the form of more stressful, shorter, less healthy lives that are devoured by pointlessly huge amounts of work.
• The self-regulating market is a façade covering political domination by business owners
• Retired Marine Corps general Smedley Butler testified before Congress that in 1933, several conservative business owners had recruited him to lead a fascist militia that overthrow FDR in a coup.
• …having access to the state’s violent authority is what it means to own something.
• The whole economic edifice of business, profits, workers, and so on rests on the state’s structural foundation. This means that the common neoliberal objective of “deregulation” is all but impossible.
• …If too much of the national income flows to the rich, who disproportionately save instead of spending it, the working class will not have enough income to consume what they produce.
• …in Finland a conservative business lobby recently proposed a minimum wage partly on the explicit grounds that it would weaken the collective bargaining system.
• In the United States, wealth ownership is grotesquely unequal—the top 10% of house golds own nearly 75% of the national wealth, and the top 1% own nearly 40%.
• The Byzantine labyrinth of Obamacare regulations shows just how much government regulation is necessary to create even a poor simulacrum of a health insurance market.
• The behavioral system proposed by neoliberalism is better suited to solitary predators or scavengers than it is to primates living in large groups.
• Under Augusto Pinochet, who overthrew the democratic government of Salvador Allende in a military coup in 1973 (with help from the CIA) … Chile would remain a dictatorship until 1990. While in power, Pinochet’s forces murdered at least 3,197 people, and tortured some 29,000, as he personally amassed a $28 million fortune. But hey, at least there was economic ‘freedom’.
• Reagan promised the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) he would support their needs, but when the union struck for better pay and benefits in 1981… Reagan slapped both PATCO and the workers with massive fines, decertified the union from legal recognition, and eventually fired 11,345 air traffic controllers, who were banned from federal employment (many ended up in poverty as a result)
• While productivity (that is, output per hour worked) has increased 77% since 1973, hourly compensation has increased by only 12.4%.
• In 1914, Colorado mine workers went on strike and constructed a large encampment near the town of Ludlow. Colorado National Guard and private security forces broke the strike by setting the camp ablaze and opening fire with machine guns. An estimated 21 people died, including 11 children.
• Sell wheat by weight… not all wheat is the same… that in turn created a cheating problem… traders had to institute random inspections… In other words, the Chicago Board of Trade had to invent regulations to make their market work at all.
• The United States and South Korea are the only OECD countries without any national sick leave program… even if we assume that all American workers got the private-sector average of eleven days of paid vacation (in fact, only 75% do), that would still put the United States in 2nd to last place.
• The love of money as a possession—as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life—will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity.
• We spend far more than any other country on our medical system, yet do not even provide universal access to healthcare. Spending more for less—it’s the American way!
• American life expectancy has declined for five years straight and counting beginning 2016… our infant mortality rate is also the worst in the developed world.
• The fifty most expensive hospitals in the country charged uninsured patients ten times the Medicare-allowed rate…
• Something like 43 million people are forced off their employer-based insurance plan each year… in other words, if universal Medicare was rolled out over four years, even during the period when it was rolling the entire employer-based insurance population into the program, it would cause fewer insurance switching events than the internal function of the system it was replacing. After that of course, nobody would lose their insurance ever again.
• If we count insurance premiums as a tax, which they basically are, then Americans are already the 2nd most highly taxed in the developed world.
• Much of the declined in U.S emissions can be chalked up to moving manufacturing to China.
• The price of solar panels has fallen by 99% over the past 40 years.
• Deaths per terawatt-hour of electrical generation:
o Coal – 24.6
o Oil – 18.4
o Natural Gas – 2.8
o Nuclear – 0.074
• People transported in one lane per hour:
o Cars – 1,600
o Bike – 5,000
o Bus – 8,000
o Light-rail – 25,000
o Subway – 70,000
• The total tax rate on the richest 400 Americans has declined from 70% in 1950 to 47% in 1980 and just 23% in 2018 after the Trump tax cuts—the lowest rate of anyone on the income spectrum.
• Median employee to CEO pay ratio by year:
o 1965 – 21:1
o 1978 – 31:1
o 1995 – 118:1
o 2018 – 320:1
• Between 2015 and 2017, the restaurant industry spent a sum equal to 136.5% of its profits on share buybacks
• If we were to scoop up just half of the national capital stock into an American social wealth fund, and pay it out on a basis equal to the 255 million who are already 18 years or older, that would result in an annual divided payment on the order of $7,400.
• These dope peddlers shipped 9 million pills (of opioids) in just two years to the town of Kermit, West Virginia—population 382.
• The criminal punishment system today is not designed to solve the problem of crime; rather it has been designed to warehouse the social dysfunction caused by Propertarain rule.
• There is a difference $15.2 trillion between what Blacks actually possess and what they would have if they had an equal share of the national wealth.
• Ironically, communist Vietnam’s ultra-aggressive state response meant the government ended up meddling far less in citizens’ lives that most Western democracies have, at least in terms of pandemic controls.
• (on debt ceiling negotiations) All told, this gruesome incident was a world-historical episode of moronic policy incompetence. It’s as if your house were on fire, and the mayor and the fire department were arguing furiously about which grade of gasoline should be sprayed on the blaze.
From a literature perspective, this book may ask too much of its readers, occasionally requiring you to know what schools of thought certain economists subscribed to, who signed what bills, what policy did what, etc., with little context provided. Also, the crux of this book is the detailing of why and how the dismantling and replacement of Propertarianism is essential--an ideology that I believe should be better defined/explained before it is attacked for hundreds of pages (I believe it's synonymous with neoliberalism and/or "the status quo.")
Some potent excerpts:
• The real pain comes from failing to set up any kind of welfare programs and protections… we’ll all pay in the form of more stressful, shorter, less healthy lives that are devoured by pointlessly huge amounts of work.
• The self-regulating market is a façade covering political domination by business owners
• Retired Marine Corps general Smedley Butler testified before Congress that in 1933, several conservative business owners had recruited him to lead a fascist militia that overthrow FDR in a coup.
• …having access to the state’s violent authority is what it means to own something.
• The whole economic edifice of business, profits, workers, and so on rests on the state’s structural foundation. This means that the common neoliberal objective of “deregulation” is all but impossible.
• …If too much of the national income flows to the rich, who disproportionately save instead of spending it, the working class will not have enough income to consume what they produce.
• …in Finland a conservative business lobby recently proposed a minimum wage partly on the explicit grounds that it would weaken the collective bargaining system.
• In the United States, wealth ownership is grotesquely unequal—the top 10% of house golds own nearly 75% of the national wealth, and the top 1% own nearly 40%.
• The Byzantine labyrinth of Obamacare regulations shows just how much government regulation is necessary to create even a poor simulacrum of a health insurance market.
• The behavioral system proposed by neoliberalism is better suited to solitary predators or scavengers than it is to primates living in large groups.
• Under Augusto Pinochet, who overthrew the democratic government of Salvador Allende in a military coup in 1973 (with help from the CIA) … Chile would remain a dictatorship until 1990. While in power, Pinochet’s forces murdered at least 3,197 people, and tortured some 29,000, as he personally amassed a $28 million fortune. But hey, at least there was economic ‘freedom’.
• Reagan promised the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) he would support their needs, but when the union struck for better pay and benefits in 1981… Reagan slapped both PATCO and the workers with massive fines, decertified the union from legal recognition, and eventually fired 11,345 air traffic controllers, who were banned from federal employment (many ended up in poverty as a result)
• While productivity (that is, output per hour worked) has increased 77% since 1973, hourly compensation has increased by only 12.4%.
• In 1914, Colorado mine workers went on strike and constructed a large encampment near the town of Ludlow. Colorado National Guard and private security forces broke the strike by setting the camp ablaze and opening fire with machine guns. An estimated 21 people died, including 11 children.
• Sell wheat by weight… not all wheat is the same… that in turn created a cheating problem… traders had to institute random inspections… In other words, the Chicago Board of Trade had to invent regulations to make their market work at all.
• The United States and South Korea are the only OECD countries without any national sick leave program… even if we assume that all American workers got the private-sector average of eleven days of paid vacation (in fact, only 75% do), that would still put the United States in 2nd to last place.
• The love of money as a possession—as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life—will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity.
• We spend far more than any other country on our medical system, yet do not even provide universal access to healthcare. Spending more for less—it’s the American way!
• American life expectancy has declined for five years straight and counting beginning 2016… our infant mortality rate is also the worst in the developed world.
• The fifty most expensive hospitals in the country charged uninsured patients ten times the Medicare-allowed rate…
• Something like 43 million people are forced off their employer-based insurance plan each year… in other words, if universal Medicare was rolled out over four years, even during the period when it was rolling the entire employer-based insurance population into the program, it would cause fewer insurance switching events than the internal function of the system it was replacing. After that of course, nobody would lose their insurance ever again.
• If we count insurance premiums as a tax, which they basically are, then Americans are already the 2nd most highly taxed in the developed world.
• Much of the declined in U.S emissions can be chalked up to moving manufacturing to China.
• The price of solar panels has fallen by 99% over the past 40 years.
• Deaths per terawatt-hour of electrical generation:
o Coal – 24.6
o Oil – 18.4
o Natural Gas – 2.8
o Nuclear – 0.074
• People transported in one lane per hour:
o Cars – 1,600
o Bike – 5,000
o Bus – 8,000
o Light-rail – 25,000
o Subway – 70,000
• The total tax rate on the richest 400 Americans has declined from 70% in 1950 to 47% in 1980 and just 23% in 2018 after the Trump tax cuts—the lowest rate of anyone on the income spectrum.
• Median employee to CEO pay ratio by year:
o 1965 – 21:1
o 1978 – 31:1
o 1995 – 118:1
o 2018 – 320:1
• Between 2015 and 2017, the restaurant industry spent a sum equal to 136.5% of its profits on share buybacks
• If we were to scoop up just half of the national capital stock into an American social wealth fund, and pay it out on a basis equal to the 255 million who are already 18 years or older, that would result in an annual divided payment on the order of $7,400.
• These dope peddlers shipped 9 million pills (of opioids) in just two years to the town of Kermit, West Virginia—population 382.
• The criminal punishment system today is not designed to solve the problem of crime; rather it has been designed to warehouse the social dysfunction caused by Propertarain rule.
• There is a difference $15.2 trillion between what Blacks actually possess and what they would have if they had an equal share of the national wealth.
• Ironically, communist Vietnam’s ultra-aggressive state response meant the government ended up meddling far less in citizens’ lives that most Western democracies have, at least in terms of pandemic controls.
• (on debt ceiling negotiations) All told, this gruesome incident was a world-historical episode of moronic policy incompetence. It’s as if your house were on fire, and the mayor and the fire department were arguing furiously about which grade of gasoline should be sprayed on the blaze.
December 11, 2022
An excellent and important book if we're interested in making the US not just more fair for all its citizens but actually a decent place to live. Cooper brilliantly notes that the United States is a tyranny of the propertied. He also shows with biting detail that the overall myth--that the economy is a natural and independent creation that government only slows down--is wrong in every aspect. The economy is a political creation and can be changed and influenced by political action, indeed it always is. The propertarians, as he calls them, have convinced huge segments of ordinary Americans that any policy meant to make life better for the majority is to be viewed with suspicion (the title question, "How are you going to pay for that?"). Business leaders demand that government action be taken to make unemployment as painful as possible so that workers can be forced back into low-paying jobs at the whim of the capitalist class. Nobody asks how the government is going to pay for the military or for tax cuts for the wealthy. Cooper's solution is not Marxist (Marx and his Soviet disciples were just as propertarian as the most laissez-faire types) but communitarian. We have to recognize that we are all part of the same community and reorganize our economy so that the vaunted ideal of American liberty is not just political but economic and social as well. Practically speaking, most Americans are simply free to starve to death or die of preventable diseases because the propertied classes are intent on preserving THEIR freedom to run the economy and society to their benefit. Cooper is willing to pillory members of left and right and both political parties (Obama comes off almost as bad as Reagan) but his overall point is that there are blueprints all over the developed world for fixing the United States. We do pay a lot of taxes--we just get nothing for them. Our counterparts in Europe and Asia pay slightly more and have way more quality of life. While some of his plans are probably a little harder to implement than he imagines, it must be admitted that most of the difficulty comes from entrenched policy elites and not because there's anything wrong with the strategy. Interestingly, it is not Karl Marx but Adam Smith who would likely agree with Cooper more--Smith wanted to abolish the residency requirement for welfare to allow workers to move to follow jobs and believed that nothing that benefited the majority (ie--the poor) could be said to be bad for the nation as a whole. Thinking like a community is the only thing that will get us out of this mess. I hope more take up Cooper's challenge. The Biden administration (shockingly, as Cooper notes, given Biden's history as a fairly propertarian leader) has made some good starts. But it needs go much further.
May 16, 2023
It's tough to only rate this a 3, b/c I really like Cooper's work in general. He's sharp, incisive, and pretty clear-eyed. And he's those things in this book as well, maybe it's just that I had misconceptions about what the book would be about.
I thought it was going to spend much more time on the economic theories and practicalities and why they were horseshit lol, but it honestly felt like we were really rushing around from place to place. And so when we headed into the policy section of the book I still didn't really have a clear idea of just what some of the main topics were. "Propertarianism", Keynesian economics, bastard-Keynesian economics, etc.
So my expectation was a book that really chopped away at those economic underpinnings, but it felt like we got a rushed job of that and then it headed into honestly a pretty standard policy suggestion section. Not really what I was expecting, and I honestly think the book is a little worse off. Like I was paying attention the whole time, and I still don't think I fully grasp some of the main thrusts of his economic argument.
Plus I'd add that while some of the explanations in the lightning-history-round section(s) made a good deal of sense, others had me raising my eyebrows a bit. Was the recession of '37 really all about the pullback from investment? I read an FDR bio recently, and at least at the time no one really knew what was going on there. Of course 80+ years later we'll probably have a better idea, but it still gave me the strong impression that it was a fairly complex economic situation, not one given to easy answers. Of course I could be wrong! But I would have appreciated more evidence there.
Idk, overall this meant it was a mixed bag for me.
I thought it was going to spend much more time on the economic theories and practicalities and why they were horseshit lol, but it honestly felt like we were really rushing around from place to place. And so when we headed into the policy section of the book I still didn't really have a clear idea of just what some of the main topics were. "Propertarianism", Keynesian economics, bastard-Keynesian economics, etc.
So my expectation was a book that really chopped away at those economic underpinnings, but it felt like we got a rushed job of that and then it headed into honestly a pretty standard policy suggestion section. Not really what I was expecting, and I honestly think the book is a little worse off. Like I was paying attention the whole time, and I still don't think I fully grasp some of the main thrusts of his economic argument.
Plus I'd add that while some of the explanations in the lightning-history-round section(s) made a good deal of sense, others had me raising my eyebrows a bit. Was the recession of '37 really all about the pullback from investment? I read an FDR bio recently, and at least at the time no one really knew what was going on there. Of course 80+ years later we'll probably have a better idea, but it still gave me the strong impression that it was a fairly complex economic situation, not one given to easy answers. Of course I could be wrong! But I would have appreciated more evidence there.
Idk, overall this meant it was a mixed bag for me.
February 14, 2023
This is the first economics books I've ever read, might be the last because damn do I hate econ. Besides that, Cooper does a great job of diagnosing the problems, but his arguments for fixing them come across as weak and way too general. His main argument is that "propertarianism" has created a toxic economic field where property is held as the most important aspect that leads to the idea people should serve the markets and not vice versa. I think anyone on the left would mostly agree with what he identifies as the problem, my issue with his solutions is it feels like he is just rediscovering Keynesian economics/embedded liberalism with an added dash of socialism-lite. None of these ideas feel new or particularly well polished. His penultimate chapter focusing on how the legacy of slavery in his opinion has divided the working class even now and has allowed these neoliberal policies to run without opposition in the US was actually the most compelling argument in this book, and I think perhaps he should've done more research to focus on that and write a different book. A good primer for leftist economic ideas, but nothing new was put forward.
July 21, 2024
If you didn't buy into liberal economics in the first place, this book isn't going to convince you otherwise. Despite what the title says, I don't think this book really answered anything thoroughly. I found the writing to be very inconsistent. In some parts, Ryan Cooper would go through great pains expressing his personal views but provide little to no statistics or factual evidence; In other parts, he would throw out paragraphs of numbers and article excerpts without explaining any of it.
The result was a book that reads more like a half-hearted editorial piece. It provided no real counterargument against conservative politics and leaves the readers with no concrete grasp of liberal policies.
The reason I'm giving this 3/5 stars is because this book brings to attention a lot of major issues the US faces domestically. While I didn't necessarily enjoy this particular read, I certainly think more books addressing these topics deserve to be published, however, the content needs to be informatively written and backed by substantial evidence and analysis.
The result was a book that reads more like a half-hearted editorial piece. It provided no real counterargument against conservative politics and leaves the readers with no concrete grasp of liberal policies.
The reason I'm giving this 3/5 stars is because this book brings to attention a lot of major issues the US faces domestically. While I didn't necessarily enjoy this particular read, I certainly think more books addressing these topics deserve to be published, however, the content needs to be informatively written and backed by substantial evidence and analysis.
May 11, 2022
"How are you going to pay for that?" This is a question rooted in a very old way of thinking that sees the economy as something outside human control. Like the poor subjects of the Greek gods, we hoi polloi must forget about the things we want and bow down to the inescapable power of the market. We are told to be pious: weather the market storms with mercantile virtue. By being thrifty and rational, individuals opt out of collective endeavors and seek only their own material good.
To be on the left is to argue against ideological hegemony. Cooper does a good job of laying out the basic policy arguments while harkening back to compelling moral ones: There is no such thing as a natural economy. Human suffering does not have to be ignored!
To be on the left is to argue against ideological hegemony. Cooper does a good job of laying out the basic policy arguments while harkening back to compelling moral ones: There is no such thing as a natural economy. Human suffering does not have to be ignored!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 16, 2025
An incredibly lofty and ambitious book about policies that can actually improve the lives of Americans. This book details "how we can pay for that" and how these policies are experiencing success in other developed countries. It gives a history of neoliberalism, how we got to where we are now, new deal politics and the "propertatian" counter arguments against implenting these policies.
If you have even the slightest left leaning politics, you should read this book to find out that your ideas are not just "pie in the sky". If you are right-leaning, you should read this book even more. This is the type of book that can be used to refer to later and makes you think about wtf our government is doing when there are all these really good ideas we could be implementing.
If you have even the slightest left leaning politics, you should read this book to find out that your ideas are not just "pie in the sky". If you are right-leaning, you should read this book even more. This is the type of book that can be used to refer to later and makes you think about wtf our government is doing when there are all these really good ideas we could be implementing.
May 12, 2023
I happened to have the chance to talk to the Author of this book on Twitter and Bluesky Social. What Ryan Cooper did was expose the dark truth of the policy-making process and how the bureaucratic decision kept the people who needed help from the government away and shamed them from receiving the benefits they all deserved.
When the government decides to govern and deliver what the people need, it's good for politics, and the policies would benefit all working-class people. I recommend this book to all people who have an interest in the US economy. This book has no bemuse economic jargon, and all you have to do is to keep reading this book until the very end.
When the government decides to govern and deliver what the people need, it's good for politics, and the policies would benefit all working-class people. I recommend this book to all people who have an interest in the US economy. This book has no bemuse economic jargon, and all you have to do is to keep reading this book until the very end.
May 28, 2023
One of the few pieces of political and economical commentary that remains balanced throughout. While the author does have a left lean, they remain neutral by calling out the failings, and successes, of both political parties. This book provides an in-depth look into a new way of economic thought and theory that serves to expand ones mind with easy to follow narratives. Cooper does a great job of taking highly complex economical theories and distilling them into something the average reader can understand.
March 19, 2024
Decent intro/overview into alternatives to neoliberal/'propertarian' dogma - especially the core notion that private commerce and markets operate outside of politics and social engagement.
It suffers a bit from 'magic wand' syndrome, and I'd quarrel with some of Cooper's characterizations and claims (supporting one of his points: political economy is socially constructed, not made of natural laws like physics. Neoliberal and Chicago school folks are disingenuous in trying to present 'economics' as a hard science divorced from social and political processes).
It suffers a bit from 'magic wand' syndrome, and I'd quarrel with some of Cooper's characterizations and claims (supporting one of his points: political economy is socially constructed, not made of natural laws like physics. Neoliberal and Chicago school folks are disingenuous in trying to present 'economics' as a hard science divorced from social and political processes).
October 1, 2022
Solid overview of neoliberalism and its transgressions. It's very accessible, although at some points it feels handwavy with its arguments. It goes into enough depth to get a good grasp of the ideas but leaves room for further independent research. I wish more time was spent on actual argumentation and rhetorical tactics, but overall it's a good starting point to dive deeper into the topics introduced.
October 22, 2022
This book tackles an enormous number of topics, all of them fairly well, with clear and convincing prose, and enough references and statistics laid out for it to feel adequately researched. These are some major topics, at times feeling intractable, but there are enough specifics in this to feel like you have something to take away and to consider for actionable change - such as the first actually good argument for single payer healthcare that I have read.
March 30, 2022
The author apparently did his research in many areas, and the discussion of the topics was very extensive, in depth, and more importantly, thought-provoking, which is a quality we really need. Even though I don't necessarily agree with everything in the book, it answered quite a few of my questions very convincingly.
August 9, 2022
It made me sad, more than anything. Reading convincing arguments on how the system is broken combined with how to fix it, but then feeling the melancholy of not being able to see those changes ever happening.
The content was good, but it's not one that I am going constantly recommend to people. I would give it four stars (instead of three) if it didn't just make me so depressed.
The content was good, but it's not one that I am going constantly recommend to people. I would give it four stars (instead of three) if it didn't just make me so depressed.
July 22, 2021
Great book.
Confirms to me that as a nation (more like the divided states of America) we are one hot mess. And, it is depressing to imagine that mess ever being fixed by anyone.
I won an ARC on Goodreads in exchange for an honest review.
Confirms to me that as a nation (more like the divided states of America) we are one hot mess. And, it is depressing to imagine that mess ever being fixed by anyone.
I won an ARC on Goodreads in exchange for an honest review.
February 3, 2022
I usually knock a point off for an author reading their own book - LEAVE IT TO THE PROS, JERKS - but this book's good so I didn't.
I'm sort of too cynical to full enjoy reading whitepapers / "I've got a plan for that" style writing these days, but this one's chipped away at my icy heart.
I'm sort of too cynical to full enjoy reading whitepapers / "I've got a plan for that" style writing these days, but this one's chipped away at my icy heart.
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