The Squandering of America: How the Failure of our Politics Undermines our Prosperity (2007) by Robert Kuttner
I am starting at the end in the chapter of on Trade and the National Interest, subtitle “The Debate We Should be Having.” Much of the book is kind of more of the same of his other books, maybe a little more difficult to get into. I did particularly like his position on trade since the TPP terrifies me in a scifi dystopian world to come soon kind of way. Page 241:
If you accept the broad premise of this book (and the evidence of twentieth history), a MANAGED FORM OF CAPITALISM is far better for most people, better for a broadly diffused prosperity, better for economic efficiency, and better for the stability of the system as a whole. The nation-state is necessarily the venue of that economic management, because it is the locus of government and of political democracy. There is no global government, only very partial and largely unaccountable institutions of international regulation. The only entity close to a transnational democratic polity is the European Union. But the European Union solves the problem of reconciling private commerce with managed capitalism on only one continent and Europe’s model is coming under increasing threat by the current brand of globalization.
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