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Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall–and Those Fighting to Reverse It
In this revelatory narrative covering the years 1967 to 2017, Steven Brill gives us a stunningly cogent picture of the broken system at the heart of our society. He shows us how, over the last half century, America’s core values—meritocracy, innovation, due process, free speech, and even democracy itself—have somehow managed to power its decline into dysfunction. They have isolated our best and brightest, whose positions at the top have never been more secure or more remote. The result has been an erosion of responsibility and accountability, an epidemic of shortsightedness, an increasingly hollow economic and political center, and millions of Americans gripped by apathy and hopelessness. By examining the people and forces behind the rise of big-money lobbying, legal and financial engineering, the demise of private-sector unions, and a hamstrung bureaucracy, Brill answers the question on everyone’s How did we end up this way? Finally, he introduces us to those working quietly and effectively to repair the damages. At once a diagnosis of our national ills, a history of their development, and a prescription for a brighter future, Tailspin is a work of riveting journalism—and a welcome antidote to political despair.
418 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 29, 2018
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February 5, 2020
Brill’s is one of a gazillion recent books that addresses the question, what happened to America? That it’s broken, we all know, even if we don’t always admit it to ourselves.
This book, however, really is different. Brill is one of the few authors who has the legal and financial expertise to really get it right. And that he does. The problem is not social, political, racial, or patriarchal (although the latter two are real problems that must be addressed). The problem is economic. In short, the new American aristocracy are the wealthy who continue to elevate themselves above the rest of society financially and who have successfully dug moats around themselves and their children to protect their elite status.
It is, in my own words, the commercialization of America. The wealthy in America have successfully constructed a false meritocracy where ‘merit without means’ has grown increasingly difficult. Class mobility, as a result, has declined and fewer and fewer of our youth can expect to live better than their parents.
It’s the universal law of unintended consequences. We replaced the old-boy, inherited wealth aristocracy with a true meritocracy. The meritorious among us, however, used their newfound mobility to create a world where class mobility has been commercialized. The children of the already wealthy, as a result, who have access to private schools, tutors, SAT prep classes, violin lessons, and the latest technology, have a material advantage in climbing their own ladder of merit.
What distinguishes Brill’s book is that he works harder than most authors on providing solutions, or at least finding and revealing people and institutions who have already made a difference (no, not Trump) and who offer a template for moving forward.
Brill is informed across a wide spectrum of topics. He is, first and foremost, however, a journalist and it shows. The prose is easy to read but always backed up with plenty of data. At times, perhaps, just a tad too much. But that’s okay. He, more than most, makes it clear why we are all so disillusioned.
This book will make you mad. And it should. Our politicians are dialing for dollars while Washington burns. And Brill has the connections and the writing skills to bring the heat into your living room.
A very good book that no one will want to pick up a second time. But that’s okay. Sometimes we need a good whack to make sure we’re still awake.
This book, however, really is different. Brill is one of the few authors who has the legal and financial expertise to really get it right. And that he does. The problem is not social, political, racial, or patriarchal (although the latter two are real problems that must be addressed). The problem is economic. In short, the new American aristocracy are the wealthy who continue to elevate themselves above the rest of society financially and who have successfully dug moats around themselves and their children to protect their elite status.
It is, in my own words, the commercialization of America. The wealthy in America have successfully constructed a false meritocracy where ‘merit without means’ has grown increasingly difficult. Class mobility, as a result, has declined and fewer and fewer of our youth can expect to live better than their parents.
It’s the universal law of unintended consequences. We replaced the old-boy, inherited wealth aristocracy with a true meritocracy. The meritorious among us, however, used their newfound mobility to create a world where class mobility has been commercialized. The children of the already wealthy, as a result, who have access to private schools, tutors, SAT prep classes, violin lessons, and the latest technology, have a material advantage in climbing their own ladder of merit.
What distinguishes Brill’s book is that he works harder than most authors on providing solutions, or at least finding and revealing people and institutions who have already made a difference (no, not Trump) and who offer a template for moving forward.
Brill is informed across a wide spectrum of topics. He is, first and foremost, however, a journalist and it shows. The prose is easy to read but always backed up with plenty of data. At times, perhaps, just a tad too much. But that’s okay. He, more than most, makes it clear why we are all so disillusioned.
This book will make you mad. And it should. Our politicians are dialing for dollars while Washington burns. And Brill has the connections and the writing skills to bring the heat into your living room.
A very good book that no one will want to pick up a second time. But that’s okay. Sometimes we need a good whack to make sure we’re still awake.
April 5, 2018
Medieval moats updated
For Steven Brill, “America has increasingly become a Moat Nation, producing a parade of unfair advantages for those with the resources to deploy the knowledge workers to build and fortify their moats while contributing to the overall decline of the country.” The protected classes – the rich, the corporations and the lobbyists – keep building their moats wider and deeper, at the very real expense of the rest of us. They are untouchable, while we become untouchable castes. That is the essence of Tailspin.
Justice has failed us, as companies are too big to fail, too big to jail, and now, even too big to manage. Managers are no longer on the hook for crimes committed under them. Results-based executive bonuses do not take into account fines and settlements, so their compensation can be higher. Supposedly gigantic fines are just the cost doing business, and are well worth paying to keep breaking the law. And besides, companies don’t even have to admit guilt.
There are now 20 lobbyists per lawmaker in The Swamp, and President Trump has been picking among them for prominent posts in government so they can directly favor their clients over voters. Companies can prevent anyone suing by mandating arbitration – and they pick and pay the arbitrators. The Supreme Court has chosen a president by itself, and freed the wealthy corporations to outspend and overwhelm the public with their politics.
The government says it is not its job to retrain Americans as the world economy changes. So millions of jobs go unfilled while millions of people (42%) are in dead-end minimum wage jobs that force them onto food stamps and Obamacare to survive. The savings go to the rich in tax cuts. Meanwhile the US leads in almost no categories with comparable countries, and is near the bottom when it comes to the education, health and welfare of its citizens.
Corporations are claiming anything they say in their labels or advertising or commercials is their “opinion” and not necessarily provable or factual. So they can’t be sued for fraud. (All those fraudulent ratings of mortgage-backed securities that Moody’s and S&P gave five star ratings to? Just opinions.) This is “freedom of speech” taken to absurd reaches. It cancels out all regulation and all protection. Corporations are not people and were not covered by the constitution – but that’s what lawyers and judges now rely on. This is yet another further moat around the protected classes.
Lawmakers spend 4-5 hours every day dialing for dollars, because they have to. Another third of the day is spent with lobbyists at useless receptions, mostly fundraisers. Voters have no voice and no role in Washington’s Swamp. They just get in the way.
The list is endless, and despite Brill’s counterexamples of unknown heroes laboring against the tide, it continues to worsen by the day.
There are so many books like this. They all seem to have the same structure. They bemoan the wrong turns since the Depression that had set us on the right path. They pack in horrid stats to show how far we’ve fallen. They profile individual heroes – usually lawyers – who are fighting the good fight with their small counter-lobbies. The books express hope that Americans will protest the takeover of the country by the corporations and the special interests. As I read, I kept hoping Brill of all people would take it in a new direction with some new insight or conclusion. But no such luck. To that extent, it was a disappointment.
David Wineberg
For Steven Brill, “America has increasingly become a Moat Nation, producing a parade of unfair advantages for those with the resources to deploy the knowledge workers to build and fortify their moats while contributing to the overall decline of the country.” The protected classes – the rich, the corporations and the lobbyists – keep building their moats wider and deeper, at the very real expense of the rest of us. They are untouchable, while we become untouchable castes. That is the essence of Tailspin.
Justice has failed us, as companies are too big to fail, too big to jail, and now, even too big to manage. Managers are no longer on the hook for crimes committed under them. Results-based executive bonuses do not take into account fines and settlements, so their compensation can be higher. Supposedly gigantic fines are just the cost doing business, and are well worth paying to keep breaking the law. And besides, companies don’t even have to admit guilt.
There are now 20 lobbyists per lawmaker in The Swamp, and President Trump has been picking among them for prominent posts in government so they can directly favor their clients over voters. Companies can prevent anyone suing by mandating arbitration – and they pick and pay the arbitrators. The Supreme Court has chosen a president by itself, and freed the wealthy corporations to outspend and overwhelm the public with their politics.
The government says it is not its job to retrain Americans as the world economy changes. So millions of jobs go unfilled while millions of people (42%) are in dead-end minimum wage jobs that force them onto food stamps and Obamacare to survive. The savings go to the rich in tax cuts. Meanwhile the US leads in almost no categories with comparable countries, and is near the bottom when it comes to the education, health and welfare of its citizens.
Corporations are claiming anything they say in their labels or advertising or commercials is their “opinion” and not necessarily provable or factual. So they can’t be sued for fraud. (All those fraudulent ratings of mortgage-backed securities that Moody’s and S&P gave five star ratings to? Just opinions.) This is “freedom of speech” taken to absurd reaches. It cancels out all regulation and all protection. Corporations are not people and were not covered by the constitution – but that’s what lawyers and judges now rely on. This is yet another further moat around the protected classes.
Lawmakers spend 4-5 hours every day dialing for dollars, because they have to. Another third of the day is spent with lobbyists at useless receptions, mostly fundraisers. Voters have no voice and no role in Washington’s Swamp. They just get in the way.
The list is endless, and despite Brill’s counterexamples of unknown heroes laboring against the tide, it continues to worsen by the day.
There are so many books like this. They all seem to have the same structure. They bemoan the wrong turns since the Depression that had set us on the right path. They pack in horrid stats to show how far we’ve fallen. They profile individual heroes – usually lawyers – who are fighting the good fight with their small counter-lobbies. The books express hope that Americans will protest the takeover of the country by the corporations and the special interests. As I read, I kept hoping Brill of all people would take it in a new direction with some new insight or conclusion. But no such luck. To that extent, it was a disappointment.
David Wineberg
Read
July 4, 2018Feeding the populist bonfire.....
"Following the Great Recession, the recovery passed over most of America. Incomes for the top 1 percent rose 31.4 percent from 2009 to 2012, but crept up a barely noticeable .4 percent for the bottom 99 percent. The moats built by those who were largely responsible for the Great Recession, or at least prospered in the run-up to the crash, worked. They survived the damage suffered by everyone else."
A key to the thesis of the book is that the divide is not between parties, but between the new Gilded Age elite, from both parties, and everyone else. I have a friend, a lifelong Democrat who voted for Hillary, who is now convinced that the corporatist wing of the Demo party, as she calls it, is mostly motivated by hanging on to their wealth and privileges, not helping the people. I think she's right. I mean, horror of horrors if your taxes go up to help the less fortunate and you might have to sell that place in the Hamptons or the dude ranch in Montana as a result. Let them eat cake!
=========
Were the elitists from either party helping people like these folks? Nope.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbxQp...
==========
The author goes into great detail about how certain phenomena came about, such as how the Right co-opted the First Amendment for wasteful reasons. Here is the short version.....
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/us...
Tha author breaks down the infamous Lewis Powell memo. But it speaks for itself. It's a milestone in the path to corporations are people and the Citizens United decisions.
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_me...
"Following the Great Recession, the recovery passed over most of America. Incomes for the top 1 percent rose 31.4 percent from 2009 to 2012, but crept up a barely noticeable .4 percent for the bottom 99 percent. The moats built by those who were largely responsible for the Great Recession, or at least prospered in the run-up to the crash, worked. They survived the damage suffered by everyone else."
A key to the thesis of the book is that the divide is not between parties, but between the new Gilded Age elite, from both parties, and everyone else. I have a friend, a lifelong Democrat who voted for Hillary, who is now convinced that the corporatist wing of the Demo party, as she calls it, is mostly motivated by hanging on to their wealth and privileges, not helping the people. I think she's right. I mean, horror of horrors if your taxes go up to help the less fortunate and you might have to sell that place in the Hamptons or the dude ranch in Montana as a result. Let them eat cake!
=========
Were the elitists from either party helping people like these folks? Nope.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbxQp...
==========
The author goes into great detail about how certain phenomena came about, such as how the Right co-opted the First Amendment for wasteful reasons. Here is the short version.....
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/us...
Tha author breaks down the infamous Lewis Powell memo. But it speaks for itself. It's a milestone in the path to corporations are people and the Citizens United decisions.
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_me...
June 26, 2018
Why We’re in the Fix We Are
If you’ve been paying attention for the past few years, what Steven Brill tells you in his often times infuriating new book Tailspin will not surprise you. There’s a tremendous and still expanding disparity between the haves and the have-nots. The haves control the levers of government and they work actively to reduce government, because, frankly, government can do little for them; from their viewpoint, it mostly hinders them. The have-nots control nothing. They really don’t understand how government and business work. They especially don’t grasp how good government benefits them, and, amazing to many, they support the goals of the haves in their effort to shutdown government.
As a result, the country feels like it’s going to hell in a hand basket, what with crumbling infrastructure, skyrocketing medical costs, lack of meaningful work for many, shortage of affordable housing, spreading poverty, and the like. What Brill shows you is how after the 1960s we began spiraling downward, how almost unnoticed changes contributed, what good intentions morphed into, and how some, a handful, work now to pull us out of our spin. If the book has a weakness, it’s this last part, ways that we can level off, and climb, once again regaining our lofty status as a country that prospers by helping the least of us succeed. Unfortunately, as Brill presents it, the space he gives it, it really seems meager, particularly viewed against the entrenched powers.
Brill begins back in the early 1970s when a few forward thinking universities, among them Yale, actively endeavored to break the American old family network by developing outreach programs designed to accept students based upon merit. Other institutions followed, a culture of meritocracy blossomed, and, lo and behold, these new bright people began pulling up the ladder after them. They went where the money was, becoming lawyers, corporate leaders, bankers, and Wall Street financiers.
On the way up, they revolutionized banking and finance with complicated and dangerous financial instruments. They enlisted lawyers to transform due process into a weapon for besieging and crippling government regulators. They turned free speech on its head to give corporations much more leeway in advertising, dodging marketing regulations, working around product labeling rules, and accumulating and trading in personal data.
With the advent of multiple channels of information, the public no longer operated off of a shared set of facts. Using C-Span, a noble idea, political leaders with the loudest and most conservative voices gained control and moved the country rightward. The myriad of issues well known to us today, from healthcare, to immigration, to a diminished middle class, and to financial speculation, became unsolvable problems, mere pawns for demagoguery.
The first step to reversing descent into accent is understanding how we got here, really getting under the hood for a close inspection of the origins and operating parts of our dysfunction, examining it in its particulars and also from a gestalt view. Here, Brill, as he did with his America’s Bitter Pill on healthcare, does the public a great service. Tailspin is the book that should be on every American’s reading list who truly have an interest in helping America achieve greatness defined in human prosperity and dignity. Too bad many who should read it won’t.
If you’ve been paying attention for the past few years, what Steven Brill tells you in his often times infuriating new book Tailspin will not surprise you. There’s a tremendous and still expanding disparity between the haves and the have-nots. The haves control the levers of government and they work actively to reduce government, because, frankly, government can do little for them; from their viewpoint, it mostly hinders them. The have-nots control nothing. They really don’t understand how government and business work. They especially don’t grasp how good government benefits them, and, amazing to many, they support the goals of the haves in their effort to shutdown government.
As a result, the country feels like it’s going to hell in a hand basket, what with crumbling infrastructure, skyrocketing medical costs, lack of meaningful work for many, shortage of affordable housing, spreading poverty, and the like. What Brill shows you is how after the 1960s we began spiraling downward, how almost unnoticed changes contributed, what good intentions morphed into, and how some, a handful, work now to pull us out of our spin. If the book has a weakness, it’s this last part, ways that we can level off, and climb, once again regaining our lofty status as a country that prospers by helping the least of us succeed. Unfortunately, as Brill presents it, the space he gives it, it really seems meager, particularly viewed against the entrenched powers.
Brill begins back in the early 1970s when a few forward thinking universities, among them Yale, actively endeavored to break the American old family network by developing outreach programs designed to accept students based upon merit. Other institutions followed, a culture of meritocracy blossomed, and, lo and behold, these new bright people began pulling up the ladder after them. They went where the money was, becoming lawyers, corporate leaders, bankers, and Wall Street financiers.
On the way up, they revolutionized banking and finance with complicated and dangerous financial instruments. They enlisted lawyers to transform due process into a weapon for besieging and crippling government regulators. They turned free speech on its head to give corporations much more leeway in advertising, dodging marketing regulations, working around product labeling rules, and accumulating and trading in personal data.
With the advent of multiple channels of information, the public no longer operated off of a shared set of facts. Using C-Span, a noble idea, political leaders with the loudest and most conservative voices gained control and moved the country rightward. The myriad of issues well known to us today, from healthcare, to immigration, to a diminished middle class, and to financial speculation, became unsolvable problems, mere pawns for demagoguery.
The first step to reversing descent into accent is understanding how we got here, really getting under the hood for a close inspection of the origins and operating parts of our dysfunction, examining it in its particulars and also from a gestalt view. Here, Brill, as he did with his America’s Bitter Pill on healthcare, does the public a great service. Tailspin is the book that should be on every American’s reading list who truly have an interest in helping America achieve greatness defined in human prosperity and dignity. Too bad many who should read it won’t.
September 28, 2018
I'll tell y'all right up front this review doesn't do the book justice. Tailspin is so full of good information that I'd have to read it, carefully, 3 or 4 times to fully digest it.
I frequently complain that subtitles tend to be misnomers and that they seem to be designed to catch eyes and sell books more than to give an accurate impression of what the book's about, but the opposite is true here. The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall--and Those Fighting to Reverse It basically says it all. That's exactly what Tailspin is: an honest, accurate, deeply-researched, carefully thought out, and well-documented profile of the individuals who and agencies and corporations that have promoted and caused various policy changes from 1967 through 2017; why they did it, how they did it; and the consequences, positive and negative, intended and unforeseen, of the changes they succeeded in bringing about.
Author Steven Brill is fair and even-handed in assigning blame and credit. Unlike some political authors, (I'm talking about you, Ann Coulter and Matt Taibbi, et al) Brill does not comes across as shrill, apoplectic, or disgusted. Even when profiling people and decisions he clearly disagrees with or despairs of, Brill presents that person's reasoning fairly, accurately, and without undue condemnation.
The best part of Tailspin is that Brill spends almost as much time and space to profiling the individuals and agencies who are working today to bring about positive change. He takes pains to describe their ideas in detail, to offer references to their proposals, and to make suggestions for what readers, who may have little time to engage in activism or to work actively to bring about change, can do in their own small way to work for change.
Tailspin offers encouragement throughout and ends on a hopeful note. It should be required reading for high school and college political science courses, and every American citizen who's worried about the future of our country and is interested in helping bring about change but has no idea what to do about it should read this book.
I frequently complain that subtitles tend to be misnomers and that they seem to be designed to catch eyes and sell books more than to give an accurate impression of what the book's about, but the opposite is true here. The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall--and Those Fighting to Reverse It basically says it all. That's exactly what Tailspin is: an honest, accurate, deeply-researched, carefully thought out, and well-documented profile of the individuals who and agencies and corporations that have promoted and caused various policy changes from 1967 through 2017; why they did it, how they did it; and the consequences, positive and negative, intended and unforeseen, of the changes they succeeded in bringing about.
Author Steven Brill is fair and even-handed in assigning blame and credit. Unlike some political authors, (I'm talking about you, Ann Coulter and Matt Taibbi, et al) Brill does not comes across as shrill, apoplectic, or disgusted. Even when profiling people and decisions he clearly disagrees with or despairs of, Brill presents that person's reasoning fairly, accurately, and without undue condemnation.
The best part of Tailspin is that Brill spends almost as much time and space to profiling the individuals and agencies who are working today to bring about positive change. He takes pains to describe their ideas in detail, to offer references to their proposals, and to make suggestions for what readers, who may have little time to engage in activism or to work actively to bring about change, can do in their own small way to work for change.
Tailspin offers encouragement throughout and ends on a hopeful note. It should be required reading for high school and college political science courses, and every American citizen who's worried about the future of our country and is interested in helping bring about change but has no idea what to do about it should read this book.
July 10, 2018
The subtitle of Tailspin promises a very comprehensive book, one that covers the causes of problems and their solutions. Brill comes up short of the promised comprehensive, critical analysis but produces a thoroughly researched book that has lots of detail about the ways in which America is failing (according to Brill's standards) and how it got to that point.
Brill roots his hypothesis in an interesting place: the movement toward meritocracy and away from cronyism and aristocracy. Leaning heavily on a graduation speech by Yale Law School Professor Daniel Markovits, Brill argues that tilting society toward the smartest and hardest working has even more entrenched the upper classes because their resources give them the ability to raise the most competitive children.
This is a pretty interesting idea and one Brill does a convincing job of defending. He argues that basing society around meritocracy had the unintended effect of turning many previously "collegial" arenas into competitions -- such as law where a new generation of super-lawyers would find ways to bend society's rules. Once elites had the ability to defend their position not just through privilege but also through skill, Brill argues many other functions of a equitable society fell apart.
I really do not have many quarrels with Brill's general take, but he does a much poorer job identifying real solutions. The title promises to also cover "those fighting to reverse it," but in practice this mostly means each chapter ends with a few pages profiling some random person and/or nonprofit organization tackling the problem in question. Some of these are interesting community-based approaches that may or may not be scalable. Some are broad approaches with no evidence they will ever get traction. After the (otherwise good) chapter on Congressional hyperpartisanship, Brill spends about one page on a group called the Bipartisan Policy Center, pointlessly concluding that its work has been wholly ignored.
This is emblematic of Tailspin's main limitation, which is that it is reporting, not analysis. Brill writes as though readers need information about what the problems are and how they came to be, not information or insight into how to solve them or how complex solutions might be. For instance, Brill talks about America's inability to recruit enough teachers and compensate them well enough. Later, he points out America's falling academic achievement and haphazardly offers that one solution could be doing away with summer vacations, which of course are one of the best benefits of becoming a teacher. At no point in the entire book is attention spent on the possibility that a solution to one problem may be a contributor to another.
Perhaps most egregiously, the book never actually challenges its most central hypothesis. What would be the ramifications of a modern society that does not operate through a meritocracy? Is this desirable? Admittedly this is a huge moral question, but one that Brill's own book would suggest we should already be tackling.
Brill roots his hypothesis in an interesting place: the movement toward meritocracy and away from cronyism and aristocracy. Leaning heavily on a graduation speech by Yale Law School Professor Daniel Markovits, Brill argues that tilting society toward the smartest and hardest working has even more entrenched the upper classes because their resources give them the ability to raise the most competitive children.
"Those with blue-chip college degrees...had always gone in large numbers to work at prestige banks, businesses, consultancies and law firms. Now the ones who flocked there were more likely to be talented and tougher -- because they were more likely to have gotten there through brains and hard work, not connections. They would be better at winning, and better at building moats to protect their winnings."
This is a pretty interesting idea and one Brill does a convincing job of defending. He argues that basing society around meritocracy had the unintended effect of turning many previously "collegial" arenas into competitions -- such as law where a new generation of super-lawyers would find ways to bend society's rules. Once elites had the ability to defend their position not just through privilege but also through skill, Brill argues many other functions of a equitable society fell apart.
"Those who have thrived in the post-1970s world of the new meritocracy, the casino economy, the marginalized middle class, and the dominance of political money are not interested in the Bipartisan Policy Center's solutions. They are more concerned with what the government can do to them than for them. A minimum wage law means that they have to pay more, not that they earn more... Tougher government regulation to protect consumers or to rein in Wall Street would constrain, not protect them."
I really do not have many quarrels with Brill's general take, but he does a much poorer job identifying real solutions. The title promises to also cover "those fighting to reverse it," but in practice this mostly means each chapter ends with a few pages profiling some random person and/or nonprofit organization tackling the problem in question. Some of these are interesting community-based approaches that may or may not be scalable. Some are broad approaches with no evidence they will ever get traction. After the (otherwise good) chapter on Congressional hyperpartisanship, Brill spends about one page on a group called the Bipartisan Policy Center, pointlessly concluding that its work has been wholly ignored.
This is emblematic of Tailspin's main limitation, which is that it is reporting, not analysis. Brill writes as though readers need information about what the problems are and how they came to be, not information or insight into how to solve them or how complex solutions might be. For instance, Brill talks about America's inability to recruit enough teachers and compensate them well enough. Later, he points out America's falling academic achievement and haphazardly offers that one solution could be doing away with summer vacations, which of course are one of the best benefits of becoming a teacher. At no point in the entire book is attention spent on the possibility that a solution to one problem may be a contributor to another.
Perhaps most egregiously, the book never actually challenges its most central hypothesis. What would be the ramifications of a modern society that does not operate through a meritocracy? Is this desirable? Admittedly this is a huge moral question, but one that Brill's own book would suggest we should already be tackling.
June 10, 2019
The chapters on education most evidence where I kinda just hate this author's worldview. See a problem, sure, but distort it, and absolutely refuse to see it outside the Republican/Democrat divide. What we need isn't bi-partisanship, or non-partisanship (which really is bullshit, we agree on that), but a new party. New ideas for a new century.
For instance - why, the hell, do we have a society where anything and everything that actually is done above the poverty levels must adhere rigidly to the definition wrangling and smug smart-assery of lawyers? You can't fire someone without explicitly detailing what they've done,w hat they should of done, and that they knew they were doing it wrong? Are you kidding me? Screw inventing definitions for this, they aren't necessary. Who says "Due Process" means wantonly embracing the insanity of satire? Moreover, where is any of this concern when it comes to the common person? Cause, last I checked, comething like 95% of inmates never had a trial, let alone this absurdist definition of "Due Process" - we don't get our basic rights, let alone special ones. Hell - most of us live in the practical world of "Right to Work", in name or not. Unions pretty much only exist in the criminal and the public sectors at this point, because the system itself has functionally criminalized them.
And what good does expanding a school's intake by 20% and making it all poor kids, who beat out thousands of others, do for meritocratic elitism? Make it slightly less heritable? HArdly, it jsut makes moving up a tiny bit more possible, but definitionally reserving it to the 1 or 5% Moreover, the "Up" these folks move into is what, banking, hedge funds, and lawyering? So, you know, the veryt hings that are fucking everything up, yeah? That's progress? That's like taking the talented black kid and making him into a white supremacist copy to sit on the Supreme Court so you can point to him and say "See, we aren't racist! Our Black agrees with us!" - and, worse, removing a talented, skilled, and downright lucky individual who COULD have been an actual benefit to his or her own community from that very community, and making them an enemy of it, like that absolute asshole that wrote Hillbilly Elegy - "So, what, you think your better than us?" Yes, yes he fucking does. That's the point of the entire goddamed book - he doesn't actually see his luck, but hard work, and blames everyone who didn't come up with him.
Meritocracy was always meant to be a biting satire, a critique of schools and American/British culture. But Brill is a conservative insofar as hierarchical support goes, without question, and I'm just not having it.
You can get the same, good, points elsewhere, but his take-aways tend towards the insipid, the elitist, or the downright unimaginative.
Our intellectual elites really need to make some poor friends and get to grips witht he actual country they live in. Because every damn one of them assumes folks like myself, who work at Wal~Mart and read, don't exist at all --usually pointing out that "If you're reading this, you're in the 1%". No, mate, I fuckin' ain't. I have a net worth, discounting medical, of about negative 100k. And I make 16k a year. I may be in the global 1%, not really sure and don't really care, because that's not how poverty actually works, and, frankly, I can't help people outside my country, or change countries that aren't my own, and that's not my job. Tho I can, and do, agitate against our overt actions to deliberately fuck up peoples lives here and abroad just to make a few bucks. Or, dumber still, blow a few tens of billions of purely imaginary USD more.
For instance - why, the hell, do we have a society where anything and everything that actually is done above the poverty levels must adhere rigidly to the definition wrangling and smug smart-assery of lawyers? You can't fire someone without explicitly detailing what they've done,w hat they should of done, and that they knew they were doing it wrong? Are you kidding me? Screw inventing definitions for this, they aren't necessary. Who says "Due Process" means wantonly embracing the insanity of satire? Moreover, where is any of this concern when it comes to the common person? Cause, last I checked, comething like 95% of inmates never had a trial, let alone this absurdist definition of "Due Process" - we don't get our basic rights, let alone special ones. Hell - most of us live in the practical world of "Right to Work", in name or not. Unions pretty much only exist in the criminal and the public sectors at this point, because the system itself has functionally criminalized them.
And what good does expanding a school's intake by 20% and making it all poor kids, who beat out thousands of others, do for meritocratic elitism? Make it slightly less heritable? HArdly, it jsut makes moving up a tiny bit more possible, but definitionally reserving it to the 1 or 5% Moreover, the "Up" these folks move into is what, banking, hedge funds, and lawyering? So, you know, the veryt hings that are fucking everything up, yeah? That's progress? That's like taking the talented black kid and making him into a white supremacist copy to sit on the Supreme Court so you can point to him and say "See, we aren't racist! Our Black agrees with us!" - and, worse, removing a talented, skilled, and downright lucky individual who COULD have been an actual benefit to his or her own community from that very community, and making them an enemy of it, like that absolute asshole that wrote Hillbilly Elegy - "So, what, you think your better than us?" Yes, yes he fucking does. That's the point of the entire goddamed book - he doesn't actually see his luck, but hard work, and blames everyone who didn't come up with him.
Meritocracy was always meant to be a biting satire, a critique of schools and American/British culture. But Brill is a conservative insofar as hierarchical support goes, without question, and I'm just not having it.
You can get the same, good, points elsewhere, but his take-aways tend towards the insipid, the elitist, or the downright unimaginative.
Our intellectual elites really need to make some poor friends and get to grips witht he actual country they live in. Because every damn one of them assumes folks like myself, who work at Wal~Mart and read, don't exist at all --usually pointing out that "If you're reading this, you're in the 1%". No, mate, I fuckin' ain't. I have a net worth, discounting medical, of about negative 100k. And I make 16k a year. I may be in the global 1%, not really sure and don't really care, because that's not how poverty actually works, and, frankly, I can't help people outside my country, or change countries that aren't my own, and that's not my job. Tho I can, and do, agitate against our overt actions to deliberately fuck up peoples lives here and abroad just to make a few bucks. Or, dumber still, blow a few tens of billions of purely imaginary USD more.
November 4, 2018
This book should have been titled "Be Careful What You Wish For; You May Get It," or perhaps "Unforeseen and Unintended Consequences."
He begins with a litany of problems facing the United States: income inequality, the highest poverty rate among the industrialized nations, a crumbling infrastructure, an attitude of American "exceptionalism"with a Congress that hasn't been able to pass a budget in decades, ("Like slacker schoolchildren unable to produce a book report on time, the country’s elected leaders have fallen back instead on an endless string of last-minute deadline extensions and piecemeal appropriations.") which is ruled by the more than twenty lobbyists for each Congressman. He then proceeds to zoom in on a variety of events and institutions he regards as the cause of these failures.
Just a couple of examples. He discusses the rise of meritocracy, the intent being to support and encourage those with brains and talent. What happened was those folks succeeded brilliantly, went to the best Ivy League schools (Brill is really big on mentioning where individuals graduated from and I was hard pressed to discover anyone he mentioned who had come from anywhere but an Ivy League school except perhaps Bernard Baruch in New York, a special case) but then created themselves into a protected class. Brill divides the world into two classes: the protected and the unprotected. The protected build walls around themselves and their money that make it virtually impossible for those not in the class to join it.
Another example is what he calls the "greening" of free speech. He cites Citizens United as a terrible decision because, in part, it emphasized the "personhood" of corporations. Yet, his informative history of free speech and corporations shows how critical that linkage is. Very much a progressive initiative, PACS were formed by unions first in 1943 as a way to support FDR's reelection. Through the 1950s and 1960s there was far more political money in union PACs than in business-oriented PACs. The New York Times case and the Virginia Pharmacy decision (ironically supported by Ralph Nader's Public Interest group as a way to make drug prices available on advertising and to create competition -- support they were to rue in when Citizens United came down)
A law review article by Martin Redish, a progressive Democrat, in 1982 * was an argument for why free speech should be applied to corporations. That view began to become more and more popular in legal circles culminating in Citizens United.
I happen to support that decision. What people often forget is that it was a case first, with a plaintiff who wanted to distribute a political movie and was told "no." During the oral arguments before the Supreme Court, which I listened to, I was absolutely horrified, as were most of the justices, by the response of the Deputy Solicitor General, who, when asked if the government could prevent the publication of a book that expressed political advocacy. That was a huge mistake.
Stewart's argument played into the hands of Ted Olson, counsel for Citizens United. By taking an extreme position that could be seen as akin to throwing someone in jail for writing a book, or book-banning, Stewart went way down the slippery slope, making it more likely that a majority on the Court (Alito, Roberts, Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas) will want to say something about the Constitution, and not merely decide, as I've suggested, that the video-on-demand delivery of the anti-Clinton movie simply is not covered by the McCain-Feingold statute.**
While I occasionally disagreed with Brill's interpretations of several events, it's certainly a provocative book that does provide some interesting examples of positive solutions.
*https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/pen...
**https://www.americanbar.org/publicati...
He begins with a litany of problems facing the United States: income inequality, the highest poverty rate among the industrialized nations, a crumbling infrastructure, an attitude of American "exceptionalism"with a Congress that hasn't been able to pass a budget in decades, ("Like slacker schoolchildren unable to produce a book report on time, the country’s elected leaders have fallen back instead on an endless string of last-minute deadline extensions and piecemeal appropriations.") which is ruled by the more than twenty lobbyists for each Congressman. He then proceeds to zoom in on a variety of events and institutions he regards as the cause of these failures.
Just a couple of examples. He discusses the rise of meritocracy, the intent being to support and encourage those with brains and talent. What happened was those folks succeeded brilliantly, went to the best Ivy League schools (Brill is really big on mentioning where individuals graduated from and I was hard pressed to discover anyone he mentioned who had come from anywhere but an Ivy League school except perhaps Bernard Baruch in New York, a special case) but then created themselves into a protected class. Brill divides the world into two classes: the protected and the unprotected. The protected build walls around themselves and their money that make it virtually impossible for those not in the class to join it.
Another example is what he calls the "greening" of free speech. He cites Citizens United as a terrible decision because, in part, it emphasized the "personhood" of corporations. Yet, his informative history of free speech and corporations shows how critical that linkage is. Very much a progressive initiative, PACS were formed by unions first in 1943 as a way to support FDR's reelection. Through the 1950s and 1960s there was far more political money in union PACs than in business-oriented PACs. The New York Times case and the Virginia Pharmacy decision (ironically supported by Ralph Nader's Public Interest group as a way to make drug prices available on advertising and to create competition -- support they were to rue in when Citizens United came down)
A law review article by Martin Redish, a progressive Democrat, in 1982 * was an argument for why free speech should be applied to corporations. That view began to become more and more popular in legal circles culminating in Citizens United.
I happen to support that decision. What people often forget is that it was a case first, with a plaintiff who wanted to distribute a political movie and was told "no." During the oral arguments before the Supreme Court, which I listened to, I was absolutely horrified, as were most of the justices, by the response of the Deputy Solicitor General, who, when asked if the government could prevent the publication of a book that expressed political advocacy. That was a huge mistake.
Stewart's argument played into the hands of Ted Olson, counsel for Citizens United. By taking an extreme position that could be seen as akin to throwing someone in jail for writing a book, or book-banning, Stewart went way down the slippery slope, making it more likely that a majority on the Court (Alito, Roberts, Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas) will want to say something about the Constitution, and not merely decide, as I've suggested, that the video-on-demand delivery of the anti-Clinton movie simply is not covered by the McCain-Feingold statute.**
While I occasionally disagreed with Brill's interpretations of several events, it's certainly a provocative book that does provide some interesting examples of positive solutions.
*https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/pen...
**https://www.americanbar.org/publicati...
June 21, 2018
Tailspin is journalist Steven Brill's attempt to determine what's recently gone wrong in America.
His thesis centers on a cultural shift he sees that began around 1965. Starting then America divided into an elite and those he calls "the unprotected many". Since then the elite successfully "overmatched, overran, and paralyzed the government" to grow and preserve their gains (7).
Each chapter of Tailspin focused on one aspect of that transformation. Brill addresses the rise of a meritocracy starting in education, an unintended consequence of which was the creation of a new aristocracy - of talent, yes, but one that then defended its gains by reducing everyone else's opportunities. Tailspin hits on lawyers, too, and partisan gridlock, as well as decaying infrastructure, but financial changes are the giants. Growing financialization (shifting parts of the economy from manufacturing or non-finance-related service to financial services) and the business shift to emphasize quarterly earnings for shareholders are a dangerous two-step for our author. This leads to business being able to mess with democracy in new and powerful ways, and connects with declining status and protection for workers.
There are many fascinating bits in Tailspin. I appreciated the deep dive into policy and law. The history of Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) was fascinating (151ff), as was the look into arbitration (213ff). The prehistory of Citizens United (going back to Ralph Nader!) is very useful. Overall, I agree with many of his assessments.
Unfortunately, the book suffers from some blind spots.
First, although at times it sounds like a left wing manifesto - citing Thomas Piketty, repeatedly calling out a financial elite - Brill insists that his argument isn't about left or right (339). One skeptical reviewer dubbed the book "the cry of the centrist", and that's a good description of both the book and its failure. The projects and ideals Brill celebrates are good but not very coherent, except as a kind of Bernie Sanders effort. Alternatively, we could imagine Tailspin as describing the emergence of a post-left-right politics, but it never heads in that direction. The result is, well, a mess.
Speaking of which, although the text consistently slams Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in ways that sound very left of center, the book only mentions Sanders once (29) and ditto for Occupy (251). Brill really doesn't want us to think in left wing terms.
Second, Brill somehow manages to almost completely ignore foreign policy. This is a domestic book, and really should have been signaled as such. I mention this not to pose as a geopolitical nerd (which I can be), but because American foreign policy plays such a key role for his thesis. For example, the decision to expand trade wasn't simply a Clinton administration decision, but part of a multinational movement; situating NAFTA and China's WTO entrance in that context gives a richer - well, simply more accurate - picture. It also leads us to a deeper understanding of the elite Brill dislikes, since they are often transnational in outlook if not lifestyle.
An international context also saps Brill's points about partisan gridlock. The two parties who abhor each other in so many ways somehow managed a pretty firm, bipartisan consensus about waging the war on terror, from spending bills to surveillance to strategy. Support for international trade deals has frequently crossed party lines - think, for example, of GOP support for Obama's TPP deal. Such context challenges Brill's thesis in a way I wish he'd address.
This is also a very Baby Boomer book. He starts his account in the early 1960s, when Boomers entered college and public life. His final chapter wonders where things went wrong, and leads off with JFK's assassination, the primal scene for the Boomer psyche. His last line calls for a "new New Frontier", again echoing the Kennedy administration. This isn't a criticism, necessarily, but a pointer to the book's standpoint and, perhaps, blinders.
I teetered between giving this 3 or 4 stars. What tipped me over the edge is Brill's persistent focus on people he sees doing good work. Every chapter shows us disasters and dangers... then ends with stories of real world projects seeking to undo them. I admire that spirit. Maybe we need it.
His thesis centers on a cultural shift he sees that began around 1965. Starting then America divided into an elite and those he calls "the unprotected many". Since then the elite successfully "overmatched, overran, and paralyzed the government" to grow and preserve their gains (7).
Each chapter of Tailspin focused on one aspect of that transformation. Brill addresses the rise of a meritocracy starting in education, an unintended consequence of which was the creation of a new aristocracy - of talent, yes, but one that then defended its gains by reducing everyone else's opportunities. Tailspin hits on lawyers, too, and partisan gridlock, as well as decaying infrastructure, but financial changes are the giants. Growing financialization (shifting parts of the economy from manufacturing or non-finance-related service to financial services) and the business shift to emphasize quarterly earnings for shareholders are a dangerous two-step for our author. This leads to business being able to mess with democracy in new and powerful ways, and connects with declining status and protection for workers.
There are many fascinating bits in Tailspin. I appreciated the deep dive into policy and law. The history of Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) was fascinating (151ff), as was the look into arbitration (213ff). The prehistory of Citizens United (going back to Ralph Nader!) is very useful. Overall, I agree with many of his assessments.
Unfortunately, the book suffers from some blind spots.
First, although at times it sounds like a left wing manifesto - citing Thomas Piketty, repeatedly calling out a financial elite - Brill insists that his argument isn't about left or right (339). One skeptical reviewer dubbed the book "the cry of the centrist", and that's a good description of both the book and its failure. The projects and ideals Brill celebrates are good but not very coherent, except as a kind of Bernie Sanders effort. Alternatively, we could imagine Tailspin as describing the emergence of a post-left-right politics, but it never heads in that direction. The result is, well, a mess.
Speaking of which, although the text consistently slams Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in ways that sound very left of center, the book only mentions Sanders once (29) and ditto for Occupy (251). Brill really doesn't want us to think in left wing terms.
Second, Brill somehow manages to almost completely ignore foreign policy. This is a domestic book, and really should have been signaled as such. I mention this not to pose as a geopolitical nerd (which I can be), but because American foreign policy plays such a key role for his thesis. For example, the decision to expand trade wasn't simply a Clinton administration decision, but part of a multinational movement; situating NAFTA and China's WTO entrance in that context gives a richer - well, simply more accurate - picture. It also leads us to a deeper understanding of the elite Brill dislikes, since they are often transnational in outlook if not lifestyle.
An international context also saps Brill's points about partisan gridlock. The two parties who abhor each other in so many ways somehow managed a pretty firm, bipartisan consensus about waging the war on terror, from spending bills to surveillance to strategy. Support for international trade deals has frequently crossed party lines - think, for example, of GOP support for Obama's TPP deal. Such context challenges Brill's thesis in a way I wish he'd address.
This is also a very Baby Boomer book. He starts his account in the early 1960s, when Boomers entered college and public life. His final chapter wonders where things went wrong, and leads off with JFK's assassination, the primal scene for the Boomer psyche. His last line calls for a "new New Frontier", again echoing the Kennedy administration. This isn't a criticism, necessarily, but a pointer to the book's standpoint and, perhaps, blinders.
I teetered between giving this 3 or 4 stars. What tipped me over the edge is Brill's persistent focus on people he sees doing good work. Every chapter shows us disasters and dangers... then ends with stories of real world projects seeking to undo them. I admire that spirit. Maybe we need it.
January 2, 2019
Brill does a good job of laying out some history: the antecedents to Citizens United, the due process clause, public unions, and the scandal at the VA.
Where he fails is at his underlying premise.
First, he caterwauls about terrible income inequality. Simple math: if one man makes 50k and increases his salary to 55k and another makes 5 million and increase his take to 5.5 million both have seen a 10% increase. Of course Inequality has risen, but so what.
Put another way, the guy working the fry basket at McDonalds isn’t being cheated by the likes of Mitt Romney, and in fact without the Mitt Romney’s the guy sweating over the fryer would have no job.
Similarly, Brill quotes selectively from the war on poverty, noting a charge from 62 to 71 that is misleading. Fact: Americans in poverty numbered about 38% by 1948 and saw a steep decline all the way to 71 when only about 11% found themselves in poverty. However, it was in 1965 that LBJ began his great war on poverty. By the time these programs to help the poor kicked in poverty began an upward rise where it sits today at about 15%. In other words, govt programs have not helped the poor get out of poverty but have instead ensconced them there.
The wealthy, those making over 130k pay 85% of federal tax, those between 50 and 130k — 15%. The rich are not cheating the poor.
Finally, Brill’s other failing is his belief in govt and the capabilities of the average man. The author catalogues many failings of the govt but returns like a beaten wife, offering apologies, and thoughts how this next cohort of govt polices will be different.
Brill makes good points on the need for job training but assumes people are capable of such feats. Fifty years ago people might have two careers, today they have five, and asking fifty year old to retrain is a hard hill to climb.
His final failed assumption is to take the post WW2 era as the norm and to assume that economies should continue to give up so many rewards to so many, especially in America. As proof he is wrong I would point to all the years, starting in the 70’s that proved his assumption incorrect.
Where he fails is at his underlying premise.
First, he caterwauls about terrible income inequality. Simple math: if one man makes 50k and increases his salary to 55k and another makes 5 million and increase his take to 5.5 million both have seen a 10% increase. Of course Inequality has risen, but so what.
Put another way, the guy working the fry basket at McDonalds isn’t being cheated by the likes of Mitt Romney, and in fact without the Mitt Romney’s the guy sweating over the fryer would have no job.
Similarly, Brill quotes selectively from the war on poverty, noting a charge from 62 to 71 that is misleading. Fact: Americans in poverty numbered about 38% by 1948 and saw a steep decline all the way to 71 when only about 11% found themselves in poverty. However, it was in 1965 that LBJ began his great war on poverty. By the time these programs to help the poor kicked in poverty began an upward rise where it sits today at about 15%. In other words, govt programs have not helped the poor get out of poverty but have instead ensconced them there.
The wealthy, those making over 130k pay 85% of federal tax, those between 50 and 130k — 15%. The rich are not cheating the poor.
Finally, Brill’s other failing is his belief in govt and the capabilities of the average man. The author catalogues many failings of the govt but returns like a beaten wife, offering apologies, and thoughts how this next cohort of govt polices will be different.
Brill makes good points on the need for job training but assumes people are capable of such feats. Fifty years ago people might have two careers, today they have five, and asking fifty year old to retrain is a hard hill to climb.
His final failed assumption is to take the post WW2 era as the norm and to assume that economies should continue to give up so many rewards to so many, especially in America. As proof he is wrong I would point to all the years, starting in the 70’s that proved his assumption incorrect.
January 2, 2019
Having read some of Brill's material related to healthcare I know that he is an astute observer of the political and economic realities of our age so looked forward to this work on our "tailspin" of the last 50 years as the country went into gridlock and so many pressing needs went unmet. He characterizes much of the problem with the existence of a "moat" around the participants which makes the problems difficult to solve. Book is stronger on description than proscription but still an interesting analysis of the problems we face and how we got there.
February 9, 2020
5 for quality of content and depth of analysis. Early portions of chapters, where Brill introduced his general themes, were fascinating, but if you're not particularly interested in the subject matter the material can feel dry and overly long. One of the later chapters covers poverty in America and has lots of statistics throughout but not a single example of any of its actual victims. That's an easy subject to pull the reader in and was an opportunity missed.
My reading experience here was similar to Brill's book "Bitter Pill" - very well written, a slog at times and deeply interesting at other times. Both books would be awesome textbooks for 3 credit college courses (and I would absolutely take both courses).
The middle chapters were excellent and very accurate.
This is a great book for the right audience. Check the highlights to get a sense for yourself.
My reading experience here was similar to Brill's book "Bitter Pill" - very well written, a slog at times and deeply interesting at other times. Both books would be awesome textbooks for 3 credit college courses (and I would absolutely take both courses).
The middle chapters were excellent and very accurate.
This is a great book for the right audience. Check the highlights to get a sense for yourself.
March 5, 2022
As an aging baby boomer I spend time trying desperately to figure out how we got here. From my senior year in HS with Kent State and heading off to college believing women had equal rights and willing to push for more - how did we get here with Roe v Wade possibly being overturned? How did we get here with children being taken from parents at the Mexican border? How did we get here with pharmaceuticals being advertised for off label uses without consequences ? How did we get here with Congress paralyzed and unable to do anything for the common good of the US and its citizens? How did we get here with the middle class hollowed out and college graduates burdened with incredible student loan debt making home ownership a distant dream? How did we get here?
Steven Brill takes all the small and not so small changes since 1970 that had unintended consequences and when taken together brought us to this point. The path forward and its implications on the country as a whole could not be seen as they were happening - it is only in hindsight each change in the law, each change in policy, each change in political party primaries, each FDA change, and FCC change , each Supreme Court decision - especially Citizens United - slowly but surely led us to this point.
There is no desire for the best for all - the common good as Brill points out. It is all winners and losers now - only winners are those with enough protected wealth. The winners are those who in some way connected to corporate wealth and protection that wealth and power provides. The average American has been lost to fend for themselves with ever deteriorating safety nets. The wealthy have taken ( bought?) the reins of power and continue - almost without obstacle - to continue to maintain their position believing safety nets for the rest of the population are government handouts to the undeserving.
He uses the example of street lights as there for the common good. But, a segment of society would, in theory, suggest government not pay for them either and if people wanted such - they should get together and fund it themselves. Why should wealthy fund decent public education when they can send their children to private schools? Why should corporate America support programs and tax hikes to fund infrastructure? Why should wealthy support politicians who want universal health care when they can afford all medical procedures wanted or needed? And if insurance corporations were taken out of the equation for medical care imagine how much money that wealthy class would lose.
I would have to say the one change and its impact no one saw coming was due to party structure and primary processes that started in 1972. Those rule changes along with growing impact of money - dirty and clean - combined to produce a Congress no longer beholden to any political party but beholden to individual mix of donors. No one has to answer to political party elite. The party bosses no longer have power to compete with money donated by individuals and corporations with public and hidden agendas.
Most Americans do not realize the government has been hijacked. Most Americans look for scapegoats and for being left out of growth and productivity. Most do not see how slowly their say in government has been eroded beyond recognition. And that is the problem. Changing the person in the White House will not change the corruption of the US system as a whole. Only removing the obscene impact of money in politics and elections and making corporations resume their position as "people" for purposes of legal contracts as opposed to free speech will make a dent in our demise.
Brill does point to those people and organizations who "get it." He comments on many as they slowly work to get the truth out of how the average American is being taken for a ride by the wealthy and their stranglehold on the government. It is very hard to swallow the idea that America has lost its way - but it has - and it has been going on since 1970. There is not going to be any return of the coal mining industry no matter what is preached at rallies. Not going to happen but unfortunately, easier to believe that fantasy than to face the fact one might need to move or get training in order to get the middle class life hoped for.
Read the book - see what you think. Look around at what is happening with a new perspective - a new set of "glasses." See if some things that just did not make sense - do make sense once you place those "glasses" on.
Steven Brill takes all the small and not so small changes since 1970 that had unintended consequences and when taken together brought us to this point. The path forward and its implications on the country as a whole could not be seen as they were happening - it is only in hindsight each change in the law, each change in policy, each change in political party primaries, each FDA change, and FCC change , each Supreme Court decision - especially Citizens United - slowly but surely led us to this point.
There is no desire for the best for all - the common good as Brill points out. It is all winners and losers now - only winners are those with enough protected wealth. The winners are those who in some way connected to corporate wealth and protection that wealth and power provides. The average American has been lost to fend for themselves with ever deteriorating safety nets. The wealthy have taken ( bought?) the reins of power and continue - almost without obstacle - to continue to maintain their position believing safety nets for the rest of the population are government handouts to the undeserving.
He uses the example of street lights as there for the common good. But, a segment of society would, in theory, suggest government not pay for them either and if people wanted such - they should get together and fund it themselves. Why should wealthy fund decent public education when they can send their children to private schools? Why should corporate America support programs and tax hikes to fund infrastructure? Why should wealthy support politicians who want universal health care when they can afford all medical procedures wanted or needed? And if insurance corporations were taken out of the equation for medical care imagine how much money that wealthy class would lose.
I would have to say the one change and its impact no one saw coming was due to party structure and primary processes that started in 1972. Those rule changes along with growing impact of money - dirty and clean - combined to produce a Congress no longer beholden to any political party but beholden to individual mix of donors. No one has to answer to political party elite. The party bosses no longer have power to compete with money donated by individuals and corporations with public and hidden agendas.
Most Americans do not realize the government has been hijacked. Most Americans look for scapegoats and for being left out of growth and productivity. Most do not see how slowly their say in government has been eroded beyond recognition. And that is the problem. Changing the person in the White House will not change the corruption of the US system as a whole. Only removing the obscene impact of money in politics and elections and making corporations resume their position as "people" for purposes of legal contracts as opposed to free speech will make a dent in our demise.
Brill does point to those people and organizations who "get it." He comments on many as they slowly work to get the truth out of how the average American is being taken for a ride by the wealthy and their stranglehold on the government. It is very hard to swallow the idea that America has lost its way - but it has - and it has been going on since 1970. There is not going to be any return of the coal mining industry no matter what is preached at rallies. Not going to happen but unfortunately, easier to believe that fantasy than to face the fact one might need to move or get training in order to get the middle class life hoped for.
Read the book - see what you think. Look around at what is happening with a new perspective - a new set of "glasses." See if some things that just did not make sense - do make sense once you place those "glasses" on.
August 14, 2018
So about the time that I was born America started going into a “tailspin.” Causation or correlation? Who knows?
This book picks up on some of the threads discussed in Coming Apart (Charles Murray) and Our Kids (Robert Putnam) and follows the meritocratic elite as they make America a steady worse and more unequal place.
Usually this is because the best and brightest decided to go into law, where they help build moats to protect the super-elite, or finance, where they commoditize and extract any value that would have otherwise gone to the lower, middle, or working classes.
This book differs from the other gloomy Gus America-in-decline books in that it (1) tries to show the roots in some of our issues are the unintended consequences of well-meaning policies and (2) identifies and covers individuals and institutions working to reverse the tailspin. So by reading this book you can identify areas where you can contribute instead of complaining on social media, though that dopamine squirt from doing the latter is more alluring.
My only complaint about this book is that it doesn’t blame anything on the Baby Boomers, the generation that by definition of the timeframe in this book is clearly responsible for America’s tailspin.
Highly recommended.
This book picks up on some of the threads discussed in Coming Apart (Charles Murray) and Our Kids (Robert Putnam) and follows the meritocratic elite as they make America a steady worse and more unequal place.
Usually this is because the best and brightest decided to go into law, where they help build moats to protect the super-elite, or finance, where they commoditize and extract any value that would have otherwise gone to the lower, middle, or working classes.
This book differs from the other gloomy Gus America-in-decline books in that it (1) tries to show the roots in some of our issues are the unintended consequences of well-meaning policies and (2) identifies and covers individuals and institutions working to reverse the tailspin. So by reading this book you can identify areas where you can contribute instead of complaining on social media, though that dopamine squirt from doing the latter is more alluring.
My only complaint about this book is that it doesn’t blame anything on the Baby Boomers, the generation that by definition of the timeframe in this book is clearly responsible for America’s tailspin.
Highly recommended.
September 17, 2018
Brill thoroughly explains how we got to our present state of un-exceptionalism. It will depress you. It will anger you. And it’s not so much about Trump either.
It all started around the time I graduated from high school in the mid 70’s. Blame Vietnam, Watergate, whatever. A perfect storm of changes and unintended consequences. A movement to level the playing fields and doing away with the old boy networks and replacing them by merit succeeded. Ironically the meritocracy that replaced the aristocracy got too good at it. Simultaneously the early shift to a service and eventually a knowledge based economy saw a huge increase in lawyers. The weaponization of due process began and everything began to be choked by delays in time because of the over emphasis and embrace of the right of due process. Then there was the money beginning to exponentially control the political process linked to new legal interpretations imposed by conservative judges on the rights of corporations. Gerrymandering is discussed as well. There’s a great chapter on why nothing works in this country and our pathetic infrastructure. Healthcare, big banks, the 2008 Recession are discussed in detail. We meet the intellectual geniuses who have wrought this havoc as well as those who are pushing back. We have the lowest tax base of any developed country too. We are as much an oligarchy as Russia. Compromise is dead. Winning is all about thwarting the opposition and seeing they get no credit. The common good is dead.
Dude, what happened to my country? Brill is optimistic though. I don’t see why. I only see a 1789 French Revolution in the future.
It all started around the time I graduated from high school in the mid 70’s. Blame Vietnam, Watergate, whatever. A perfect storm of changes and unintended consequences. A movement to level the playing fields and doing away with the old boy networks and replacing them by merit succeeded. Ironically the meritocracy that replaced the aristocracy got too good at it. Simultaneously the early shift to a service and eventually a knowledge based economy saw a huge increase in lawyers. The weaponization of due process began and everything began to be choked by delays in time because of the over emphasis and embrace of the right of due process. Then there was the money beginning to exponentially control the political process linked to new legal interpretations imposed by conservative judges on the rights of corporations. Gerrymandering is discussed as well. There’s a great chapter on why nothing works in this country and our pathetic infrastructure. Healthcare, big banks, the 2008 Recession are discussed in detail. We meet the intellectual geniuses who have wrought this havoc as well as those who are pushing back. We have the lowest tax base of any developed country too. We are as much an oligarchy as Russia. Compromise is dead. Winning is all about thwarting the opposition and seeing they get no credit. The common good is dead.
Dude, what happened to my country? Brill is optimistic though. I don’t see why. I only see a 1789 French Revolution in the future.
March 6, 2019
This book was surprisingly pithy and erudite. It focuses on two trends in American life in the late 20th century- the rise of meritocracy and moat creation around incumbents in different fields, and their deleterious effects. Meritocracy, counter-intuitively, reduced the social consensus on activist government involvement to redress inequalities and also subverted any sense of noblesse oblige. The meritocratic winners also succeeded in digging sufficient moats around themselves to sustain their "meritocratic" wins across generations. The author is clear on the diagnosis, but nebulous on policy solutions.
July 22, 2018
A very high 4 stars -- an excellent book that I do recommend everyone read. I didn't quite give it 5 stars because there were a few things that were included that I didn't necessarily think were as responsible for our downward spiral as some others (like cost overruns and the procurement process) and there were a few repetitive areas and false equivalencies that made me cringe. But, all in all a solid work by a highly intelligent, well informed author. I didn't love the wrap up, which feels overly optimistic, in a sense, to me -- he essentially says that things will indeed get so bad that a sufficient number of people will rise up and demand change. I guess I'm too cynical, because I think there are too many people who simply DGAF. But we shall see. I do hope that change is demanded.
One paragraph that I thought was a great synopsis of where we are now is this one:
The coming of the Trump administration featured the ultimate in moat fortification. As we have seen, Americans have been divided into two groups: the vast majority who count on government to provide of rate common good, and the minority who don't need the government for anything and even view the government as something they often need to be protected from. One of the most breathtaking outrages of the Trump residency is that those in the latter group were bought to Washington to run the government. As CEOs, financial engineers, lawyers and lobbyists, they had spent their lives building moats to shield themselves and their way of doing business from the country's instruments of accountability -- the courts; the tax code; laws promoting competitive, honest markets, clean air and water, and safe, fair workplaces; and the cabinet departments and regulatory agencies that are supposed to implement those laws. yet they are the people whom President Trump chose to set the policies, propose the was, staff those agencies, and sit on the courts. "Because of Trump's tweets, the crazy things he does, and the crises he ignites, we're not paying attention to what he's doing to the day-to-day functions of the country," Kelleher warned. "He has spread all these termites throughout the departments and agencies who are eating away at all aspects of our government , day and night. They don't believe in the laws they have sworn an oath to enforce."
One major thing this book cleared up for me was the distain for the so-called "elites." I've long been puzzled by the sudden (in my perception) turn against education - particularly our most revered and respected institutions of higher learning. I couldn't fathom how going to Harvard or Yale could be thought of as a bad thing -- as disdainful or some kind of evidence that one must be untrustworthy. Brill's discussion of the meritocracy (which always seemed to me was a good thing) and how certain people within it decided to keep the spoils for themselves made me understand this position, even if I still find it ridiculous. I also really enjoyed the discussions of people and institutions that really are making a difference and doing good work. Those examples do give me some hope for our society, despite how bleak it appears now.
One paragraph that I thought was a great synopsis of where we are now is this one:
The coming of the Trump administration featured the ultimate in moat fortification. As we have seen, Americans have been divided into two groups: the vast majority who count on government to provide of rate common good, and the minority who don't need the government for anything and even view the government as something they often need to be protected from. One of the most breathtaking outrages of the Trump residency is that those in the latter group were bought to Washington to run the government. As CEOs, financial engineers, lawyers and lobbyists, they had spent their lives building moats to shield themselves and their way of doing business from the country's instruments of accountability -- the courts; the tax code; laws promoting competitive, honest markets, clean air and water, and safe, fair workplaces; and the cabinet departments and regulatory agencies that are supposed to implement those laws. yet they are the people whom President Trump chose to set the policies, propose the was, staff those agencies, and sit on the courts. "Because of Trump's tweets, the crazy things he does, and the crises he ignites, we're not paying attention to what he's doing to the day-to-day functions of the country," Kelleher warned. "He has spread all these termites throughout the departments and agencies who are eating away at all aspects of our government , day and night. They don't believe in the laws they have sworn an oath to enforce."
One major thing this book cleared up for me was the distain for the so-called "elites." I've long been puzzled by the sudden (in my perception) turn against education - particularly our most revered and respected institutions of higher learning. I couldn't fathom how going to Harvard or Yale could be thought of as a bad thing -- as disdainful or some kind of evidence that one must be untrustworthy. Brill's discussion of the meritocracy (which always seemed to me was a good thing) and how certain people within it decided to keep the spoils for themselves made me understand this position, even if I still find it ridiculous. I also really enjoyed the discussions of people and institutions that really are making a difference and doing good work. Those examples do give me some hope for our society, despite how bleak it appears now.
September 19, 2018
Overall, I thought this was a top notch piece of reporting on the state of affairs in America today and the stagnation of economic growth for our middle and lower classes.
I'd say that I take some issues with some of the solutions pushed by Brill. I have almost no faith in a prosperous future where most jobs are based around caring for the elderly, children, and the disabled (which was essentially the main jobs program pushed by Brill). I thought that his positive view on earmarks was probably in bad taste. And most of all, I hated the lack of attention and credit to the rising progressive movement in American politics.
This last point is a conflicting one: Brill basically aggrees with a large share of the progressive agenda. He wants increased infastructure spending, a federal jobs program, a $15/hr Minimum wage, universial Healthcare, expanded jobs training, a financial transaction tax, an expansion of the EITC, public election financing, the repeal of citizens United, and dozens of other progressive policy proposals. He even speaks positively about Nixon's plan for a basic minimum income (despite not going into greater detail on modern proposals). And despite this, he also show great respect and support for centrists who would fight for none of these proposals and says precious little about the new breed of democrats who are uncompromising on these necessary programs.
Despite this cognitive dissonance, I wouldn't group this with other spinless centrist policy books: it very much knows who levy the the most blame for our state of affairs. And that is primarily Republicans and conservative thinkers (and to a lesser extend, moderate "new" democrats who co-opted many of their ideas). He gives them all the blame they deserve: for refusing to invest in the future or even the present..... And acting as headwinds against past progress.
It's a refreshing tone, but it also brings up a few new ideas for your typical progressive: perhaps our regulations ARE too complicated. Maybe protections for civil servants are too strong. Maybe they are acting as a headwinds and are as big a part of the problem as the ones typical focused on by progressives. This idea has potential. I think it's possible for principaled "progressive deregulation", a idea that could steal the thunder from republicans efforts on deregulation (which offense toss out the baby with the bathwater).
I don't know exactly how to make this view on progressive deregulation work. It needs Ballance (a nuance brought up by Brill). Citizens need due process to prevent government agencies from steamrolling over individual rights.... But government agencies need to have a degree of Freedom to do their jobs effectively.
It's a idea that has merit..... And one I'll be exploring in the future. For that the book has my appreciation. But I can't give it a perfect score just because I feel that it's negligence on the importance of progressive politics in actually implementing the authors main policy ideas undermines his entire argument. But it just big enough of a flaw to keep me from giving it a perfect score.
This is a highly enjoyable 4/5, and a solid book to give to a political novice to get them up to speed on the situation.
I'd say that I take some issues with some of the solutions pushed by Brill. I have almost no faith in a prosperous future where most jobs are based around caring for the elderly, children, and the disabled (which was essentially the main jobs program pushed by Brill). I thought that his positive view on earmarks was probably in bad taste. And most of all, I hated the lack of attention and credit to the rising progressive movement in American politics.
This last point is a conflicting one: Brill basically aggrees with a large share of the progressive agenda. He wants increased infastructure spending, a federal jobs program, a $15/hr Minimum wage, universial Healthcare, expanded jobs training, a financial transaction tax, an expansion of the EITC, public election financing, the repeal of citizens United, and dozens of other progressive policy proposals. He even speaks positively about Nixon's plan for a basic minimum income (despite not going into greater detail on modern proposals). And despite this, he also show great respect and support for centrists who would fight for none of these proposals and says precious little about the new breed of democrats who are uncompromising on these necessary programs.
Despite this cognitive dissonance, I wouldn't group this with other spinless centrist policy books: it very much knows who levy the the most blame for our state of affairs. And that is primarily Republicans and conservative thinkers (and to a lesser extend, moderate "new" democrats who co-opted many of their ideas). He gives them all the blame they deserve: for refusing to invest in the future or even the present..... And acting as headwinds against past progress.
It's a refreshing tone, but it also brings up a few new ideas for your typical progressive: perhaps our regulations ARE too complicated. Maybe protections for civil servants are too strong. Maybe they are acting as a headwinds and are as big a part of the problem as the ones typical focused on by progressives. This idea has potential. I think it's possible for principaled "progressive deregulation", a idea that could steal the thunder from republicans efforts on deregulation (which offense toss out the baby with the bathwater).
I don't know exactly how to make this view on progressive deregulation work. It needs Ballance (a nuance brought up by Brill). Citizens need due process to prevent government agencies from steamrolling over individual rights.... But government agencies need to have a degree of Freedom to do their jobs effectively.
It's a idea that has merit..... And one I'll be exploring in the future. For that the book has my appreciation. But I can't give it a perfect score just because I feel that it's negligence on the importance of progressive politics in actually implementing the authors main policy ideas undermines his entire argument. But it just big enough of a flaw to keep me from giving it a perfect score.
This is a highly enjoyable 4/5, and a solid book to give to a political novice to get them up to speed on the situation.
August 11, 2018
This is a top-flight book by top-flight journalist Steven Brill and all Americans should spend the time to read this BEFORE the next election cycle!
The top 6 or 8 reviews on Goodreads will inform you in detail about the book's contents, so I won't repeat that here.
In a nutshell our problem revolves around the concentration of resources (money) and power that has occurred in the U.S. in the last 60 years. Prior to that time, the division of wealth between the wealthiest and the poorest has been slowly shrinking, growing the middle class. Since sometime in the 1970's to 1980's (yes-the Reagan presidency), the divide has grown dramatically, shrinking the middle class and raising the number of poor precipitously. Steven Brill zeros in on the causes and effects with precision and superb research.
Two things I particularly appreciate about this book: He introduces people and organizations (mostly smaller non-profits) who are studying the problems and proposing specific steps to begin to reverse the country's slide. We all need to find out more about these groups, publicize them, and financially support them! Second, Brill supplies a superb bibliography. I intend to read a number of the key books that are mentioned here.
As I read the book, I found myself almost becoming fatigued at the size and scope of some of the issues. But we can't let that prevent us from becoming engaged and speaking out.
There are a number of recent books out there now (since Donald Trump's election) analyzing our country's precarious situation, and many are very good. I rate 'Tailspin' by Steven Brill as one of the best.
Here is a partial list of groups/people Steven Brill highlights who are working to reverse the country's slide. I urge everyone to find out about and support one or more of these groups:
-Issue One (campaign finance reform)
-OpenSecrets (publicizes political money sources & money connections to politicians)
-Bipartisan Policy Center (Combine best ideas from both parties to propose detailed legislative solutions to our most intractable problems)
-Better Markets (corporate financial rules reform)
-Year Up (trains young adults for skilled jobs & wages that will move them into the middle class)
-Common Good (nonpartisan bureaucratic reform)
-American Prosperity Project (long-term investment in infrastructure, basic science, education and training for workers)
The top 6 or 8 reviews on Goodreads will inform you in detail about the book's contents, so I won't repeat that here.
In a nutshell our problem revolves around the concentration of resources (money) and power that has occurred in the U.S. in the last 60 years. Prior to that time, the division of wealth between the wealthiest and the poorest has been slowly shrinking, growing the middle class. Since sometime in the 1970's to 1980's (yes-the Reagan presidency), the divide has grown dramatically, shrinking the middle class and raising the number of poor precipitously. Steven Brill zeros in on the causes and effects with precision and superb research.
Two things I particularly appreciate about this book: He introduces people and organizations (mostly smaller non-profits) who are studying the problems and proposing specific steps to begin to reverse the country's slide. We all need to find out more about these groups, publicize them, and financially support them! Second, Brill supplies a superb bibliography. I intend to read a number of the key books that are mentioned here.
As I read the book, I found myself almost becoming fatigued at the size and scope of some of the issues. But we can't let that prevent us from becoming engaged and speaking out.
There are a number of recent books out there now (since Donald Trump's election) analyzing our country's precarious situation, and many are very good. I rate 'Tailspin' by Steven Brill as one of the best.
Here is a partial list of groups/people Steven Brill highlights who are working to reverse the country's slide. I urge everyone to find out about and support one or more of these groups:
-Issue One (campaign finance reform)
-OpenSecrets (publicizes political money sources & money connections to politicians)
-Bipartisan Policy Center (Combine best ideas from both parties to propose detailed legislative solutions to our most intractable problems)
-Better Markets (corporate financial rules reform)
-Year Up (trains young adults for skilled jobs & wages that will move them into the middle class)
-Common Good (nonpartisan bureaucratic reform)
-American Prosperity Project (long-term investment in infrastructure, basic science, education and training for workers)
August 18, 2018
Eye opening. The tailspinning of America has taken place over the last 50 years. I feel like the frog in tepid water that is gradually heated and is being boiled alive without realizing it. So much I didn’t know or connect together.
This is not an easy read. It is full of stories of greed, unintended consequences, financial and political malfeasance, all backed up by data and extensive research. Brill is a journalist, business person, attorney, and excellent writer. My heart broke a little further with each page. However, I appreciate his inclusion of hope into each devastating chapter.
Here are some takeaways:
First Amendment enabled political money that led to an imbalance of power. This was associated with declining power of unions and the working class.
Meritocracy/Knowledge economy has stiff-armed government.
Medicare is not allowed to negotiate drug prices (!). Big boon for pharmaceutical industry.
First PAC created by union to get around political contribution ban (unintended consequences).
Corporations pay civil fines and no executives are charged criminally. But, under Citizens United, corporations have First Amendment rights. Also, civil penalties can be structured to be tax deductible.
Americans are divided into two groups: vast majority who count on the government to provide for the common good, and the minority who don’t need the government for anything and even view the government as something they need to be protected from. The second group builds moats to protect assets.
Due process, the bedrock of our democracy, can cripple regulatory agencies and cause voluminous rules that take years to write. Delays are profitable for industries, which are focused on short term profits that determine bonuses for CEOs.
Opensecrets.org is a fabulous website.
Having been in education, I’m not convinced that Brill’s assessment on Common Core was complete. His take on training, though, is spot on.
This is not an easy read. It is full of stories of greed, unintended consequences, financial and political malfeasance, all backed up by data and extensive research. Brill is a journalist, business person, attorney, and excellent writer. My heart broke a little further with each page. However, I appreciate his inclusion of hope into each devastating chapter.
Here are some takeaways:
First Amendment enabled political money that led to an imbalance of power. This was associated with declining power of unions and the working class.
Meritocracy/Knowledge economy has stiff-armed government.
Medicare is not allowed to negotiate drug prices (!). Big boon for pharmaceutical industry.
First PAC created by union to get around political contribution ban (unintended consequences).
Corporations pay civil fines and no executives are charged criminally. But, under Citizens United, corporations have First Amendment rights. Also, civil penalties can be structured to be tax deductible.
Americans are divided into two groups: vast majority who count on the government to provide for the common good, and the minority who don’t need the government for anything and even view the government as something they need to be protected from. The second group builds moats to protect assets.
Due process, the bedrock of our democracy, can cripple regulatory agencies and cause voluminous rules that take years to write. Delays are profitable for industries, which are focused on short term profits that determine bonuses for CEOs.
Opensecrets.org is a fabulous website.
Having been in education, I’m not convinced that Brill’s assessment on Common Core was complete. His take on training, though, is spot on.
August 26, 2018
As you might expect, this book with lots of examples of policy and legal cases is pretty dense, but Brill does a great job of doing this in a readable narrative format where possible. I also appreciated that he did not try to scapegoat certain subgroups, but pointed to the more systemic issues. And he gives examples of people who are working to repair the system and how we might create bipartisan solutions for the future!
January 15, 2019
Definitely a 3+. A missed opportunity to be a much better book. There is a LOT of interesting and convincing information here, and I basically agree with most of what he was saying, but it would have rated higher and been much more effective if he could have toned down the rant and been more objective. There were instances that I was quite familiar with that I clearly knew he had distorted, which hurt his credibility in the areas I did NOT know as much about.
May 3, 2019
I got angry with this book & put it down somewhere near halfway. What pisses me off is the author's stated belief that we need to turn universities - especially the non-elite universities that most people who are neither privileged nor gifted attend - into voc/tech schools with remedial "how to market yourself" courses of study. Maybe our economic system needs to adapt to humanity instead of vice-versa.
August 11, 2019
The author brought up some wonderful points, but let his partisanship get in the way of any true solutions. Completely worth reading though to be able to start some much needed conversations. Just don't take what Brill states as "fact" as though it were.
July 24, 2018
To say a book is “essential” is such a cliche, that I must find another way to say it!
I have read many wonderful books recently about our nation’s current predicament, but this is certainly the most complete and informative. Seemingly intractable problems are explained in terms of the history leading to them, many of which I thought that I understood. However, to mention just one example, I found the well-documented story of how the First Amendment is being twisted and abused to benefit commercial interests to be truly shocking.
The author’s attempt to provide hopeful solutions to recover our stolen democracy is appreciated. At the end he admits that “Things may get worse before they get better.” Sadly, the word “may” in his sentence should be replaced by the word “will”.
All readers, both Democrats and Republicans, who are interested in the current state of our country will appreciate this awesome book.
Thank you, Mr. Brill.
I have read many wonderful books recently about our nation’s current predicament, but this is certainly the most complete and informative. Seemingly intractable problems are explained in terms of the history leading to them, many of which I thought that I understood. However, to mention just one example, I found the well-documented story of how the First Amendment is being twisted and abused to benefit commercial interests to be truly shocking.
The author’s attempt to provide hopeful solutions to recover our stolen democracy is appreciated. At the end he admits that “Things may get worse before they get better.” Sadly, the word “may” in his sentence should be replaced by the word “will”.
All readers, both Democrats and Republicans, who are interested in the current state of our country will appreciate this awesome book.
Thank you, Mr. Brill.
October 19, 2018
Review title: The Conspiracy Theory of Everything
In my review of The Oath and the Office, I focused on author Corey Brettschneider's thesis that wisdom, virtue and deliberation are the three most essential traits of a perspective president--and of the electorate, I concluded. Here, Brill describes how even in the presence of those traits, the American political, financial, legal, educational, and physical infrastructure have collapsed in the last 50 years. In his view, indeed "Everything is broken", in the words of that great Dylan song. But the cause is not the reactionary right wing, if you are a biased fan of our previous president, or those radical socialists, if you are a partisan supporter of our current one, but a confluence of good intentions gone wrong.
"One day, in a land far, far away...": while Brill doesn't start with this fairy-tale opener, he does start with an Horatio-Alger story of being plucked from his working-class beginnings into what he calls the "protected" class by his scholarship admission to an Ivy League prep school and then Yale by well-meaning administrators hoping to open up the upper classes to the rest of us. Best of intentions indeed, as this movement in the 1960s across the educational landscape sought to break down barriers to the best educations (and then careers) that had stood in the way of race, gender, geography, income, religion, and class. But in Brill's analysis, good intentions went bad when this new generation of educated, hard-working, and ambitious young people instead of giving back to society and going back to their roots, got jobs in law, investments, banking and corporate finance that made them fabulously wealthy. They then used that wealth to build a moat (Brill's term) of protection around their wealth.
Next good intention: extending the First Amendment protection of free speech to corporations. Free speech is good, right? Even if it is paid advertising: the more we know, the better-informed consumers we become. That in itself is a dubious proposition, Brill acknowledges, but then good intentions went worse: Corporations sued and won landmark legal cases that their right to free speech included freedom from regulation, and freedom to contribute to political campaigns and influence legislation. Hence were born political action committees and paid lobbyists who now exert undue influence on the election and legislation processes, to the exclusion of the rest of us.
His examples go on. Well-meaning individuals winning financial, legal, and political battles that benefit themselves and open up those closed institutions. But when others follow those victories to their farthest logical and legal conclusions and applications, bad things happen. Middle class and working class voters lose influence at the polls, politicians are driven to extreme left and right positions, unions are destroyed so workers lose their collective voice, tax laws benefit the wealthy and the corporations, regulatory protections for consumers and the environment are mired in dubious due process litigation, opt-in clauses (those ubiquitous check-boxes at the bottom of paragraph after paragraph of unread legalese when you install an app) accompany every transaction or contract and cut off individual or class-action access to courts of law, social safety nets are dismantled, needed infrastructure updates to roads and airports are neglected, financial gurus create toxic mortgages that cost people their houses and billions of dollars while the guilty escape prosecution and even get too-big-to-fail bailouts.....
".... And so, kids, that's how the tiger got its stripes." While Brill doesn't wrap everything up with the neat precision of a just-so story, his conclusions are broad and sweeping enough to feel like a mystical explanation, a vicious circle beyond coincidence, for a physical phenomenon. Brill doesn't document a criminal conspiracy of everything (makes for an eye-catching review title, though), even though everything has seemed to conspire against us these last 50 years, but he does show, or hint at, the touch points between the bad consequences of our best intentions (the newly wealthy are driven to contribute to political action committees, and chair corporations that push for less regulatory restriction, for example).
Does he offer a way back to the beginning? No, but he offers a way forward, because as he argues, each of these downward loops in the spiral started with the good intention of slaying a goblin in the fairy tale forest, so we don't want to go back there. Brill finds optimism in the groundswell of anger and dissatisfaction that brought working and middle class voters to elect Donald Trump, even though in his analysis Trump is an active participant in the confluence of bad consequences and has in his short time in office left his constituency even less protected and more disadvantaged. Brill is optimistic that voters will realize this and turn to better leaders who work to "storm the moat" around those who are protected in this just-so world to provide realistic legal, financial, and social protections for the rest of us who lack the legal and financial means to protect ourselves from the consequences of a broken country.
Does he make a believable case? This is the harder question to answer. He certainly documents the problems, backed by data; it is the causes and effects that are harder to pin down with unarguable certainty, and with which reasonable readers on all sides of the arguments may differ. His assignment of causes is bipartisan in terms of political party and leaning, although he does see the actions of the first year of the Trump administration as contributing to the continued tailspin. I will say that it is an argument that those on all sides should read and consider, even if he happens to gore your favorite ox in the process. Don't stop reading because you get angry, instead keep reading and compose your reasonable case as to why you disagree. From this deliberation comes wisdom and solutions to start back up a virtuous circle out of the tailspin.
In my review of The Oath and the Office, I focused on author Corey Brettschneider's thesis that wisdom, virtue and deliberation are the three most essential traits of a perspective president--and of the electorate, I concluded. Here, Brill describes how even in the presence of those traits, the American political, financial, legal, educational, and physical infrastructure have collapsed in the last 50 years. In his view, indeed "Everything is broken", in the words of that great Dylan song. But the cause is not the reactionary right wing, if you are a biased fan of our previous president, or those radical socialists, if you are a partisan supporter of our current one, but a confluence of good intentions gone wrong.
"One day, in a land far, far away...": while Brill doesn't start with this fairy-tale opener, he does start with an Horatio-Alger story of being plucked from his working-class beginnings into what he calls the "protected" class by his scholarship admission to an Ivy League prep school and then Yale by well-meaning administrators hoping to open up the upper classes to the rest of us. Best of intentions indeed, as this movement in the 1960s across the educational landscape sought to break down barriers to the best educations (and then careers) that had stood in the way of race, gender, geography, income, religion, and class. But in Brill's analysis, good intentions went bad when this new generation of educated, hard-working, and ambitious young people instead of giving back to society and going back to their roots, got jobs in law, investments, banking and corporate finance that made them fabulously wealthy. They then used that wealth to build a moat (Brill's term) of protection around their wealth.
Next good intention: extending the First Amendment protection of free speech to corporations. Free speech is good, right? Even if it is paid advertising: the more we know, the better-informed consumers we become. That in itself is a dubious proposition, Brill acknowledges, but then good intentions went worse: Corporations sued and won landmark legal cases that their right to free speech included freedom from regulation, and freedom to contribute to political campaigns and influence legislation. Hence were born political action committees and paid lobbyists who now exert undue influence on the election and legislation processes, to the exclusion of the rest of us.
His examples go on. Well-meaning individuals winning financial, legal, and political battles that benefit themselves and open up those closed institutions. But when others follow those victories to their farthest logical and legal conclusions and applications, bad things happen. Middle class and working class voters lose influence at the polls, politicians are driven to extreme left and right positions, unions are destroyed so workers lose their collective voice, tax laws benefit the wealthy and the corporations, regulatory protections for consumers and the environment are mired in dubious due process litigation, opt-in clauses (those ubiquitous check-boxes at the bottom of paragraph after paragraph of unread legalese when you install an app) accompany every transaction or contract and cut off individual or class-action access to courts of law, social safety nets are dismantled, needed infrastructure updates to roads and airports are neglected, financial gurus create toxic mortgages that cost people their houses and billions of dollars while the guilty escape prosecution and even get too-big-to-fail bailouts.....
".... And so, kids, that's how the tiger got its stripes." While Brill doesn't wrap everything up with the neat precision of a just-so story, his conclusions are broad and sweeping enough to feel like a mystical explanation, a vicious circle beyond coincidence, for a physical phenomenon. Brill doesn't document a criminal conspiracy of everything (makes for an eye-catching review title, though), even though everything has seemed to conspire against us these last 50 years, but he does show, or hint at, the touch points between the bad consequences of our best intentions (the newly wealthy are driven to contribute to political action committees, and chair corporations that push for less regulatory restriction, for example).
Does he offer a way back to the beginning? No, but he offers a way forward, because as he argues, each of these downward loops in the spiral started with the good intention of slaying a goblin in the fairy tale forest, so we don't want to go back there. Brill finds optimism in the groundswell of anger and dissatisfaction that brought working and middle class voters to elect Donald Trump, even though in his analysis Trump is an active participant in the confluence of bad consequences and has in his short time in office left his constituency even less protected and more disadvantaged. Brill is optimistic that voters will realize this and turn to better leaders who work to "storm the moat" around those who are protected in this just-so world to provide realistic legal, financial, and social protections for the rest of us who lack the legal and financial means to protect ourselves from the consequences of a broken country.
Does he make a believable case? This is the harder question to answer. He certainly documents the problems, backed by data; it is the causes and effects that are harder to pin down with unarguable certainty, and with which reasonable readers on all sides of the arguments may differ. His assignment of causes is bipartisan in terms of political party and leaning, although he does see the actions of the first year of the Trump administration as contributing to the continued tailspin. I will say that it is an argument that those on all sides should read and consider, even if he happens to gore your favorite ox in the process. Don't stop reading because you get angry, instead keep reading and compose your reasonable case as to why you disagree. From this deliberation comes wisdom and solutions to start back up a virtuous circle out of the tailspin.
June 23, 2018
I agree with many of the points Brill makes. His critiques of just how paralyzed and dysfunctional our civic institutions have become, make me shake my head in disbelief--yet, I realize the truth of what he's saying.
As far as making a raw impact, though, his recent cover essay in Time Magazine, based on highlights from this book, covered many of the same points, and was more effective.
As far as making a raw impact, though, his recent cover essay in Time Magazine, based on highlights from this book, covered many of the same points, and was more effective.
December 19, 2018
If you want a book that explains our country then look no further. It is hopeful but...dang.
August 18, 2018
Unlike many 'what is wrong' books, Mr. Brill infused his with suggested solutions, with the names of people and organizations who have potential solutions, and with an attempt at an upbeat ending.
What this reader found was one of the most difficult books I have ever read. Not that there was much new, really. I've kept up to date over the past 60 years. But it is all packed together here, with names and dates and perspective. Brill discusses jobs, income, college, the military, Congress, elections, law, pharmaceuticals; the moats the rich have built around themselves, the corruption endemic to our system, the decades-long widespread conspiracy in fact if not intention. He also considers race, banking law, infrastructure and the failure of government to protect its citizens.
What is not made clear is the failure of the citizen. This mess is our fault. We let it happen. We have become a nation of short-term thinkers. The poor, the middle, the corporate, judicial and bureaucratic, the billionaire who inherited or earned their fortune: everyone and everything is concerned about today and tomorrow. Next year can go hang itself, and probably will.
Steven Brill (Note he uses the 'n' at the end of his first name. No good ol' boy crotch scratching here) could have left out a lot of names and mini-biographies and sources, an option which would have resulted in a much shorter but infinitely less authoritative book. He goes back at least 50 years, sometimes centuries, to trace the roots of individual problems: as I said, perspective. Also enlightening. What is missing is any mention of Joseph Stalin. Another Steve, Stephan Kotkin, is two-thirds through publishing a biography of the brutal Russian leader. One almost wants another to arise here because as one reads "Tailspin" outrage follows outrage, and a visceral urge to punish arises.
Here is what we need Stalin to do: First, as always, kill the lawyers and the barnacles which cling to them: tens of thousands of lobbyists and all the Congresspeople and senators and Bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., the States and the Foreign Service. Burn the law books and the Law Schools.
Kill the CEOs and the rest of the Cxx monsters. Kill the bankers and the thieves on Wall Street, including all the branch officers. Kill at least 50% of the Welfare recipients. Probably we need to get rid of 50 million Republicans and another 30 million Democrats. The Libertarians, Progressives and any other 3rd party nut jobs can go into the mass graves, too. Why all of those 'regular' people'? Because they have failed us. They have not kept up their job skills, have not taken advantage of educational opportunity, have not educated themselves as voters and have not voted. They broke the contract between government and citizen. So they need to be taken off the board. They are guilty. It should be unnecessary, but I'll write it out: kill the rich and confiscate their Mansions and Penthouses and planes and yachts. Use the buildings as toilets, since shit used to occupy them.
The truth of the matter, in case anyone is appalled by this solution, is that we won't have any trouble finding lunks to do the dirty work. History and today's news shows us that enforcers are easy to come by and people, in general, will buy just about anything if it is packaged in sexy terms and the possibility of more money. Right now we live in a nation where the majority of people spurn education and are repelled by hard work and long-term solutions. So we need to get this killing over quickly. Stalin took decades to effect his massacre, and we may need to do the same, but quick is better. Let us not forget the French Revolution, which resembles our American purge.
Now go pick up the pieces, console the orphans other survivors, and try to rebuild a Democratic Republic using wisdom, justice and long-term policies.
"Tailspin", by Stephen Brill: Highly Recommended
What this reader found was one of the most difficult books I have ever read. Not that there was much new, really. I've kept up to date over the past 60 years. But it is all packed together here, with names and dates and perspective. Brill discusses jobs, income, college, the military, Congress, elections, law, pharmaceuticals; the moats the rich have built around themselves, the corruption endemic to our system, the decades-long widespread conspiracy in fact if not intention. He also considers race, banking law, infrastructure and the failure of government to protect its citizens.
What is not made clear is the failure of the citizen. This mess is our fault. We let it happen. We have become a nation of short-term thinkers. The poor, the middle, the corporate, judicial and bureaucratic, the billionaire who inherited or earned their fortune: everyone and everything is concerned about today and tomorrow. Next year can go hang itself, and probably will.
Steven Brill (Note he uses the 'n' at the end of his first name. No good ol' boy crotch scratching here) could have left out a lot of names and mini-biographies and sources, an option which would have resulted in a much shorter but infinitely less authoritative book. He goes back at least 50 years, sometimes centuries, to trace the roots of individual problems: as I said, perspective. Also enlightening. What is missing is any mention of Joseph Stalin. Another Steve, Stephan Kotkin, is two-thirds through publishing a biography of the brutal Russian leader. One almost wants another to arise here because as one reads "Tailspin" outrage follows outrage, and a visceral urge to punish arises.
Here is what we need Stalin to do: First, as always, kill the lawyers and the barnacles which cling to them: tens of thousands of lobbyists and all the Congresspeople and senators and Bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., the States and the Foreign Service. Burn the law books and the Law Schools.
Kill the CEOs and the rest of the Cxx monsters. Kill the bankers and the thieves on Wall Street, including all the branch officers. Kill at least 50% of the Welfare recipients. Probably we need to get rid of 50 million Republicans and another 30 million Democrats. The Libertarians, Progressives and any other 3rd party nut jobs can go into the mass graves, too. Why all of those 'regular' people'? Because they have failed us. They have not kept up their job skills, have not taken advantage of educational opportunity, have not educated themselves as voters and have not voted. They broke the contract between government and citizen. So they need to be taken off the board. They are guilty. It should be unnecessary, but I'll write it out: kill the rich and confiscate their Mansions and Penthouses and planes and yachts. Use the buildings as toilets, since shit used to occupy them.
The truth of the matter, in case anyone is appalled by this solution, is that we won't have any trouble finding lunks to do the dirty work. History and today's news shows us that enforcers are easy to come by and people, in general, will buy just about anything if it is packaged in sexy terms and the possibility of more money. Right now we live in a nation where the majority of people spurn education and are repelled by hard work and long-term solutions. So we need to get this killing over quickly. Stalin took decades to effect his massacre, and we may need to do the same, but quick is better. Let us not forget the French Revolution, which resembles our American purge.
Now go pick up the pieces, console the orphans other survivors, and try to rebuild a Democratic Republic using wisdom, justice and long-term policies.
"Tailspin", by Stephen Brill: Highly Recommended
August 17, 2018
The growing inequality between wealthy Americans and all the rest has been remarked on for several years now. Steven Brill in TAILSPIN tackles the many factors he believes have contributed to American democracy’s disastrous dive.
He begins with what should have been a good idea: replacing the old boy network at prestigious American universities with more merit based systems. Using scholarships and programs to bring expertise to the deserving rather than only to the inheritors of wealth, the universities succeeded in changing the ground rules. At the same time, a shift to a knowledge-based economy encouraged this retooling.
Lots of young people like the author himself, from humble backgrounds, were admitted on the basis of their skills, not their families, and were given the advantages of a superior education.
Once fitted out for success, however, they formed their own money-making clique. Then they worked to influence politicians to pass favorable tax plans and other goodies to further advance their interests. Court decisions like Citizens United handed companies the right to bankroll the campaigns of politicians favorable to business interests.
Bonuses for company executives in stocks rather than merely high salaries led to efforts to inflate the stock, not necessarily to long term success for the companies.
Ugly buyouts, takeovers, and mergers were means to gain more wealth and monopoly. Workers were left behind as collateral damage.
As jobs changed, Americans lost healthcare benefits, too. Here Brill blames Republicans for not working with Obama to create a true health care plan for Americans. He believes their determination to defeat whatever Obama brought up robbed them of an opportunity to create healthcare that ultimately would have saved corporations money. Brill offers a scathing review of a medical industry based on profits rather than healthcare and of the politicians who allow it.
Taxes could be raised to find solutions for problems like healthcare and failing schools, Brill believes, but the wealthy do not wish to be taxed to pay for the solutions when they can pay for their own healthcare as well as privates schools for their children.
The cost of delay, however, can be catastrophic: Allowing profit driven drug companies to market oxycontin led to a tragic drug epidemic that still takes the lives of thousands of Americans. Climate change may face a similar course.
At the end of each gloomy chapter, however, Brill brings examples of Americans trying to bring in a more just system.
Throughout each chapter, Brill provides examples and details almost to exhaustion. Nevertheless, sticking to the book is well worth it. Brill sheds welcome light on the serious losses inflicted on our country’s economic and political systems.
He begins with what should have been a good idea: replacing the old boy network at prestigious American universities with more merit based systems. Using scholarships and programs to bring expertise to the deserving rather than only to the inheritors of wealth, the universities succeeded in changing the ground rules. At the same time, a shift to a knowledge-based economy encouraged this retooling.
Lots of young people like the author himself, from humble backgrounds, were admitted on the basis of their skills, not their families, and were given the advantages of a superior education.
Once fitted out for success, however, they formed their own money-making clique. Then they worked to influence politicians to pass favorable tax plans and other goodies to further advance their interests. Court decisions like Citizens United handed companies the right to bankroll the campaigns of politicians favorable to business interests.
Bonuses for company executives in stocks rather than merely high salaries led to efforts to inflate the stock, not necessarily to long term success for the companies.
Ugly buyouts, takeovers, and mergers were means to gain more wealth and monopoly. Workers were left behind as collateral damage.
As jobs changed, Americans lost healthcare benefits, too. Here Brill blames Republicans for not working with Obama to create a true health care plan for Americans. He believes their determination to defeat whatever Obama brought up robbed them of an opportunity to create healthcare that ultimately would have saved corporations money. Brill offers a scathing review of a medical industry based on profits rather than healthcare and of the politicians who allow it.
Taxes could be raised to find solutions for problems like healthcare and failing schools, Brill believes, but the wealthy do not wish to be taxed to pay for the solutions when they can pay for their own healthcare as well as privates schools for their children.
The cost of delay, however, can be catastrophic: Allowing profit driven drug companies to market oxycontin led to a tragic drug epidemic that still takes the lives of thousands of Americans. Climate change may face a similar course.
At the end of each gloomy chapter, however, Brill brings examples of Americans trying to bring in a more just system.
Throughout each chapter, Brill provides examples and details almost to exhaustion. Nevertheless, sticking to the book is well worth it. Brill sheds welcome light on the serious losses inflicted on our country’s economic and political systems.
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