More than ever, large corporations wield an unjustifiably excessive influence over our lives. The consequences are indeed frightening-environmental destruction, political corruption, erosion of democracy, increased polarization between rich and poor, declining wages and benefits, increased stress and overwork. As corporations become more powerful, these problems will only get worse.
The People's Business offers a comprehensive series of proposals for reforming and restructuring corporations so that they become the people's servants, not their masters. Writing in a lively populist style, the authors pull together recommendations from the prestigious members of the Citizen Works Commission on Corporate Reform to present a clear-headed plan of action.
Drutman and Cray discuss how corporations managed to achieve their current privileged position and offer a comprehensive approach for reconceiving corporations as engines of public prosperity, not private plunder. They outline specific reforms that could be enacted to get corporations out of politics, establish truly public-minded regulation of corporate behavior, safeguard our natural resources, combat unfair market domination by corporations, crack down on corporate crime, and challenge the corporate claim to constitutional rights.
Bolstered with relevant history and recent examples, The People's Business is a lively book that will appeal both to deeply-committed (and often frustrated) long-time activists looking for a coherent approach in the struggle for corporate accountability, as well as relative newcomers looking for immediate measures that could serve as effective means of corporate reform.
2009
Plunder and Blunder chronicles the growth and collapse of the stock and housing bubbles, explains how policy changes since 1980 laid the groundwork for catastrophicbut completely predictablemarket meltdowns, and offers prescriptions for avoiding these disasters in the future. Dean Baker argues not only that competent economists should have recognized the developing housing bubble, but also that policy makers and the media cheerfully neglected those economists who did predict danger. Baker doesnt engage in 20-20 hindsight, but thoroughly documents how fundamental policy shifts destabilized the economy and eroded the broad prosperity of the post-war period. His expert analysis explains the outcomes clearly so we can prevent similar financial disasters.
2015
2010