ABSTRACT
A review of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future, by Robert B. Reich. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.
I confess at the outset that Aftershock is both a satisfying and exasperating book. Robert Reich’s introduction is called “The Pendulum.” He identifies three periods of modern American capitalism in which the pendulum swung back and forth. The first is 1870 to 1929, when the concentration of income and wealth increased to fabled proportions. The second is 1947 to 1975, when a “basic bargain” was struck between capital and labor, which allowed prosperity-to a degree-to be shared. The third is 1980 to 2010, when the pendulum swung back to a concentration of income and wealth as great as the first. Now Reich expects us to begin a fourth stage in which the pendulum again swings toward shared prosperity.
