The ends of freedom : reclaiming America's lost promise of economic rights
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Bibliographic Information
The ends of freedom : reclaiming America's lost promise of economic rights
University of Chicago Press, 2023
- : cloth
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Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
An urgent and galvanizing argument for an Economic Bill of Rights-and its potential to confer true freedom on all Americans.
Since the Founding, Americans have debated the true meaning of freedom. For some, freedom meant the provision of life's necessities, those basic conditions for the "pursuit of happiness." For others, freedom meant the civil and political rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights and unfettered access to the marketplace-nothing more. As Mark Paul explains, the latter interpretation-thanks in large part to a particularly influential cadre of economists-has all but won out among policymakers, with dire repercussions for American society: rampant inequality, endemic poverty, and an economy built to benefit the few at the expense of the many.
In this book, Paul shows how economic rights-rights to necessities like housing, employment, and health care-have been a part of the American conversation since the Revolutionary War and were a cornerstone of both the New Deal and the Civil Rights Movement. Their recuperation, he argues, would at long last make good on the promise of America's founding documents. By drawing on FDR's proposed Economic Bill of Rights, Paul outlines a comprehensive policy program to achieve a more capacious and enduring version of American freedom. Among the rights he enumerates are the right to a good job, the right to an education, the right to banking and financial services, and the right to a healthy environment.
Replete with discussions of some of today's most influential policy ideas-from Medicare for All to a federal job guarantee to the Green New Deal-The Ends of Freedom is a timely and urgent call to reclaim the idea of freedom from its captors on the political right-to ground America's next era in the country's progressive history and carve a path toward a more economically dynamic and equitable nation.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I: American Freedom
1. States of America
2. Capitalism and Freedom
3. America's Other Freedom
Part II: Economic Rights
4. The Right to Work
5. The Right to Housing
6. The Right to an Education
7. The Right to Health Care
8. The Right to a Basic Income and Banking
9. The Right to a Healthy Environment
Part III: A Budget for the People
10. How Do We Pay for It?
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
