Robert Reich's Supercapitalism is a must-read for anyone hoping to make a positive difference in today's world. Using accessible prose and familiar examples, Reich portrays the economic and political world we live in and the nature of our agency in it. Along the way, he critiques common but misleading explanations of how economic activity and social goals relate to each other. I'm aware that my academic background in economics and business helped me to read this book quickly and enhanced my enjoyment of it. But I believe that anyone interested in understanding American economic and political life – and especially those who have experienced as adults the profound changes that began in the 1970s – will be drawn into and engaged by this book.
Reich's basic argument is that since the 1970s, competition has intensified throughout the economy. Before then, each of the major sectors of America's economy were dominated by a few large firms capable of setting the price of their products hi...more
Robert Reich's Supercapitalism is a must-read for anyone hoping to make a positive difference in today's world. Using accessible prose and familiar examples, Reich portrays the economic and political world we live in and the nature of our agency in it. Along the way, he critiques common but misleading explanations of how economic activity and social goals relate to each other. I'm aware that my academic background in economics and business helped me to read this book quickly and enhanced my enjoyment of it. But I believe that anyone interested in understanding American economic and political life – and especially those who have experienced as adults the profound changes that began in the 1970s – will be drawn into and engaged by this book.
Reich's basic argument is that since the 1970s, competition has intensified throughout the economy. Before then, each of the major sectors of America's economy were dominated by a few large firms capable of setting the price of their products high enough to provide acceptable returns to shareholders and good compensation to labor. The iconic firm then was General Motors. Now the iconic firm is WalMart. Instead of firms owning factories, factories compete for firms' production contracts. It is no longer the production system, but the distribution system, that has the power. The pressure that consumers and investors apply to get better deals is felt throughout a production system less able to resist it. Consumers, investors, and components of the production system are likely to abandon their relationships for a better deal and are unlikely to enter into lasting commitments. This way of being in the world spills over into politics and everyday life, and hampers our ability as citizens in a democracy to pursue and achieve social goals and public goods. To remedy this, Reich recommends: setting legal limits on how good a deal consumers and investors can get; ceasing to treat corporations as if they were people (stop granting them the legal rights that people have and deny them a role in the legislative process); tax all corporate income as the personal income of shareholders; and focus public policy on making Americans, not American corporations, more competitive.
The last chapter of the book is "A Citizen's Guide To Supercapitalism" which summarizes Reich's argument and recommendations. It is a useful aid for sorting out, for example, what the 2008 presidential candidates are saying as (at this writing) the first primaries approach. For a generation, our politics has been dominated by a misguided ideology that worships a magical "free market" capitalism and denigrates the government's legitimate economic role as "interference." By focusing on the personal experience each of us has of being on the one hand consumers and investors, and on the other hand citizens, Reich puts government's role back in its proper perspective and equips us to exercise our power as citizens and pursue a shared vision of a good society and a better world....less
Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life 
