A Sustainable Economy for the 21st Century

Open Media

by Juliet B. Schor

In this groundbreaking pamphlet, Juliet Schor, author of The Overworked American, examines how Americans can begin making the shift away from a resource-destructive society to one that values the environment, community, and quality of life above business and profit. She a traces back how after W.W.II, Americans had hoped that technology and social investment would yield shorter work weeks, more pay, and complete healthcare. Instead, we work more, get paid less, and maintain an indecent adult minimum wage. Where did we go wrong?
Schor's pamphlet charts an economic vision based that aims to reduce work hours, increase leisure, create new work schedules that are not operating on a "male" model of employment, create green quotas and industry-wide environmental standards, alternative housing and transportation, raise minimum wage, restructure labor relations, change corporate culture, and promote social accountability. The pamphlet "sets the guideposts," writes Noam Chomsky, "for constructive thinking and action to save our country from becoming a plaything for investors and transnational corporations, and to place its fate in the hands of its citizens."

Genres: Economics, Politics

64 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 1995

About the author

Juliet Schor’s research over the last ten years has focussed on issues pertaining to trends in work and leisure, consumerism, the relationship between work and family, women's issues and economic justice. Schor's latest book is Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Scribner 2004). She is also author of The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure and The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting and the New Consumer. She has co-edited, The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience, The Consumer Society Reader, and Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the 21st Century. Earlier in her career, her research focussed on issues of wages, productivity, and profitability. She also did work on the political economy of central banking. Schor is currently is at work on a project on the commercialization of childhood, and is beginning research on environmental sustainability and its relation to Americans’ lifestyles.

Schor is a board member and co-founder of the Center for a New American Dream, an organization devoted to transforming North American lifestyles to make them more ecologically and socially sustainable. She also teaches periodically at Schumacher College, an International Center for Ecological Studies based in south-west England.

from http://www2.bc.edu/~schorj/default.html

Reviews

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought provoking short book that, though written at the end of the nineties, reads as if it could have been written today. In addition to analyzing the problems that have led us to the current crisis, it offers several positive policy suggestions towards creating a sustainable, just economy. While I cannot agree with all of these suggestions (I find the idea of a 'green tax' on common subsistence commodities to be extremely regressive), the fact that it is making them is in itself worthy of considered attention. It stands in stark contrast with current Occupy Movement which, for all of its virtues, still has not coalesced around a concrete set of implementable demands. Definitely worth reading.

[Tom F · Rating 2 out of 5]

She has a few interesting observations and ideas, but seems to think more government, taxes, and welfare are the solution. I was hoping to read good ideas, not proposals for government programs. Sadly, I think the author's ideas would be mostly unsustainable, though a few of the ideas are good or might be worth looking at.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short pamphlet that was written in the 90s (with a few updates). It had some good ideas but it was not anything ground breaking. Like the idea of a global minimum wage and placing tariffs on nations not complying.