It is common to lament that no means has been found to restore American laborers to the advantageous position they occupied in the 1960s. But talking workers into surrendering the advantageous redoubts they once occupied was the whole point of post-1960s economic reforms, at least for politicians, the businessmen who funded them, and the economists who advised them. Working-class prerogatives constrained innovation, it was held. They were also incompatible with government efforts to use civil rights law to reshape the labor market from above.
