The Ends of Freedom

Reclaiming America's Lost Promise of Economic Rights

De: Mark Paul

Narrado por: Gregory Abbey

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.

©2023 Mark Paul (P)2023 Audible, Inc.

Strong Connective Work

I always greatly appreciate when an author has a birds eye view of our ideological history and material realities. This book does an excellent job at providing a coherent and informed view of our political economy.

Movement inducing

It’s so simple. This book has got to be taught in schools, even Florida! Amazing

Needs better production value

The audio quality on the cut transitions in this audiobook is really poor. Honestly, it could be drastically improved by using a simple compressor plug-in. It’s not that difficult. As is, it sounds like the narrator recorded his voice standing in different parts of a room, possibly in different rooms, and then sliced them all together in a primitive way. It’s unfortunate because it detracts from the narrative.