Aftershock

The Next Economy and America’s Future

By: Robert B. Reich

Narrated by: Robert Reich

Length: 4 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's Summary

The author of 12 acclaimed books, Robert B. Reich is a Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and has served in three national administrations.

While many blamed Wall Street for the financial meltdown, Aftershock points a finger at a national economy in which wealth is increasingly concentrated at the top - and where a grasping middle class simply does not have the resources to remain viable.

©2010 Robert B. Reich (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic Reviews

"Reich's thesis is well argued and frighteningly plausible: without a return to the 'basic bargain' (that workers are also consumers), the "aftershock" of the Great Recession includes long-term high unemployment and a political backlash - a crisis, he notes with a sort of grim optimism, that just might be painful enough to encourage necessary structural reforms." ( Publishers Weekly)

Very plausible assessment of our economy

I heard Mr Reich discuss this book on NPR and immediately downloaded this Audible version. His arguments are very clear, and I 100% agree with his analysis. I’m not completely sure I agree with his solutions – but they are thought provoking ideas. I energetically recommend this book to anyone who is trying to understand these times

5 Concise Reasons to Read

I love short books. Can you recommend any good, but concise, nonfiction? Great reads under 200 pages?

Here are my 5 concise reasons to read Robert Reich's latest book "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future"

Reason #1 - Conciseness: Most books are too long. Aftershock is a blessed 192 pages; 4 hours and 29 minutes short in audiobook format.

Reason #2 - Originality: Reich's big argument is that out economy is fundamentally unbalanced. That the growth of inequality that has concentrated economic gains among the top 5 percent of the populations has resulted in an inability of most Americans to adequately consume. We cannot afford to buy what we produce (a problem near and dear to the heart of any parent who works in higher education).

Reason #3 - The Higher Education Plan: Reich actually has a plan for higher education. He would make tuition free (to public institutions), and recoup the costs with a levy on future earnings for anyone who participated. His proposal is more complex than this description, and wildly unlikely to ever be enacted anywhere, but still fun to debate.

Reason #4 - History: Reich was one of the first academic popularizers that I discovered. Back in 1992, he wrote The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism, in which he argued that economic gains and options would accrue to the "symbolic analysts" - those who manipulate and create information. Reich was ahead of the game in 1992, and if we had listened more carefully to his warnings we might be in better shape today.

Reason #5 - Narration: Reich narrates his own book - and does it beautifully. Usually reading what you have written does not work out so well. Narration is a skill best left to professional readers. But in this case, Reich is the right person to read his own words

Robert Reich is brilliant!!!

Once again Robert Reich nails it!!!
Very clearly explains how we got in the financial mess, and his suggested ideas to correct it and to keep it from happening again.
This book has really stimulated my thinking, and made me realize how wrong the current experts are in the way they are trying to address the challenges, with old solutions, that have been proven not to work.

Highly recomended.

Warren B. White
Nashville, TN

Shocking, Scary, but with some hope

I've listened to this book twice so far and I will again. I assume the print version has pictures or graphics or charts that support his arguments. But Reich is persuasive without them. You can get an idea of that by listening to his commentaries on NPR's Marketplace. But here he gets to expound more fully. He imagines a future dystopia only 10 years away and it is a scary place indeed. So much so that you are surprised that he lets us even consider the possibility. Later he tells us a possible solution. By that time you might be thinking along the lines of Churchill who supposedly said "you can count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else."

One of the strongest points about this Audible book is that it is read by the author. When you get to hear him in this format, his positions are rather apolitical and strongly moral. A conservative who doesn't like Krugman and doesn't believe Liz Ann Sonders should consider the malaise that Reich describes and decide if they have a plausible alternative. A liberal will feel more than a little chastised by Reich and realize that optimism alone won't restore America.

Nooo…please STOP...you're making me think!!

Robert Reich I am sure gets his share of flack from the militant "Right"…and you really can’t publically show your support if you believe Dub-Yah and Reagan were “just like” having Jesus as the president…but for the rest of us…who suffer from, well actually…thinking…you might find this a good read. I give Reich a 8.5 for his presentation and 7 to 7.5 for detailed content. His target audience was the interested working American, who must live through this Investment Banker nightmare…and I appreciate his balanced explanation and suggestions to recover from the loving arms of uncontrolled Wall Street. Now, if you are really convinced that a monster, global exploiting, Wall Street controlled government will actually rebuild the middle class…well...stay away...turn up the Fox News volume...DON’T risk your mental façade!!! You have been warned.

a compelling argument clearly delivered

Robert Reich has a gift for explaining complex economic arguments in a language a non-economist can understand. His argument here is very compelling and goes down easy read in his friendly, familiar voice. I give it 4 instead of 5 stars because the last third of the audio book seems like filler added at the insistence of a publisher, not necessary to make his argument. But the whole is a very pleasant listen and certainly convinced me that tea party demogagues notwithstanding, the American public is looking not for smaller but for fairer government, and getting there is critical to economic recovery and to the recovery of the legitimacy of our political system.

Defending the Indefensible

In an eloquent, wonderfully pleasant, soft, disarmingly convincing voice Robert Reich takes us through the looking glass into a world where fantasy is fact, black is white and white is black. As if it is not enough to fall through the looking glass, Reich delivers us into a world filled with mirrors where there is no way to tell what is real and what is an illusion. In Orwellian double speak, Reich repeatedly drives home the concept that if we can only focus closely on the wheels of the cart we will see that every time they turn, the horse moves.

As the patient gets sicker he gleefully announces the patient is responding to the medicine. He extolls the engine of consumption as the thing that builds wealth and is quick to measure assets but totally ignores liabilities and fails to acknowledge the obvious; that consumption is by definition wealth destruction. In a disturbingly perverted view, Reich asserts that the mess we are in is because we have failed to adequately “share the wealth” while conveniently ignoring the fact that for more than 20 years every effort was made to push money at people in the form of low interest loans that bore no relevance to the associated risk.

His enamor of Eccles, the privateer who helped FDR revitalize the economy, is so gushing that perhaps he can be excused for allowing it to cloud his mind when he manages the great leap of connecting two dots and establishing a trend, forgetting about the small sample size. There may be many reasons for the disproportion of wealth in our country in 1928 and 2007, but Reich uses it to erect a tower of defense of the great failure of 50 years of Keynesian economics better known as the great ice cream effect. Those who promise the most free ice cream to the most people will get elected. Had Reich written his book in 2007, no doubt we would have had a book of gushing acclaim that Keynes was right and the vast wealth spread across the middle class is proof of that. Instead, with the financial collapse, the tower began to crack in 2008 and Reich could not bring himself to accept his share of the blame for what ice cream givers had wrought even though he was one of the givers himself.

Reich effortlessly holds up the wondrous recovery (ending in the 1950’s) from the great depression as proof that the Keynesian approach magically works, cleverly ignoring that given 30 years and just about any approach would have led to recovery. This book is a defense of the indefensible. It is a “someone else did it” defense and he points a finger squarely at the 1% of wealthy Americans for hoarding money, as if we are in a poker game and there are a fixed number of chips, ignoring the croupier behind him printing more chips every second and pouring them into the game by the truckload. Thanks to the ice cream givers we are now all about the “share the poverty” and now with his book in print, Reich can smugly say “I didn’t do it.” Read Peter Schiff’s book on “How and Economy Grows” to clear your head of Reich’s psychobabble. It is a bit corny but you will not end every chapter with your mouth agape thinking “What the hell did he say?”

Hey! Rob Reich can read his own books!!

And he didn't do a bad job either! It's probably not easy to read your own book. The recording is clear and works just fine for the ear. Reich keeps the tone conversational throughout. Kudos to the sound engineer!

propagada

i am pretty liberal but this is typical one sided liberal viewpoint. It's like listening to a speech. I like that the author read it, but its pretty much the far left viewpoint without any attempt to provide a balanced opinion/view of the isues.

Completely one sided with straw man arguments.....

THIS BOOK IS PROPAGANDA TO THE CORE... If you are looking for a propaganda piece that sounds like it was written by the Federal Reserve itself then buy this book...

If you want the TRUTH about our financial mess then buy books like Meltdown, or any books by Ron Paul or Peter Schiff...

To give an example of how far out of wack this guy is- this guy gives the federal reserve credit for 'guiding us for 14 years' into prosperity.. This genius author should have checked how the Federal Reserve was actually created in secret on Jekyll Island. Then he should check into how quickly the severe 1921 depression (that noone hears about) was over very quickly because the government did nothing and let the free market correct itself...

But this ignorant author wants to act as though the reason we go into eventual financial prosperity following the great depression was because the Federal Reserve was given more power??? Oh my... This author is ignorant at best..


The author sets up straw man oposition claims that are half truths at best and knocks the straw man down to give the apearance of winning the argument... Thomas E Woods, Ron Paul, or Peter Schif could chew this author up and spit him out while they are sleep talking...

If you want proof just look into the past... in 2005-2006 while everyone was saying everything was great and there is not going to be any kind of collapse, the deseneters from that opinion were who? Thomas E Woods, Ron Paul, and Peter Schiff.... Now that the collapse has happened, morons like this author want to jump up and say he knows what the problem is.... I dare you to look into what this author had to say before this collapse... If you look into what he was saying before the collapse I seriously doubt you will buy this book.