cover image Restoring the American Dream: A Working Families' Agenda for America

Restoring the American Dream: A Working Families' Agenda for America

Thomas A. Kochan, . . MIT, $27.95 (247pp) ISBN 978-0-262-11292-5

In this earnest, meticulous volume, MIT management professor Kochan argues that Americans need to view work and family as "tightly coupled issues" so that the former can be managed to complement the latter. A good start, he says, would be paid family leave for all workers, not just white-collar professionals; beyond that, he even suggests new laws that give corporate employees "the same rights to information and voice in [corporate] government" that investors already have. His other ideas are hardly objectionable, at least to blue-staters: fund basic public education, especially science; increase the minimum wage; invest in R&D to develop new jobs; revamp labor laws ("a national disgrace") to protect workers' right to unionize; and repeal "some or all of the tax cuts that have gone to the most wealthy Americans in recent years" in order to reduce the federal deficit. Kochan mostly ignores the current political scene and sidesteps cost figures, but suggests that a variety of networks and coalitions, including religious and identity groups, might help effect change—as they have already in some local cases. This wonkish book awaits a candidate and movement ready to translate Kochan's "vision for the longer term" into a workable plan. (Sept.)