The Ends of Freedom: Reclaiming America’s Lost Promise of Economic Rights
Mark Paul will discuss his new book with Eric Beinhocker. The event is in-person and will take place in the Tun Razak Lecture Theatre at the Blavatnik School of Government. We will also stream the event via Zoom. Please register to receive the link.
BOOK DETAILS:
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.
Mark Paul is an assistant professor at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. His research and writing have appeared in the New York Times, Economist, Washington Post, Nation, American Prospect, and Financial Times, among other publications.
Date:
22 May 2023, 16:30 (Monday, 5th week, Trinity 2023)
Venue:
Blavatnik School of Government, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter OX2 6GG
Venue Details:
Tun Razak Lecture Theatre
Speaker:
Mark Paul (Rutgers University)
Organising department:
Institute for New Economic Thinking
Organiser:
Susan Mousley (INET Oxford Admin Team)
Organiser contact email address:
events@inet.ox.ac.uk
Booking required?:
Required
Booking url:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-ends-of-freedom-mark-paul-book-talk-tickets-626227642737
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Susan Mousley
