If this is how academe approaches income inequality ... game over!

An email to faculty, from a "comrade," opened with:

Colleagues: Please help raise the critical consciousness of students and others by recommending two outstanding books: 1) Donald Barlett, James Steele, The Betrayal of the American Dream; 2) Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.  

Every once in a while the brain works and I recalled reading reviews of that first book, especially in the NY Times.  (Even normally I care very little for Naomi Klein, who is way too shrill an ideologue for my preferences, even when she addresses issues that worry me too.)

So, of course, the nerd then did a quick google search and located the NY Times piece, and more.

Catherine Rampell, whom I have quoted many times in this blog--and, btw, I am unhappy that she ditched the Times in favor of a columnist gig at WaPo--leads her review with these sentences:

There are two major flaws in “The Betrayal of the American Dream,” a new book about the dismantling of the middle class. The first is its diagnosis of what’s causing the country’s economic troubles. The second is its prescriptions.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? ;)

Rampell's follow-up sentence is a classic:

At least it got the symptoms right.

Hehehehe!

If a relatively centrist Rampell takes that tone, I wondered how the WSJ reacted to it.  Thanks to Google, no problems tracking that down either.  This review, too, makes clear right with the opening sentences:

Beware of investigative reporters offering economic analysis. There will usually be a conspiracy theory lurking somewhere. A serious study of economics—macroeconomics especially—doesn't mate well with conspiracy theories.

This surely will not lead to any huge applause for the book, right?

Don't look for any answers to that problem in this book, because they aren't there. But, yes, it probably will sell well.

Above and beyond these reviews and the book itself, a couple of points stand out.  One, isn't it interesting that academics are getting excited that a book by investigative reporters at Vanity Fair will raise critical consciousness?  If academe is about critical thinking, and the great scholarship that ensues will lead to a lot more nuanced understanding, then shouldn't the route be via academic books authored by professors?  Could it be that those books rarely do any damn thing outside of graduate seminars because, well, academic writing stinks?

As many of my posts suggest, and much to Ramesh's annoyance, I am deeply concerned by the widening income and wealth inequalities, and the increasingly bleak outlook for those who didn't choose their parents well.  When academics want to discuss these issues, then shouldn't the book to raise that consciousness be via reading and discussing the much acclaimed work of Thomas Piketty, who has earned the respect even of those who disagree with his interpretations?  Especially when Piketty is zeitgeist and the recommended books are from a couple of years ago!  Or even  the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz in conversation with John Stewart!

I worry that this is merely the latest in the long running degradation of academic discourse, which has slipped into an ideological trash-talk mode that, unfortunately, the impressionable undergrads will believe to be the truth because of their uncritical faith in their favorite and popular professors.