When the 2008 financial crisis struck, Noam Chomsky, influential leftist intellectual extraordinaire (and arguably a dying breed), recommend the United States government enlist Joseph Stiglitz to help drive the recovery as, at the very least, an ideological consultant. Even though the government uncharacteristically ignored the recommendation, the American public should most certainly not. Especially the American left. We should be paying very close attention to what Stiglitz is saying, what he’s doing, and probably what he’ll eventually be screaming.
ReWriting the Rules of the American Economy is by no means the best thing I’ve read by Stiglitz. It lacks the depth found in The Price of Inequality and doesn’t have the bite of any of his Great Divide essays, but it does something far more important than deep exploration or evisceration, something crucial; it better frames the debate.
Essentially, ReWriting the Rules could be seen as a smarter, more concise, but less accessible version of Robert Reich’s Saving Capitalism. Like Reich, it is easy to picture Stiglitz getting exhausted in the endless debate over the free market vs the size of government and, also like Reich, thinking it doesn’t matter. The idea is we need to rewrite the rules so the government works for all Americans, not just some. Once you see the debate this way it is difficult to see it any other way.
Which is good! Stiglitz offers up some great ideas here and it is particularly important for the left now because he’s puts to rest some debates you can currently see raging between the left and the far left, mostly in the wake of Sanders V Clinton. Trade deals for instance; Stiglitz doesn’t like the TPP because it undercuts labor and the idea of transparency in trade. At the same time, he wants America to engage in trade because you can’t have the sort of wealth distribution policies he wants if America’s wealth accumulation is stymied by aggressive protectionism. His compromise? Get a regulatory body (the FTC?), or make one, to regulate business participation in trade deals; making sure they are following a series of rules on the environment, human rights, and labor rights - both at home and abroad - in order to take advantage of free and protected capital flow between nations. Who on the left would not agree with this? Exactly.
The only very real and very frustrating part of this book is the layout. Broken into two parts (three if you count the introduction) titled “The Current Rules” and “ReWriting the Rules”, Stiglitz fractures his problems and proposed solutions in a such a way that makes ReWriting the Rules a less coherent and engaging read.
Nevertheless, there is a lot of potential in ReWriting the Rules of the American Economy to be an ideological unifier of the left, as though Stiglitz is offering his consultancy and all we need to do is pick up his book and start taking his advice.
