The Next Progressive Era: A Blueprint for Broad Prosperity

Progressives 100 years ago were deeply concerned about vast income inequalities, concentrated corporate power, a weak labor movement, high immigration rates, threats to small-scale producers and retailers, middle-class debt levels, environmental degradation and unsafe food, terrorism, religious fundamentalism, and the deteriorating quality of family life. Sound familiar? The Progressive Era changed America profoundly, and this book argues that modern-day progressives must return to their roots by protecting families (rather than individuals) from the social and environmental ravages of global capital. In doing so, they should also stress the importance of wide-scale ownership of propertyincluding both real estate and secure financial assetsboth to reduce inequalities of wealth and to save more Americans from what the original progressives recognized as "wage slavery."

Progressives 100 years ago were deeply concerned about vast income inequalities, concentrated corporate power, a weak labor movement, high immigration rates, threats to small-scale producers and retailers, middle-class debt levels, environmental degradation and unsafe food, terrorism, religious fundamentalism, and the deteriorating quality of family life. Sound Progressives 100 years ago were deeply concerned about vast income inequalities, concentrated corporate power, a weak labor movement, high immigration rates, threats to small-scale producers and retailers, middle-class debt levels, environmental degradation and unsafe food, terrorism, religious fundamentalism, and the deteriorating quality of family life. Sound familiar? The Progressive Era changed America profoundly, and this book argues that modern-day progressives must return to their roots by protecting families (rather than individuals) from the social and environmental ravages of global capital. In doing so, they should also stress the importance of wide-scale ownership of propertyincluding both real estate and secure financial assetsboth to reduce inequalities of wealth and to save more Americans from what the original progressives recognized as wage slavery.

Publishers Weekly

Longman and Boshara, both of the think tank the New America Foundation, tackle the most worrisome of American early 21st-century problems: environmental preservation, exurbanization and car culture, the country's uneven health-care system and the debt and credit crises. They connect seemingly disparate U.S. social ills: urban sprawl, car-choked highways and the health-care crisis, for example, and they offer policy solutions from the core Progressive ideals of the early 20th century-including the practice of thrift as a road to financial independence. They note a return to yeomanry-their term for Americans' increasing rates of entrepreneurship and independent contract work to escape the "wage slavery" of working for a large corporation. Calling for "stronger," rather than bigger government to regulate big business, they evoke Teddy Roosevelt's assertion that regulation should only "give each man as good a chance as possible to develop the qualities he has in him." Despite the subtitle, this is not a lofty blueprint but an astute policy guide, communicating the urgency for reform in health care, banking and transportation without resorting to shrillness or stridency. (Apr.)