Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal
George Packer
Top 10 Best Quotes
“The first big step is to repair the safety net so that workers and families are no longer at perpetual risk of falling through and drowning, as millions have in the pandemic. This means essentially extending the New Deal to more Americans in more areas of their lives: universal health care, child care, paid family and sick leave, stronger workplace safety protections, unemployment insurance that doesn’t fail in a crisis, a living minimum wage. These are the basis for any decent life, for any American to do more than survive just below the misery line.”
“To believe that Trump showed us who we really are is no different from believing that Obama showed us who we really are. Narcissism is expressed in extremes of self-contempt as well as self-adoration. Both are paralyzing.”
“What’s the point of merit that exists only to protect privilege?”
“We need an activism of cohesion. We need an activism that doesn’t separate Americans into like-minded factions but brings Americans together across tribal lines.”
“To save our democracy, we must restructure our economy to make us equal Americans.”
“The country that always modeled social mobility for the rest of the world has become more class-ridden than recent aristocracies like Austria and Japan.”
“One way to give labor more power is to make it easier to organize workers by passing labor law reform bills—the perennial campaign promises of Democratic candidates that go perennially unfulfilled. Another is to direct large-scale government investments into key national sectors—clean energy, manufacturing, education, and caregiving—to create jobs, stimulate innovation, and raise the pay and status of workers. And a third is to form new institutions for worker power that are better suited to a postindustrial economy, as Michael Lind argues in The New Class War: labor representation on corporate boards, collective bargaining by sector rather than company, and wage boards that set minimum terms for low-wage industries like fast food.”
“Libertarianism, like Marxism, is a complete explanatory system. It appeals to super-smart engineers and others who never really grow up.”
“I’m here to tell you: under-education + lack of faith in the political and economic system that has failed them + Christianity + 40 years of conservatism becoming more and more extreme + right wing talk radio + virtually no mental healthcare + lack of interaction with anyone outside of their race mixed with stereotypes that have become “normalized” + social media + no good jobs + poor health from over-work/dangerous jobs + economic desperation x magical savior = trumpism.”
“If anything can lower the fever of populism in Real America, which easily spikes into white nationalism, it will be this: the experience of shared responsibility in worker organizations, and improvements in people’s daily lives, partly made possible by the help of a government that is manifestly on their side.”
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