Editor's note: At Foreign Affairs, Oren Cass responds to a review by James K. Galbraith of his new book, The Once and Future Worker.
Debating Labor in America
James Galbraith’s bizarre critique of my book, The Once and Future Worker, fails to achieve the basic task of a book review: telling readers what is in the book. Instead, he assembles misleading descriptions of my core proposals into what he must think a quite clever conclusion, that the “historical precedent for the type of society Cass envisions” is “the Jim Crow South.” That is absurd. His unreflective commitment to long-broken institutions has deprived him of the ability to engage productively in debates over reform.
Take education. The Once and Future Worker argues that the United States’ single-minded obsession with “college for all” has been misguided, especially for the majority of young people who do not earn a degree. Instead, I argue, the United States should place “the onus on our schools to meet students where they are and help them prepare for success with the academic outcomes toward which they are headed.” I acknowledge forthrightly the concern that “a career track will be disproportionately populated by students from disadvantaged backgrounds.”
Continue reading the entire piece here at Foreign Affairs
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Oren Cass is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the new book “The Once and Future Worker.” Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in Foreign Affairs