Two Writers See America From Above and Below and Are Not Satisfied

In Clarksburg, we meet some victims, longtime employees who have lost their health insurance and pensions. Poverty and dwindling opportunities in West Virginia also make it the prime recruiting country for our all-volunteer military, and we encounter veterans who have been badly damaged. Employment from such communities, including speculators in Greenwich, as well as politicians in the nation’s capital where their sons and daughters are protected from serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, increase Washington’s ability to fight and keep America safe.

Perhaps local legislators should do better than Congress. That’s not the case in West Virginia, even when Freedom Industries, where the legislature is allied with the industry and co-founded by a former cocaine dealer and tax evader, spills toxic chemicals into Charleston water supplies.

In Chicago, Osnos shows us the ongoing struggle of African American children to get an education and avoid a largely hostile police force in an underfunded city. Many have never seen the lake, Michigan Avenue and its “fabulous mile.” What does it mean for them? Such exclusion from the best the country has to offer is an ongoing theme, and as Osnos points out, many of the Capitol rebels were visiting DC for the first time.

Some will find the picture of Osnos too dark, too one-sided. American capitalism still allows many to flourish and provides us with an enormous range of goods and services. It is true, though, that Washington has been largely hampered by the needs of campaign finance and the clamor of lobbyists. As corporations and the wealthy avoid taxes and healthcare consumes one out of every five dollars without healthcare, federal and local governments are increasingly struggling to fund police, teachers, roads and public health. Life gets worse for those without a four-year college degree; their lives have become more painful and their lifespan has shortened since 2010, even before the Covid pandemic. It is also true that our country was polarized and paralyzed before, most recently in the 1960s, and we have not entered another civil war.

“Raging in the 2020s” Alec Ross similarly, he argues that our social contract is broken, that the roles of business, labor, government, and foreign countries need to be rethought, and he provides a few of his favorite templates. Osnos’ view is from the ground, Ross’s view, that is, the view of the policy won, from above, not the view of the public, or even of politicians. The best part (by far) is a highly (and unusually) readable account of how tax havens and competition between countries allow multinationals, especially large tech companies, to avoid paying taxes in the many jurisdictions in which they operate. .