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Babe Ruth exhibit in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Credit: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
Christmas is a time to catch up on all those books you’ve been meaning to get to. I highly recommend adding these two books to your list: Big Fella by Jane Levy and The Once and Future Worker by Oren Cass.
Cass’ groundbreaking work tackles one of the great issues of our time, the decline of decently-paying work that does not require high levels of formal education. Much of our social and political unrest can be traced at least partially to this development. Automation, immigration, and globalisation have combined to make many of our fellow citizens economically expendable. And the result is continued support for various forms of populism, both on the Left (Corbynite) and the Right (Trumpist).
Cass’ central insight is that this development has occurred because we have come to value people only as consumers. But psychologically, people derive self-worth and identity from their roles as producers. They want to contribute something of value that allows them to support themselves as much as possible and share in the bounties of what together we create. Take this away, as the modern economy increasingly does, and all the transfer payments in the world cannot replace that sense of dignity and belonging that comes from paid work.
The book details a host of potential policies that aim to reverse these trends. In the United States, where suspicion of any government intervention in the marketplace remains strong, Cass’ book has unleashed a firestorm of criticism from the high priests of neoliberalism. Readers in other nations where such theological disputes are rarer might have an easier time taking on some of his ideas and making them part of a coherent, reforming conservatism that speaks to our time.
Levy’s book is a biography of one of America’s great sports heroes, the baseball icon Babe Ruth, but has an appeal that reaches beyond just baseball fans. What makes it interesting reading for everyone is its depiction of American life nearly a century ago.
Each chapter addresses one aspect of Ruth’s life and the world in which he lived. One addresses his troubled childhood, through which we glimpse working-class life and neighborhoods at the turn of the 20th Century. This is a world of violence, family, and a reliance on informal social institutions that is virtually unknown today.
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