My Progressive Reading Month

In honor of May Day—which honors the eight-hour workday, the Haymarket Incident, and attracts all manner of socialists, communists, and anarchists—it seemed like a good time to go over the contents of my progressive reading month.

Why a progressive reading month? Well, having this renewed library access has been great, and combined with being able to keep my reading list organized via GoodReads (more on that later), I have been making more of a point of getting to books that I have always intended to read. There were a handful that I tended to associate together, which related to modern politics and money, I guess. Since I had my Black History month in February, and was going to do my Native America Heritage month in November, I decided that I would put my progressive books together in August. It would be my progressive reading month, which at times I called my socialist reading month, my liberal reading month, and I might have even called it my communist reading month.

The first thing I should say is that I can’t really just decide to read four or five books in a single month and expect it to happen with no distractions (again, more on that later). I did not actually finish the last book until November 12th. Anyway, let’s go over what they were.

One potential advantage to procrastinating is that you can then read the original book and its follow-up close together. Therefore, I read two books each by David Cay Johnston and Thomas Frank. Here is the total list in the order read:

Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich – and Cheat Everybody Else, by David Cay Johnston

What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, by Thomas Frank

Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense, by David Cay Johnston

The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, by Thomas Frank

Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes, by William H Gates and Chuck Collins

How do they stack up?

Most fluid/interesting reads: What’s the Matter with Kansas and Free Lunch
Driest reads: Wealth and our Commonwealth, followed by Perfectly Legal—that’s what happens when you write about tax code.
Most important to read: The Wrecking Crew and Free Lunch (they are also the most appalling)
I can’t say they really changed my political philosophy at all, so that’s not why you would read them, but a lot of what they did was provide context on things that I already see are happening, but this is how it got there, and why. I have to say they were all pretty well written, and very educational, and I wish everyone who complains about government spending would read Free Lunch. To be fair, a lot of that is more state and local spending than federal, but if you consider that all of the money comes from somewhere, and that there is a finite amount to cover needs, then those spending issues are really very important.

One point that Johnston repeatedly made in Perfectly Legal was that for all those who evade paying taxes, there is more that the rest of us need to pay. I had looked at it more as just there being less funds available in general, but since we are spending over budget, and accumulating interest, which we do need to pay, well, he may be on to something.

One of the most interesting unexpected lessons was from Wealth and Our Commonwealth, regarding the push by the right to get people to refer to the estate tax as the “death tax”. They had something like swear jars where interns would have to put in money any time someone used a term other than “death tax”, which would fund pizza parties. Words are powerful, because they are how we form thoughts, and the words that get used are not random.

The most discouraging part of all the reading is that there did not really seem to be much in the way of solutions. Johnston focuses primarily on getting people better informed, which seems pretty hopeless. Even if you had a knowledgeable general population, you still need to overcome apathy and systemic roadblocks, but getting people in the age of willful ignorance to pay attention to facts? To read? I just don’t know if I have that much optimism handy.

That leads to a very sad quote, which came from Wealth and Our Commonwealth:
“In 1879, Henry George published Progress and Poverty, a book chronicling the dangers of consolidated land ownership. This remarkable book, which would today be considered too dense to enjoy a wide readership, sold over 1 million copies, and excerpts were serialized in several popular magazines." (Pp 32-33, emphasis mine)

I’m sure they’re right, but it makes me sad.

Mosiah 26-29 (as part of family scripture study)
Walked outside for 36 minutes
Pushups