Despair,Rigging,Anger,and Degrowth

This past summer I had occasion to read four books that should be of interest to macromarketers and macromarketers in-the-making (our PhD students), especially those interested in what I will here call political macromarketing. ¹ The books are Anne Case and Angus Deaton, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (2020), Robert Reich, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It (2020), Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth, Angrynomics (2020), and Giorgos Kallis et al., The Case for Degrowth (2020).

Deaths of Despair

The first book, The Deaths of Despair, is critical of what marketing executive Victor Lebow once called “the business system” (Lebow 1972; see also Benton 2020). Authors Case and Deaton (the 2015 Nobel Memorial laureate) make it clear that they are not critical of capitalism. In the preface they favorably comment on the progress capitalism has brought over the last two hundred and fifty years (p. ix). Then, late in the book, they write, “We are not against capitalism … We believe in the power of competition and of free markets” (p. 212). In both passages they equate competition and free markets with capitalism, an equivalence I have objected to (Benton 2021). It is an equivalence that has become a common obfuscation among those defending the status quo, which they do not do. They are critical of the status quo. Despite their criticism they, in fact, defend it—not as it is, but as it should be.

The story they tell is one of pain, addiction, alcoholism, and suicide, all self-inflicted causes of death, “quickly with a gun, slowly and less certainly with drug addiction, and more slowly still through alcohol” (p. 2). Together these constitute their title phrase: deaths of despair. The short version is that in America middle-aged white working-class men without a bachelor's degree live in a land of declining real wages, broken families, few prospects, pain, ill health, and despair. And they are dying deaths of despair. Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and, above all, to a greedy health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages upward into the pockets of the already wealthy.

The book's origin lies with an observed paradox. Case and Deaton annually vacation in southwestern Montana. They are happy when they are there; the people there seem generally happy, too. Yet that vacation paradise has a suicide rate four times greater than in suburban Philadelphia where they live for the other eleven months. They asked themselves what connects apparent happiness with suicide? This book is their answer.

The book is engagingly written. Their arguments are easy to follow. It is adequately cited and referenced. It is recommended not only for the story it tells about deaths from addiction, alcoholism, and suicide but also for the story it tells about how they went about this project: where their data came from, why they used the data they did, what questions they were asking along the way, how they answered those questions using the data they had, and how they came to their final answer regarding what drives the current epidemic of deaths of despair. Deaths would make a fine supplemental text in a macromarketing research class or module.

The book consists of an introduction and four parts. Each part is comprised of three or more chapters. Part I recounts how all-cause mortality rates consistently declined during the 20^th Century (except for the period of the 1918 Spanish influenza epidemic). Mortality rates began increasing during the latter half of the 20^th century. That was not supposed to happen. In unpacking the data, they find that the rising death rates were not general but due to suicides, drug overdoses, and alcoholic liver disease among white men aged 45–56, and almost totally confined to those without a bachelor's degree! The less educated, white middle-aged men are killing themselves in sufficient numbers to reverse the downward trend of all-cause mortality rates (but, significantly, only in the United States).

Part II considers other dimensions of the problem: more data, more facts. After discussing the role of education, they devote a chapter to how African Americans have suffered. While blacks are still a depressed population, they do not experience the deaths of despair that white middle-aged and middle-class males are. African Americans experienced their own version of the current crisis fifty years ago, which, at the time, was “attributed to peculiarities of black culture” (p. 189). In hindsight and with the current crisis unfolding, the black experience looks different. They don’t say it this way, but I will: if we attribute that black experience to peculiarities of black culture, then we ought to attribute the current episode among white men to peculiarities of less educated white culture. Charles Murray (2012) argued that case. Case and Deaton acknowledge Murray's argument and then, using both data and logic, dismiss it (pp. 260–261). They argue, instead, “if any group is threatened badly enough for long enough, it is susceptible to suffering social breakdown of one kind or another” (p. 189). African Americans were the first to suffer, less educated whites were next in line. “It is not absurd,” they warn, “to imagine the distress moving up to more highly educated groups” (p. 189). Patricia Young (2021) has argued precisely that but stops short of arguing it will lead to social breakdown. But why wouldn’t it? A sobering thought for macromarketers!

Case and Deaton devote one chapter to suicide, drugs, and alcohol-related deaths, saving opioids for a chapter unto itself. Think you know all there is to know about opioids and big pharma? Read their chapter on opioids. There are also issues of declining marriage and declining religion among middle-aged white males without a college degree. It all contributes to the epidemic in deaths of despair.

Part III explores potential causes of the epidemic. Using the data they have, they do not find poverty, the Great Recession, inequality, globalization, robots, nor China to blame. Each is important, each plays a role, but none are causal nor even central. Drawing on Emile Durkheim's classic study of suicide (1967, originally published in 1897), they argue a sociological cause. They write, “we must look beyond the individual to society, particularly to breakdown and turmoil in a society that can no longer provide its members an environment in which they can live a meaningful life” (p. 94). (If that isn’t a call to macromarketers I wouldn’t recognize one if I saw it.)

Uneducated whites do poorly on all measures—wages, family, child rearing, religion, political participation, and self-reported assessments of life—when compared to better-educated whites. In some areas, especially marriage and childbearing, the gap is widening.

They argue it is the destruction of a way of life that is central and causal, not traditional economic measures like jobs and wages. What, then, is behind that long-term and slowly unfolding destruction of a way of life if it isn’t poverty, inequality, globalization, nor robots? It is “the high and rising cost of healthcare” (p. 243, emphasis added). They find health care in the United States both central and causal. Historically the United States chose an employer-provided health insurance scheme at least in part because of an “unwillingness to adopt universal protections that included African Americans” (p. 225). Most Americans have health insurance provided by employers. As employees we may think that health insurance is a gift. It is not! It is deducted, partially or fully, from wages. Employers are not concerned with the wage they pay; they ae concerned with the total cost of hiring. Employer provided health insurance affects “how much firms are prepared to pay in wages and how many workers they employ” (p. 205).

The rising health insurance premiums have played a large part in holding down wages and an employer's decision to directly employ fewer workers or outsource the work. Working for an outsourcing company is not as attractive, and it is less meaningful, than working for a large corporation. As they write in their introduction (pp. 7–8), low wage jobs lack any sense of pride that can come with being part of a successful enterprise. Cleaners, janitors, drivers, and others “belonged” when directly employed by a large company, in a way they do not belong when their jobs have been outsourced. Citing economist Nicholas Bloom, “they are no longer part of a marquee corporation, they are no longer invited to the holiday party.”

The point is that jobs are not just the source of money. They are “the basis for the rituals, customs, and routines of working-class life.” Destroy work and working-class life cannot survive. “It is the loss of meaning, of dignity, of pride, and of self-respect that … brings on despair, not just or even primarily the loss of money.”

They then shift to the costs of health care and the healthcare lobby, a lobby intended to keep health care prices high. For perspective they state, “Healthcare is the largest-spending industry … and [alone] spends more than ten times as much as the total spent by organized labor” (p. 210). Importantly, “there are no effective lobbyists … arguing the case for the people who are paying for the enrichment of the healthcare industry” (p. 210). Who is paying for it? The insurance companies and individuals without health insurance, yes, but federal and state governments pay much of the healthcare costs. For the federal government, healthcare competes against maintaining and replacing infrastructure. At the state level, because Medicaid is an entitlement, rising healthcare expenditures eat away at education and transportation. Again, for perspective, states spend half as much again on Medicaid as they do on K-12 education. Ever wonder what happened to the once well-funded state universities that provided solid education and social advancement for those that didn’t have access to Ivy League and other private colleges and universities? Think no further than the costs of healthcare born by states.

Anticompetitive and rent-seeking behavior is not confined to healthcare. “In business more generally,” they write, “anticompetitive behavior, wherever it exists, is an agent of upward redistribution” (p. 230). ² Rent-seeking and anti-competitive behavior is important enough that they devote an entire chapter to it.

The final chapter, entitled “What to Do?”, provides a catalog of proposals for rectifying the problems they have identified, problems Lebow identified half a century ago. It is the most dissatisfying chapter of their book. They begin reasonably enough by saying that they would like to see a more just America. To get there they focus on rectifying injustices rather than pursuing justice because it is easier to reach a consensus. Besides, the more injustice can be removed the more just the society becomes.

For example, many can agree that making money out of human suffering is wrong. Many on both the left and the right can agree that rent-seeking and crony capitalism is wrong. Many can agree that to get rich through special favors is wrong. But what to do? They cover healthcare, taxing policies, benefit policies, wage policies, antitrust, rent-seeking, education, and whether democracy can rise to the challenge (they are hopeful, optimistic). Rather than take from the rich and give to the poor they argue it is easier and more beneficial to prevent the thief from stealing in the first place.

Free markets do not apply to healthcare (they cite Arrow 1963). They argue for universal health insurance to replace employer-provided healthcare as a way relieve downward pressure on wages and the exportation of jobs. And healthcare costs must be controlled. About how to do either, they are disappointingly silent.

In discussing tax and benefit policies they write that a more generous safety net would have made the transitions brought about by globalization and automation less painful for those negatively affected. Yet a stronger safety net is little more than a Band-Aid. This was a very bland discussion.

What about proposals for a Universal Basic Income (UBI)? It is possible, they say, that a UBI would give people the freedom and ability to train for new jobs, undertake new activities, contribute to their communities, and to participate more fully in democratic political activity. However, being “concerned about deaths of despair and the loss of meaning and status that has come with job destruction,” they do not see a UBI as a way forward (p. 254).

Regarding anti-trust they point out that economists are split on the issue. That leads to a dead-end discussion. One contribution they make is to propose that the burden of proof regarding proposed mergers be moved from the regulatory agency to the firms proposing the merger. This is an application of the precautionary principle to a new domain.

When it comes to rent-seeking behavior, something they go out of their way to condemn, their advice is silly. They assert there is nothing to stop trade associations and corporations from lobbying elected officials for protection. (That stance gives up on preventing the behavior they deplore. But they have not lost hope.) They assert, correctly, “that voters are generally unaware” of what is going on in Washington. To go from there to suggesting an increase in the flow of information “on who is lobbying, for what, and the consequences might provide a brake of the effectiveness of this activity” (p. 257). Simply providing more and better information to the small and powerless will not stop rent-seeking behavior by the big and powerful. While greater transparency would be nice, it will not stop rent-seeking behavior.

They conclude with their hope that democracy can rise to the challenge. They don’t see inequality as the problem but unfairness as the problem. Too many people see the that the great wealth at the top as ill-gotten in a system that gives so much to so few and so little to so many. Yet there is hope “that the sheer awfulness of the epidemic of deaths, as well as the extremes of inequality that have been generated by rent-seeking and upward redistribution, will generate an opportunity where schemes that have been long thought about might be put into place” (p. 262). Except for the UBI, they do not indicate what “schemes that have been long thought about” they have in mind. That, apparently, they leave to others and to other books, books like Robert Reich's The System: Who Rigged it, How We Fix It.

The System

Reich begins The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It with a discussion of a phone call he received from Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase. Reich criticized Dimon publicly, and Dimon was not pleased. Reich listened to Dimon complain before responding. The System is the long version of what Reich told Dimon on the phone.

The System reads more like an extended op-ed piece. There are no footnotes; there are no citations; there are no references, and there is no index. There is a six page “Note on Sources” at the end. The book's structure is fitting given that it is an open letter to Dimon and others of his ilk.

Despite beginning and ending the book with reference to Dimon, Reich is not picking on nor targeting Dimon the person: “if he weren’t running JPMorgan or chairing the Business Roundtable, someone else would be” (p. 4), adding, while the “cast of characters in power many change … the system remains firmly in place” (p. 6). Reich is focused on the system, not people nor personalities.

What must we do? We need to “Think systematically” (p. 9, emphasis is his) and free ourselves from conventional falsehoods and false choices. Falsehoods like the market knowns best, which embodies the false choice between the free market or government. It is a false choice because to work at all, the market requires rules that are made and enforced by government. In this Reich is a strange bedfellow with the economist Milton Friedman (see Benton 2021). We also can’t be dazzled by corporate social responsibility, something on which, again, he and Friedman strangely agree. And we can’t be trapped by the battle between capitalism and socialism. “We already have socialism—for the very rich” (p. 7). Everybody else is subject to harsh capitalism. Finally, we can’t permit ourselves to continue to be hypnotized by the false choice between the traditional Left versus Right, between Democrats versus Republicans. Today, and this is Reich's main argument, the dichotomy is between Democracy and Oligarchy. We must come to understand that.

To do so we must also understand the nature of power, something, Reich contends, “doesn’t show up in standard economics texts, finance courses, or even political science and law” (p. 9). This criticism applies to standard marketing texts and marketing courses, too. If it shows up all, power is attributed to the sovereign consumer (to use an economist's term). We must stop being dazzled by that, too. With these and other topics Reich builds an analysis of the system.

Part I, entitled “Democracy versus Oligarchy,” argues that the traditional left versus right, Republicans versus Democrats, is no longer the best way to understand the contemporary world. Better is to consider the dichotomy between Democracy and Oligarchy. We might think countries like Russia are the ones with oligarchies, but we have had our own oligarchies in the past, beginning with our founding fathers (see, for example, Klarman 2016), and the infamous robber barons a hundred years later who amassed fortunes, corrupted government, and mounted a second oligarchic takeover. This is also discussed by Case and Deaton but less pointedly. The second oligarchic conquest was brought to an end by World War I, the Great Depression, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

A third oligarchic wave emerged around 1980, accompanied by a flood of money into politics resulting in a system many, including Case and Deaton, refer to as Crony Capitalism: “government for, of, and by the oligarchy” (Reich, p. 17). I might be advised to hold my tongue, but this might be the deep state that so many are riled up about. Reich doesn’t say that, and neither did Case and Deaton. I just did.

Hearing and using these old labels and categories “prevents most people from noticing they are being shafted” (Reich p. 18). As Case and Deaton (p. 209) memorably explain in terms of American healthcare:

Americans … like to believe that the system is a free-market one, in spite of the fact that the government is paying half of the costs, is paying the prices demanded by pharmaceutical companies without negotiation (often absurdly described as “market-based pricing”), is granting patents for devices and drugs, is permitting professional associations to restrict supply, and is subsidizing employer-provided healthcare through the tax system.

Many in the ruling class use these old labels and old categories to distract others from noticing that it is the oligarch who is in control and is looting the nation. The labels and categories work, again, because Americans like to believe that the system is a free-market one. “One of the most dangerously deceptive ideas,” Reich proclaims, and Case and Deaton would agree, “is that we work and live in a free market” (Reich, p. 91). It is not. It is not even close! Reich suggests the way to overcome the oligarchy is for the rest of us to join in a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of the poor, the working class, and the middle class fighting for democracy against concentrated power and privilege (p. 18). This seems easier said than done.

Reich is skeptical of corporate social responsibility, the hot topic in business schools. Programs for corporate social responsibility lie outside the democratic process and provide another smoke screen. It is much more important to strengthen democracy and thwart oligarchy than to buy into the oligarchy's socially responsible programs and plans. In this I found it surprising how much Robert Reich sounded like and agreed with Milton Friedman (see Benton 2021).

Part I ends with a discussion of the dichotomy between capitalism versus socialism. The current system, the rigged system, provides socialism for the rich and harsh capitalism for everybody else. Reich has a significant discussion of this in the context of the 2008 financial crisis regarding how Wall Street banks got bailed out but little or nothing was done for average people.

Reich's best example of the kind of socialism he is talking about, coupled with crony capitalism, is presented in chapter four. It involves, as might be expected, Jamie Dimon and Dodd-Frank, the legislation which was intended to prevent taxpayers from holding the bag should bank trades blow up again. One provision of Dodd-Frank required banks to move their riskiest activities, such as derivatives trading, “to entities not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation” (p. 61). That provision was proving to be costly to JPMorgan because “it eliminated what amounted to free federal insurance backstopping the bank's high-risk, high-profit trading of derivatives” (p. 61). In December 2014 a provision repealing the portion of Dodd-Frank requiring banks to move their riskiest activities out from under FDIC protection was inserted into a 1,600-page bill to keep the government funded—at the behest of Dimon. That is how power works. ³

Reich goes on to discuss bankruptcy, the rise and fall of interest group pluralism, unions, retailer co-operatives, farm co-operatives, and local and regional banks, arguing that over the past four decades each has wilted and plummeted as a voice for middle American. Political parties have also stopped representing the views of most constituents. In a memorable phrase Reich submits, “Not even a sizzling economy can deliver anything close to the returns on political investments” (p. 57).

Part II is devoted to two themes. First, how we got where we are, and how to get out of the fix we are in. The first line of attach is to debunk the idea that we live in a free market “that is neutral and natural” (p. 91). He reinserts a running theme: the “free market” economy is governed by a set of rules and these rules, enforced by government, serve the oligarchy and not the commoners. Reich writes, echoing the concerns of Case and Deaton, “The result of this vicious cycle is a giant but hidden upward distribution of income and wealth from the bottom 90 percent to the top” (p. 94). Another consequence, to be explored in Angrynomics, is a growing anger and frustration felt by people who work harder than ever but are getting nowhere. They are also increasingly cynical about democracy, a cynicism which is “corroding the moral foundation of our society” (p. 94). Case and Deaton also note, “Working-class whites do not believe that democracy can help them,” believing instead that “elections are controlled by the rich and by big corporations” (p. 13).

Reich has an interesting discussion about how Americans have coped, adopted, and let themselves behave and possibly believe they were still taking home the same share of total national income as before, despite actual stagnant wages. This discussion should be interest macromarketers. The coping mechanisms followed a sequence. First, women moved into paid work, propping up family incomes; then those that had a job worked longer hours either by working overtime or by working two or three jobs; then families drew down their savings and borrowed to the hilt. “By 2007, the typical American household owed 138 percent of its after-tax income” (p. 125). Finally, houses doubled as ATMs, a practice that largely ended with the housing crash of 2008.

There is an equally interesting discussion of where billionaires come from. In Case and Deaton's telling (pp. 227–230), rich people, even very rich people, first made a good product, become successful, and then set out to thwart competition and protect their own wealth. In other words, they rigged the system and became rent-takers. Reich's version of where billionaires come from differs somewhat. He suggests four strategies for becoming a billionaire. The first is to choose your parents, or your spouse, carefully. Around 60 percent of wealth in the US is inherited. The best chance to becoming a billionaire is to marry or be born into intergenerational riches. Inheritance is followed by working to establish a monopoly and this involves patent and trademark rules and laws (Case and Deaton's way). Reich's third strategy is to engage in insider information (which, he suggests, is not as rare as most of us think). The final strategy is to “invest” in or bet on politicians through timely and strategically placed campaign contributions.

As I read Reich's four strategies, they seemed vaguely familiar. Then I remembered having read Warner Sombart's The Quintessence of Capitalism: A Study on the History and Psychology of the Modern Businessman (1915: 34–35). Sombart's lists for the best ways of becoming rich included wholesale trade, seeking of treasure trove, ingratiating oneself with a rich man to become his heir, usury, and the rental of pastures, horses, and the like. He then added royal service, soldiering, and alchemy. ⁴

Sombart's lists and Reich's four strategies have one thing in common: production is absent and that is precisely the economist's definition of rent-seeking behavior.

Part III focuses on overcoming oligarchy. People are angry at how the system is rigged, about the bailout of a few at the top while common people suffer. Reich traveled about the country interviewing people during the 2016 primaries for president. All he heard was Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. It wasn’t racism, gendered rhetoric, or xenophobia that he kept hearing. It was “anti-establishment fury” (p. 161). Indeed, “the most powerful force in American politics today,” Reich writes, “is anti-establishment fury at a rigged system” (p. 165). Neither political party, he asserts, can defeat authoritarian populism without an agenda of radical democratic reform.

Oligarchies do not depend on brute force to maintain power but on systems of belief (religions, dogmas, and ideologies), bribes, and manufactured threats (supposed foreign enemies, enemies within, immigrant, minorities, and marginalized populations). Chapter 13 is well worth reading. So, too, are books about power, such as John Kenneth Galbraith's The Anatomy of Power (1983) and Kenneth Boulding's Three Faces of Power (1989). Both were well regarded economists, if not in the mainstream of economics.

In the penultimate chapter Reich argues that democracy will prevail. In this he expresses his optimism. Democracy prevailed in the past, it will again. There is ample reason for hope, but hope is not enough. Work needs to be done. But first, “Americans must understand the system” and then grasp “the corrosive relationship between great wealth and great power” (p. 186). Family businesses, farmers, individual contractors, lone entrepreneurs, and inhabitants of small communities, those typically on the right side of the old political spectrum, must discover they have much in common with those on the old left: women, minorities, and urban professionals (p. 188). “If they see their common interests, they will ally themselves and come to see market fundamentalism for what it is—a religion that idolized the free market while masking those with the power over the rules of the game” (p. 189). “Democracy,” he concludes, “will prevail if we fight for it” (p. 192).

The final chapter again addresses Jamie Dimon directly, appealing to him to push for many of the things he has said he favors and that he recognizes ails us. Since Mr. Dimon and his colleagues around the Business Round Table are partially, if not largely, responsible for the system as it is, a system most Americans see as “rigged against them” (p. 197), he, and they, have a responsibility to right the wrongs they have brought upon us. At the very least, they have a moral duty to not stop the movement that is afoot. “The tectonic plates,” Reich asserts, “are on the move” (p. 197).

Angrynomics

Angrynomics (2020) is more non-traditional than either Deaths of Despair or The System. It is written as a series of five themed dialogues between Eric Lonergan, a macro hedge fund manager, and Mark Blyth, a political scientist and professor of international economics at Brown University. They are, together, discussing the issues, not lecturing about them—although at times the discussion feels fabricated. Each dialogue begins with a parable which captures the essence of the conversation to follow.

The book has a six-page “Further reading” section, end notes providing background and sources for their statements and positions, and an index.

The title suggests a different tack on the problem than the previous books. Lonergan and Blyth use anger as the central concept rather than how the current economic system deviates from the traditional “free market” system envisioned by economists and sold to us by economists and elites. That the deviation exists is accepted. They point out that reigning orthodoxy can’t explain that the UK economy doubled between 1980 and 2017 yet the use of food banks increased by 1000 percent; or that inequality rose while global corporations stopped paying taxes, as did wealthy individuals; or that states bailed out the already rich and paid for it by squeezing everybody else; or that politicians stopped making the case for deep-rooted economic change and resorted to a politics of fear. About these things we have read.

Lonergan and Blyth argue that we can’t expect real people to put up with these disconnects forever. When the disconnects become too large, the self-serving elites (Case and Deaton's rent-seekers; Reich's oligarchy) get called out. “Welcome,” Lonergan and Blyth write, “to that calling, the world of ‘angrynomics’, where real people are angry and have every right to be” (p. 7).

Lonergan and Blyth dissect the concept of anger and distinguish, first, between public anger and private anger and then between two types of public anger. “When people are publicly angry, because they are wronged, or they witness wrong-doing, they want it to be recognized and addressed” (p. 10). There are two ways that public anger can be expressed. First, as moral outrage and second, as tribalism. Tribalism seeks “to blame the ‘other’ that must be responsible” (p. 10). As Lebow, the marketing executive, expressed it so many years ago (1972, p. 17, 111; see also Benton 2020), experienced wrongs are attributed to “foreigners, Negros, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Republicans, Democrats, labor unions, professors, agitators, subversives, … state administrations, … the Congress or the incumbent national government” (1972, p. 17, 111). Moralism demands that the wrongs be righted; tribalism demands that the wrong be righted by dealing with or expelling the “responsible” other.

Private anger, on the other hand, is rooted in increased and increasing personal anxiety, stress, insecurity, and feelings of powerlessness. Private anger is often characterized by shame. It can ruin lives. People that are privately angry often seek counseling rather than retribution.

The challenge for politics today, Lonergan and Blyth argue, is to listen carefully and redress legitimate anger—both the public and private forms—while exposing and not inciting the violent anger of tribalism.

Dialogues 1 and 2 explore the two distinct types of public anger. The third dialogue gives their account of how, historically, we got here. It is a crash course in the history of political economy: who gets what, where, when, and why. The fourth dialogue discusses private anger, that anger which arises from the anxiety and stress of daily life. In this fourth dialogue they focus on two generators of private anger: technology and aging.

Dialogue five turns Lonergan and Blyth's own moral outrage toward creative solutions. Unlike Case and Deaton, and unlike Reich, they are not pleading for a return to a world that never was. They present solutions that they think may work in the system as it is. Their point is that individual-level solutions, micro solutions, don't and won’t work; needed are institutional solutions, macro solutions. That implies real changes in the macromarketing system, once that system is understood for what it is. They are solutions macromarketers should be interested in exploring, too.

First, we must continue to control inflation and regulate the financial industry (at the time of their writing inflation was near zero). Second, we must radically address wealth inequality. Finally, we must finance the decarbonization of the economy. Smart policy toward these ends will have three features. First, the policy will make a big difference; second, it will be simple and easy to explain; finally, it will garner support across traditional political lines and across electoral cycles. “If it has these three features, it can allow a new politics that calms the anger” (p. 133). Clearly raising taxes on the wealthy and instituting a wealth tax fails this three-pronged test of smart policy. The rich are powerful and will never go along with it. In addition, “there is a global tax avoidance industry that governments everywhere seem reluctant to call out” (p. 132), and it is not just the Cayman Islands and other legendary sanctuaries for money. It includes sanctuaries like the states of Wyoming (Cenziper and Fitzgibbon 2021), South Dakota (Bullough 2019), and other states. So, what do they propose?

Their most interesting proposal is for a National Wealth Fund (NWF), modeled after existing sovereign wealth funds. These funds would eventually be distributed as individual wealth funds “to the 80 per cent of households who own the fewest assets” (p. 135). The purpose of a NWF is to assure that everyone has assets that generate income; it essentially creates “a national inheritance” (p. 136).

They say the funding of such NWFs is not complicated but, contrary to their second rule for smart policies, it is not that easy to explain. It is worth following along with them (pp. 133–141; see also Lonergan and Blyth 2015). It might just be a way to reduce inequality, as they say, without fleecing—or irritating—the rich. It would not eliminate the income and wealth gap but would help to prevent it from further widening. The return on capital is historically 5%–6% while the return on wages is but 1%–2%. If all those merely earning a wage also possessed capital through a National Wealth Fund, they would also enjoy some of that 5%–6% return.

Lonergan and Blyth discuss a Universal Basic Income (UBI), which Case and Deaton dismissed because it didn’t address their concerns. Lonergan and Blyth propose a twist on UBI that, in their mind, avoids some of the objections (but not that of Case and Deaton). They propose “a data dividend” (p. 141). Rather than pay people to do nothing, a major objection, Lonergan and Blyth propose that people be paid for something that is already theirs. “We want to grant private-sector firms the right to access our data, but for a fee, and that could in part fund a minimum income” (p. 141). Yes, there are important issues here, which they discuss, including both how such a scheme might work and privacy issues. It would behoove macromarketers to pay attention as it would drastically alter the macromarketing system.

They discuss other ideas “that have been long thought about”—dual interest rates, independent fiscal councils, funding the decarbonization of the economy, and more. They are ideas that others have been thinking about and that macromarketers might do well to think about, too. They are certainly ideas that go far beyond anything proposed by Case and Deaton, or by Reich.

Degrowth

The three books thus far considered are different in many ways. There are parallels and similarities, too. They each critique crony capitalism and the existing upward distribution of wealth. They also have in common a commitment to growth as the solution for all problems. If it is true that the definition of insanity is to repeatedly do the same thing over and over, yet expect different results, then it is perhaps time to regain our sanity by considering something else. Enter The Case for Degrowth.

Degrowth, as a movement, is not cut from whole cloth. It has a pedigree. Kallis and his co-authors don’t trouble the reader with that pedigree. I will. Those with an historical orientation will hear echoes of the anti-industrialists John Ruskin, William Morris, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, and others. Those that are old enough will recognize the influence of Edward Goldsmith, E.J. Mishan, Leopold Kohr, E.F. Schumacher, Erich Fromm, Paul Goodman, and Ivan Illich. Some will be tempted to see degrowth as a continuation of the Meadows Report (The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972) and its sequels) or of Herman Daly's work on Steady-State Economics (1991, 1996), including his edited anthologies (1973, 1980, 1993). While degrowth is related to each, its intellectual fount lies with Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1971, see also 1975).

Despite an illustrious pedigree, degrowth has a long row to hoe. In the current intellectual climate the term carries a negative connotation. Reflect on how the North is opposed to the South in global politics, and the unspoken meanings that opposition carries. In the same way, degrowth is positioned against growth. Because growth is associated with the positive directional imagery of up, degrowth becomes associated with the negative directional imagery of down.

Unconscious associations influence how information is received and processed. Those that read The Case for Degrowth are encouraged, indeed admonished, to think not in terms of degrowth but in terms of a-growth (Van Den Bergh 2011), to adopt an agnostic stance toward growth. Schumacher (1974) once wrote that we should not concern ourselves with growth per se but with increasing that which is good and reducing that which is bad. Whether the two processes add up to a higher or lower grand total (GNP) should be of no concern whatsoever.

The growth imperative is very deeply rooted. It provides the basis for existential meaning. Reflect on the applicability of Daniel Bell's now decades old rhetorical question in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976, pp. 237–238):

Economic growth has become the secular religion of advancing industrial societies: the source of individual motivation, the basis of political solidarity, the ground for the mobilization of society for a common purpose … If there is no commitment to economic growth, what can the Soviet Union—or Japan, or the United States—hold out as a social goal for its people?

Just thinking about degrowth frightens a lot of people because what they hear is that they are going to be poorer tomorrow than they are today. It does not mean that. To grasp what it does mean it is necessary to approach it with a decidedly and consciously a-growth orientation. To give The Case for Degrowth a fair hearing that must be in every reader's mind.

From the three preceding books we see how the relentless pursuit of economic growth benefits the few—and increasingly the fewer—and that it demands monstrous social and ecological sacrifice. In the eyes of Kallis and his co-authors, degrowth presents a viable alternative. In an understatement of gargantuan proportions, Kallis writes, “An organized transition to degrowth will be politically difficult” (p. xvi). But degrowth may be easier, or no more difficult, than attempting to reinstate, or to instate for the first time, the free-market economy of image and myth. It is time to face up to the political facts.

Making the case for degrowth requires exposing problems with growth, something proponents of growth typically ignore, brush aside, or deny. That is the theme of the second chapter. For example, they provide an alternative interpretation of the 2008–2010 financial crisis (pp. 28–34):

Onerous debt, forced austerity, and wild inflation in food and housing markets are all portrayed as maladies to be cured by growth. We argue, to the contrary, that these are all consequences of policies intended to stimulate growth. (p. 34)

Building the case for degrowth also required learning from people who embody and perform everyday life in the spirit, if not in the name, of degrowth. That is the task of the third chapter: “Making Changes on the Ground”. It is giving voice to the admonition that what already exists is possible. They do not ignore potential problems. They include a discussion of the limits and doubts about small, or at least smaller, communities: “temptations to romanticize communities and idealize social movements should not blind us to instances in which community-driven action is exclusionary toward outsiders and tyrannical toward its members” (p. 61). To acknowledge that should not blind us to the fact that those are roads we are traveling today.

The fourth chapter outlines five path-breaking policy packages, reforms like Universal Basic Services, Universal Basic Income, the reduction in working hours, community currencies, and dual currencies. In the realm of public finance, we should “stop taxing what sustains societies (people's work), and … tax what destroys societies (pollution and inequality)” (p. 79). Implementing any or all of these is a tall order.

That is the subject of the fifth chapter—getting from here to there. The ending of growth will pose problems too, and

fear of various forms of economic, social, and political disorder that may erupt in the absence of growth is one of the biggest deterrents for citizens and politicians who are otherwise sympathetic to the values and proposals advanced here.

Degrowth is not a stand-alone movement. One of the strategies outlined in the fifth chapter involves building alliances and interconnections with other social movements and alternative economic visions that already exist (Balch 2013; Kothari et al. 2015). All share a common opposition to the belief that economic productivity and growth is the purpose of human life, organization, and civilization. This includes opposition to the current form of sustainable development as it is rooted in mainstream development ideas that aim to increase capitalist growth and consumption (Latouche 2004; Lorek et al. 2013).

An unnumbered chapter, titled “Frequently Asked Questions,” concludes this little book. It presents 23 frequently asked questions about degrowth and their answers to them.

Summary

All four books argue, in one way or another, that an economic transformation of some sort, perhaps even a great transformation, will be necessary to stave off disaster. Case and Deaton write that it is sometimes difficult to be optimistic (p. 14), citing Walter Scheidel (2017), an historian that has argued that inequality, once established, is only overcome by violent ruptures. While this is too pessimistic for Case and Deaton, they did acknowledge “it is hard to see today's levels of inequality lessening without reforms of the processes and institution that produced them” (p. 14). Nonetheless, there are reasons for optimism. They choose to be optimistic.

Reich doesn’t discuss revolution or extreme violence in The System, but in an interview with Molly Wood of the Commonwealth Club of California (Wood 2020) he does say that change must come. He then says,

If I were not so optimistic, I would say we are doomed, that the only way we actually change the system and the power structure embedded in that system is through some sort of mass uprising revolution … I don’t think mass uprising revolution is necessary and I’m afraid of it to be candid. Historically revolutions can go in any direction. They are impossible to control.

I don’t recall anything about the danger of mass uprisings, revolution, or extreme violence in Angrynomics, but it is easy to see how, if we don’t pay attention to the anger in the system, clash will be inevitable. As Don Lemon said on his CNN show On October 25, 2021, “It seems like America is angrier than ever,” and the conservative George Will recently said that that what he sees is “98 percent anger, unfocused furiousness” (Will 2021). That is, perhaps, the worst kind: unfocused and furious anger. Consider Ray Dalio's recent remark in The Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail (2021, p. 482). ⁵ “While I think that the odds of the US devolving into a [civil-war-type] dynamic within the next ten years are only around 30 percent, that is a dangerously high risk that must be protected against and watched closely … ”

All four books agree that a transition is coming, some sort of transition. In the words of Kallis et al., “We would like to see societies become slower by design, not disaster” (p. ix). They then pointed out that the unplanned Great Depression “led to Roosevelt's New Deal, and also to Hitler's Third Reich” (p. ix).

Hope, optimism, wishful thinking, and attentive watching will not suffice. Macromarketers must roll up their sleeves, put on their thinking caps, and get involved. But what to do?

What can macromarketers do?

As was pointed out above, Reich suggested that there is a vocabulary problem, one that needs to be addressed. Perhaps marketers and macromarketers have a vocabulary problem, too. If we continue to grasp and understand that marketing is about the market (which is easy to do, it is part of our name) and if we continue to understand marketing systems as “the networked structures and the assortments generated that emerge from voluntary exchanges between sellers and buyers” (Layton 2009, p. 415), we miss an incredible amount of what happens off stage and behind the scenes that predetermine those so-called “voluntary exchanges between sellers and buyers.” If we only watch what the actors on stage are doing and think that is all there is to macromarketing (and marketing more generally), we miss the role and the impact of the director, the producer, and others that predetermine what the actors do. Much is concealed by the rhetoric of the market, marketing, marketing system, and macromarketing (Benton 1987, 2011).

As macromarketers we must strive to investigate the big picture. We should take our eyes off the stage, off the actors, and focus on the director and the producer. Nothing ever comes from nothing, so we ought to reengage with our historical past for a philosophical footing (Jones and Tadajewski; Benton 2018). I propose we remove the market blinkers and engage in political macromarketing.

We can also reflect on what the marketing professional and consultant Victor Lebow had to say half a century ago. Much like Case and Deaton, Reich, Lonergan and Bly, and Kallis et al., he was attuned to how the modern economy, the one that really exists, is not the one of thought and myth. Hence, the poignant title of his much-overlooked book, “Free Enterprise”: The Opium of the American People. That in the title of the book the words “Free Enterprise” are in quotes reflects that he was writing about so-called free enterprise. In this short book, and one that has been much overlooked (Benton 2020), he was describing the economy as it really functions, how corporate enterprise, its satellites and surrogates constitute a system of power that, together, “determine the character, values, goals, and priorities of this society” (Lebow, p. 85). It is on this system of power a political macromarketing would focus.

How to proceed? First, we might adopt a sociological approach rather than an economic approach. “Economics,” the Harvard economist James Duesenberry once remarked, “is all about how people make choices. Sociology is all about why they don’t have any choices to make” (Duesenberry 1960, p. 233; for example, Schmookler 1993). It isn’t that people don’t make choices. They do. But their choices are always constrained choices. It is time macromarketers concentrated on the constraints and constrainers, rather than the choices, on the producers and directors rather than the actors.

Is there a happy ending to this saga? Economically, the authors of the four books here discussed do not see one unless and until the business system (as Lebow phrased it) is exposed for and accepted for what it is—a rigged system. It might not be, to mimic James Carvels quip, “the economy, stupid,” but rather, “the political system, stupid.” If we learned anything from these books, nothing will happen economically until we get the politics in order. Is there any hope that the political system of the United States, and much of the world, is salvageable? We must, as Case and Deaton do, choose to be optimistic. Optimism is not enough, however. We must also get involved; we must get busy! There is a lot that can be done because there is a lot already happening.

Consider the Listen First Project (Listen First, n.d.), a movement to heal America by bridging divides by providing a format where people can sit down and listen to those with whom they might otherwise disagree and may even demonize. The intent is to neutralize the toxic polarization that threatens families, communities, and the country. “The American experiment,” the website states, “will not survive unless we reverse this trend.” This is institutionalizing Lonergan and Blyth's assertion, “to harness moral outrage … we should be forced to listen to those that have been ignored” (p. 161). They do have genuine grievances. As Lonergan and Blyth put it, tribal rage “is dangerous and it challenges the values upon which humanity rests” (p. 161). It must be quelled. The Listen First Project provides a framework, albeit voluntary and not forced, by which people can listen, really listen, to those they might otherwise grumble, gripe, and grouse about.

Also consider Adam Kizinger's recently launched Country First (n.d.). Kizinger is one of two Republican members of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack (House Committee, n.d.). Country First is also dedicated “to defeating the Toxic Tribalism tearing our families, friendships, and country apart.” The webpage continues, “The extremes are holding us hostage. Reasonable people of goodwill must band together to put Country over Party.” In this Country First is much like Listen First.

In addition to defeating toxic tribalism, Country First will also work on voting rights, election integrity, reform of our primary election system (presently only the most partisan and dogmatic candidates prevail), ending partisan gerrymandering (where politicians choose their voters rather than voters choosing their representatives), and other initiatives intended to fix our political system. Our American political system, much like the economic system, is broken. To fix either, we must begin with understanding how both really work.

If we are serious about saving American democracy, the voting system might be the key. Here, in addition to Kizinger's Country First initiative, the management expert, authority, and pundit Michael E. Porter and Katherine M. Gehl (founder to The Institute for Political Innovation) tackle our dysfunctional electoral system, including the primary system (Gehl and Porter 2020a, 2020b). What they suggest warrants consideration, as does Philip Kotler's foray into politics (2016).

Once work has begun on fixing the political system we can then turn to the economic system (for example, Kotler 2015) and consider real alternatives, real institutional change along the lines of Lonergan and Blyth, of Kallis et al., and others (for example, Bollier 2020, Kothari et al. 2019, Speth and Courrier 2021), all of which have macromarketing implications. Whatever we do we cannot wallow about in the swamp of wishful thinking. It is wishful thinking to expect that somehow the free market economy of lore, myth, and model will miraculously (re)emerge if enough transparency lets enough light through, ala Case and Deaton. It is wishful thinking to believe that the oligarchy can be pleaded with, badgered, or cajoled into doing their moral duty, ala Reich.

Is there hope? Yes, but hope, by itself, is not enough. Action and involvement by those who remain on the sidelines listening to the chaos, cacophony, and clamor will be necessary. It can’t be left to the tribalists on either side to agitate and make noise. Energy always resides with the angry. Those who are morally, and legitimately, angry and are of goodwill—those that have traditionally not expressed their opinions and anger publicly—must get involved, too. They can do so by listening first and placing country first. There will be opposition, even from some of our colleagues. As Lewis Mumford reminded us, however, “A certain amount of opposition is a great help … Kites rise against, not with, the wind.”