The Disposable American
Publishing House: Knopf
WorkNameSort: Disposable American, The
Veteran business reporter for The New York Times Louis Uchitelle has written a quiet, thoughtful screed against the phenomenon of mass layoffs. The Disposable American is at once a narrative history of American layoffs, with profiles of workers bearing the brunt of the trend, and a broader polemic against job cuts and the politics that offer them no resistance. Uchitelle smacks down many of the big myths: that companies always come out stronger for trimming the fat; that layoffs are inevitable; that bipartisan prescriptions for ‘retrainingâ?� the downsized are even relevant. Uchitelle also makes much of the psychological damage of layoffs on breadwinners who took home not just a paycheck but an identity from their work. Much of this book brims with a nostalgia for economies of yore, mostly the 1950s and 1960s, when median incomes increased faster than in the previous 50 years. Who can blame him?
This article appears in Jun 21-27, 2006.