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Book Review
Canada and the United States
| Jennifer Klein. For All these Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public-Private Welfare State. Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2004. Pp. xi, 354. $35.00.
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| In this groundbreaking book, Jennifer Klein sheds light on a deeply complex, profoundly important problem that lies at the heart of the modern American political economy. More so than citizens of other economically advanced nations, Americans depend heavily on private health insurance and pension benefits. Over the past two decades, the problems inherent in that dependency have begun to emerge with relentless ferocity. Manufacturing companies, airlines, and other major employers have begun to default on or to cut pension benefits for their retirees. Meanwhile, the costs of private workplace-based health insurance has skyrocketed, discouraging employers from hiring new full-time workers and forcing millions into the ranks of the uninsured. |
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The importance of Klein's book is twofold. On the one hand, she convincingly demonstrates that today's problems have a long history. On the other, she makes clear that today's problems were not inevitable. Rather, those problems are the product of political choices, power imbalances, and delivery models that were adopted decades ago. |
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