San Antonio College Library

"The U.S. labor market is the most laissez faire of any developed nation, with a weak social safety net and little government regulation compared to Europe or Japan. Some economists point to this hands-off approach as the source of America's low unemployment and high per-capita income. But the stagnant living standards and rising economic insecurity many Americans now face take some of the luster off the U.S. model. In America Works, economist Richard...

"For decades, the idea that more education will lead to greater individual and national prosperity has been a cornerstone of developed economies. Indeed, it is almost universally believed that college diplomas give Americans and Europeans a competitive advantage in the global knowledge wars." Challenging this conventional wisdom, The Global Auction forces us to reconsider our deeply held and mistaken views about how the global economy really works...

"Work Scared draws on nearly twenty-five thousand interviews with employed and unemployed Americans conducted from 1998 to 2012. These voices of American workers tell a compelling story about wrenching structural changes and recessions during one of the most volatile periods in U.S. economic history. This book represents one of the most comprehensive social science research portraits of the views of American workers about their jobs, the workplace,...

"What does it mean to work in the forgotten America where millions toil in the shadow of prosperity? What is the daily reality of life for a factory worker or field hand? To find out, award-winning journalist Gabriel Thompson spent a year working alongside America's invisible poor--citizens and immigrants alike--all of whom endure backbreaking work, miniscule wages, and nonexistent benefits in their struggle to make ends meet"--Page 2 of cover.

Illusions of Opportunity presents the first comprehensive measure of ideal against reality, calculating exactly how much opportunity is available relative to the number of American households reliant on it. Even thirty years ago, this measure reveals, opportunity in America was already drying up - to the point that, today, we have a deficit of sixteen million adequate jobs, and nearly a quarter of American families can't find the work they need to...

"Major subsidies and regulations intended to help the poor and unemployed were changed in more than a dozen ways after 2007. Economist Casey B. Mulligan argues that many of these changes were reasonable reactions to economic events, with the intention of helping people endure the recession, but they also reduced incentives for people to work and businesses to hire. He measures the startling changes in implicit tax rates that resulted from a labyrinth...

This program examines the pros and cons of white-collar outsourcing, highlighting emotional and ideological divisions on the topic. It also studies real-life examples of outsourcing in action. An in-depth look at India's booming call center industry illustrates the extent to which American business relies on overseas labor, while commentary from economists and policy makers explores the effect of outsourcing on America's middle class.