Shakedown: How the New Economy Is Changing Our Lives

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

The Angus Reid Group has been surveying Canadians for 20 years. Reid
draws from that extensive data on what we think, believe, support, and
hold dear to present a picture of where we’ve been as a nation and
where we’re headed.

The future Reid sees for Canada contains a number of not-so-happy
scenarios. We are moving rapidly into an era in which our social safety
net is being destroyed and the rich are getting richer at the expense of
the workers, who see their salaries eroding and real jobs disappearing.
He reviews Canadian politics and economics since the 1960s, pointing out
the myths and values that have shaped our country. He looks at the
nature of change in Canada, from a “spend and share” to a
“sink-or-swim” mind set, and how this is setting us up for disaster
unless we put on the brakes and stop being conned by the self-serving
neoconservatives.

Reid presents the concept of “social capital” (trust, civility,
fairness), which is critical to Canada’s prosperity and to building a
way out of the “new economy” right-wing economists and big business
have created. He challenges the economists who say we need a strong
economy before we can have jobs: “the path to a strong economy is
through a great society,” and a great society is within our reach if
we respect our social capital.

Shakedown is unique among the dozens of books on the new economy of the
1990s in that it questions the inevitability of the destructive path
taken by the “jobless recovery.” While other authors attempt to sell
the new economy or at least present it as the natural outcome of new
technology and globalization, Reid isn’t buying it. His work is the
first to offer any real guidance on fighting against forces that, if
unchallenged, will kill Canada as we know it.