End Unemployment Now: How To Eliminate Joblessness, Debt, and Poverty Despite Congress

Batra (economics, Southern Methodist Univ.; The New Golden Age) writes how President Barack Obama, or any American president, can radically reform the U.S. economy without the aid or obstruction of Congress. He argues that monopoly capitalism and political oligarchy have eliminated the competitive market that makes regulated capitalism so vibrant. Batra details the rise of a few giant multinationals in oil, banking, and pharmaceuticals, and their collusion with corrupted politicians to keep prices and profits high while driving down wages—he sees the widening gap between productivity gains and artificially low wages as the fundamental problem. The book then describes how the president could use executive agencies to restore competitive markets by breaking up economic cartels, using federal agencies to force oil companies, drug manufacturers, and huge banks to compete, and developing policies that support labor unions and consumers in re-creating the high tax, high growth, high wage economy of the post-World War II era.