A review by alexisrt
Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope by Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl Wudunn

4.0

This is a whistle stop tour of what's ailing america, especially the working class. A lot of it is familiar if you read Kristof's columns in the NYT (I picked up the book from the library after reading an excerpt in the Times). Kristof looks in particular at the Oregon town of his childhood, but highlights examples from throughout the country. It's not spectacularly deep--and can't be, with covering so many things in 300 pages--but it hits a lot of points: healthcare, education, jobs, incarceration--and successfully makes the point that we have built this with failed policy and incentives. Voters overrate moral hazard when it comes to the poor, but underrate it for the rich. They are willing to help individuals, but see the poor en masse as willing to cheat (sometimes based on experiences with family). "Personal responsibility" is presented as overriding, and liberals occasionally fall into the trap by de-emphasizing people's decisions to the point where it seems like they're characterizing the poor as solely hapless victims of fate--a characterization that the poor themselves reject. Kristof and WuDunn are careful to show that choices matter, but that luck and birth are major factors in outcomes. As they say, when there's a 20 year difference in life expectancy based solely on place of birth, we can't pin that on choices.