Book launch: The Ends of Freedom. Reclaiming America’s Lost Promise of Economic Rights

Register here

In this book, Paul shows how economic rights—rights to necessities like housing, employment, and health care—have been a part of the American conversation since the Revolutionary War and were a cornerstone of both the New Deal and the Civil Rights Movement. Their recuperation, he argues, would at long last make good on the promise of America’s founding documents. By drawing on FDR’s proposed Economic Bill of Rights, Paul outlines a comprehensive policy program to achieve a more capacious and enduring version of American freedom. Among the rights he enumerates are the right to a good job, the right to an education, the right to banking and financial services, and the right to a healthy environment.

Replete with discussions of some of today’s most influential policy ideas—from Medicare for All to a federal job guarantee to the Green New Deal—The Ends of Freedom is a timely and urgent call to reclaim the idea of freedom from its captors on the political right—to ground America’s next era in the country’s progressive history and carve a path toward a more economically dynamic and equitable nation.

About the speakers:

Mark Paul is Assistant Professor at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. His research and writing have appeared in the New York Times, Economist, Washington Post, Nation, American Prospect, and Financial Times, among other publications.

Dr Devika Dutt is a Lecturer in Development Economics at King's College, London. Her research is focused on the political economy of foreign exchange intervention, central bank swap agreements, the political economy of development policy (especially as it relates to international financial institutions), and macroeconomic policy in developing economies. She has worked with international policy organizations like the World Health Organization, International Labour Organization, and the International Trade Union Confederation. She is also a member of the Steering Group and a co-Founder of Diversifying and Decolonising Economics (D-Econ).

This event is co-organised by the Centre for New Economic Transitions based at UCL SSEES and the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.