Glass House

“Corporate elites said they needed free-trade agreements, so they got them. Manufacturers said that they needed tax breaks and public-money incentives in order to keep their plants operating in the United States, so they got them. Banks and financiers needed looser regulations, so they got them. Employers said they needed weaker unions–or no unions at all–so they got them. Private equity firms said they needed carried interest and secrecy, so they got them. Everybody, including Lancastrians themselves, said they needed lower taxes, so they got them. What did Lancaster and a hundred other towns like it get? Job losses, slashed wages, poor civic leadership, social dysfunction, drugs.”

This is the right book for right now, America 2017, divided, angry, fearful, grossly unequal. This is the book that everyone should have been talking about last year, when instead we were reading [b:Hillbilly Elegy 27161156 Hillbilly Elegy A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis J.D. Vance http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1463569814s/27161156.jpg 47200486], a far inferior explanation of the “Trump phenomenon”, limited by the age and wisdom of its author and its inherent scope as a memoir.

Brian Alexander, native son, chronicles the history of Lancaster, OH and its once-largest employer, Anchor Hocking, maker of glassware. He begins in the 1950's: town and company are both strong, prospering in a symbiotic relationship. Lancaster is a happy place to be: kids growing up and going to state schools, pride in local sports and events, a sense of growth and moving forward. Anchor Hocking's management lives in Lancaster and is invested in the community. Globalization and macroeconomics creep up on Anchor, however, and then it's blindsided by the vulture capitalism of the 1980's, full-tilt Friedmanism, the pursuit of shareholder value above all. The company is tossed between private equity (also known as “leveraged buyout”) firms, its assets gutted, its long-term value hollowed out to provide cash flow to its managers, sitting in towers in New York City, who will rid themselves of the company after a few years. This continues up until the late present day, where Anchor's most recent owners (post-bankruptcy creditors) have finally realized their asset's latent value and are tentatively investing in growing its equity.

Through this tale he weaves this narrative with the political and social themes that recur ad nauseam in our fractured society: guns, drugs, racism, “welfare queens” and “Obama phones”, health care, joblessness, inequality and the divide between “coastal elites” and “backwards small towns”, labor unions, churches, Republicans vs. Democrats, the new service/knowledge economy, and immigration. Hanging over the narrative is the unspoken conclusion, Donald Trump's unlikely ascendancy to power, as the consequence of the last 50 years of economic and social policy.

I have rarely been sadder or more angry reading a book. Reading about the unfettered greed of the last 40 years, the total disregard for communities and human lives practiced by the private equity firms and financiers involved in gutting so many of America's legendary brands (built up over decades) in the pursuit of short-term cash flow was sickening. These financial engineers came in and said that they could find business efficiencies, when in reality they knew nothing about the business or industry. Instead, they ran the companies into the ground, saddled by massive debt.

Furthermore, the Republican Party, which is unabashedly pro-business, blamed these problems on every scapegoat in sight - immigrants, regulation, globalization, etc. And they managed to blind their constituents to the real culprit: big business, and Wall Street financial firms. Democrats are hardly immune from criticism either, but not to the same extent. The massive fraud perpetrated on the American working class in the name of economic growth has instead led to robbing small communities of all their wealth, and concentrating it in the hands of the very few. And we will be paying for it, in the form of social instability, for many decades to come.

Glass House doesn't have the smooth lyricism of “The Unwinding” but perhaps that contributes to its power. The rawness of its words, the barely-contained frustration, will cause me to remember this story for a long time. The writing suffers at points, but it isn't by any means bad. At times the author is wistful, yet avoids easy nostalgia and sentimentality. I couldn't keep all the characters straight - some of their stories were just too similar.

I would have liked to know more about the conditions that made Anchor Hocking weak leading up to the 1980's - the rise of Walmart, the fluctuations in fuel prices overseas, amongst other things - which the author glosses over in a few paragraphs. But on the whole this book is meticulously researched and reported. I'd recommend it to anyone searching for answers, who is not content with the “personal responsibility” narrative, or the “globalization” narrative, or any of the other hollow-sounding reasons why we have a country that's so messed up.

“Why didn't they just move away?” ask elites of all stripes. Woven throughout the book is a strong defense of community, of history, of ties to family, friends, acquaintances, a group of people supporting each other through good and bad times. It's hard to leave that support system behind, regardless of whether or not you can afford to. We need better answers from our economy, from our elected officials, on how to make America work for everyone in the 21st century.