The New Republic, September 8, 1973
BOOKS BY POLITICIANS tend to be boring, staff-produced efforts designed to display The Boss as a thoughtful public servant. What sets Fred Harris’ apart is his unique angle of vision. He is the only major politician who says publicly and indeed vociferously that American capitalism is a shuck.
Working Papers For A New Society, Summer 1973
IT IS JUST within the realm of possibility that low-income groups, by joining with environmentalists, labor and other progressive forces, could bring about a favorable distribution of land ownership in California. The mechanism for doing this could be a state government trust fund which might be called the California Land Conservation Fund.
The New Republic, March 31, 1973
Our economy is controlled by an extremely small, largely unaccountable set of elites operating on behalf of a wealth-owning minority. To alter this pattern of ownership and control is politically unfeasible at the moment, but so are many things until enough people decide they want them.
The New Republic, March 24, 1973
UNDER the rolling plains of eastern Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas is one of the world’s last great energy reserves — nearly a trillion tons of lignite and sub-bituminous coal, about 35 billion of which are readily strippable. A good many ranchers, young people and others, however, don’t want to mine it.
The New Republic, December 1, 1972
THE FIRST thing that strikes a shopper entering a Co‑op supermarket is a feeling that the store is on his side. But cooperatives, like small farms and many other forms of independent business, have fallen victim to the mid-century dictum of expand or die.
The New Republic, October 21, 1972
WHILE a small minority of Americans siphons off more money than it knows what to do with, a fifth of our population remains perennially poor, and millions more teeter on the edge of poverty. Ever-increasing production won’t, by itself, correct this. We also need to share better.
The New Republic, September 30, 1972
WHAT IS WEALTH, who gets it, and why? More to the point, why — despite wars on poverty, progressive taxation, relatively high employment and widespread educational opportunity — does our economy so stubbornly perpetuate inequality?
The New Republic, September 2, 1972
THERE must be a broad commitment by the federal government to assist agricultural workers, rather than tax-evading doctors, to become farm owners.
The New Republic, April 29, 1972
The book’s thesis is that a political majority can be built by rallying workers, minorities and young people around a banner that reads: “Some institutions and people have too much money and power, most people have too little, and the first priority of politics must be to redress that imbalance.”
The New Republic, April 27, 1974
THE VERY RICH, as F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, are different from us. They have pelf and power, exclusive schools, luxurious watering holes and above all, an abiding interest in preserving the economic system that so generously rewards them.
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