How Good We Can be: Ending the Mercenary Society and Building a Great Country

Britain is beset by a crisis of purpose. For a generation we have been told the route to universal well-being is to abandon the expense of justice and equity and so allow the judgments of the market to go unobstructed. What has been created is not an innovative, productive economy but instead a capitalism that extracts value rather than creates it, massive inequality, shrinking opportunity and a society organised to benefit the top 1%. The capacity to create new jobs and start-ups should not disguise that in the main the new world is one of throw away people working in throw away companies. The British are at a loss. The warnings of The State We're In have been amply justified. Will Hutton observes that the trends that so disturbed him twenty years ago have become more marked. Rather than take refuge in nativism and virulent euro-scepticism, Britain must recognize that its problems are largely made at home - and act to change them. With technological possibilities multiplying, a wholesale makeover of the state, business and the financial system is needed to seize the opportunities by being both fairer and more innovative. The aim must be to create an economy, society and democracy in which the mass of citizens flourish. In this compelling and vital new book Hutton spells out how.

About the Author :
Will Hutton is principal of Hertford College, Oxford and columnist for the OBSERVER, where he was editor, then editor-in-chief for four years. He began his career in journalism as economics correspondent for the BBC's NEWSNIGHT and for the GUARDIAN.

Review :
A magnificent survey of a post-Thatcherite wasteland of financial gluttony, where shareholder value is worshipped above all else, public goods are squandered and inequality widens. Crucially, Hutton offers some richly innovative alternatives. His analysis burns with reasonable anger and brilliant hope -- Ian McEwan Will Hutton finds his clearest voice yet. The cities of London and Westminster should read and find a long lost humility. Everyone else may find hope -- Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty Sweeps you off your feet with its hard-headed optimism, a vision of capitalism working for the many -- Avner Offer, Chichele Professor Emeritus of Economic History at Oxford, and Fellow of All Souls College Policymakers are searching for a big idea to wake the economy from its slumber, to shake it from its stagnation. We are in luck. Will Hutton has found one -- Andy Haldane, Chief Economist of the Bank of England Hutton is as persuasive, and as furious, as ever. He is angry, and it is hard not to be angry along with him Times Higher Education Supplement When the British left is so bereft of vision and so tentative about the modest ideas it does have, Hutton comes as a breath of fresh air ... Hutton predicts a glorious future Guardian [Hutton] writes with passion, controlled anger, and a good deal of evidence about the ills that beset British society in the second decade of this century Lancet What New Labour lacked wasn't heart, it was ideas - and if the party is to win power again, it's going to need to listen to people like Will Hutton Independent on Sunday [A] magisterial tour of the dislocation of Britain -- John Kampfner Observer