It was a breezy read.
1. The right/left thing works because it is relative. It always has. I understand why the author thought that this needed to be addressed, but it didn't. Nonetheless, it introduced the tension he was going to address.
2. The BART situation was on the surface logical, but lacked two main points:
A. The New Deal jobs that he compared the BART jobs to were designed to be labour intensive, even if pointless. At the time, it was assumed that one would gain dignity by doing work instead of taking a handout.
B. There is no real mechanism for the government to give $60,000 a year to someone forever. I would contend that this is a problem with capitalism that is not addressed in the author's proposal. He is correct in assuming that we have the resources and ability to make a society like that, but the forces of capitalism make it all but impossible.
3. The stuff about affirmative action was problematic as it assumed affirmative action was a knee-jerk emotional need from squishy people on the left. While there is that element, they're never worth precious much when it comes to the mats. It's the military and giant companies that want affirmative action
and go to the Supreme Court to ask for it.
Both the military and big companies see it in their best interests to be able to penetrate into a lot of diverse populations. They have, in their words, also found that it is helpful to have as many diverse viewpoints in the room as possible in order to evaluate effective decisions. This has nothing to do with being fair, but in their minds being efficient. And these are the conditions that always favour affirmative action cases.
In the last big one, the university's commitment to affirmative action was held up for the same reason--that the quality of education increased when people (and we can assume this means white people in this case) were exposed to other people from various different backgrounds and view points.
It is, in essence, still to service the dominant cultural apparatus, despite the fears of white people. However, this does not favour poor white people gunning for a bottom position that may otherwise be given to poor black people gunning for a bottom position. It's the same old story that's been there for hundreds of years in this respect.
Since the author doesn't really acknowledge this part of the issue, for me, it fell flat.
Alis Volat Propriis; Tiocfaidh ár lá; Proletarier Aller Länder, Vereinigt Euch!