The new economy (whose mascot is the Internet) provides much better information and more easily obtained choices than ever before. Accordingly, consumers have great choices and sellers must apply tremendous effort to compete successfully. Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. The consumers are also sellers of their own talents as employees/contract workers and therefore must work equally hard to compete in the employment market of the new economy. The result is greater disparity between the rich and poor and a type of social sorting and segregation which separates the "haves" from the "have-nots" rather effectively and efficiently.

The last section, entitled "Choices," reviews personal and public choices we all can make. Personal choices pertain to determining what's really important to each of us. Here, Reich shows that he really is an economist and not a spiritual guru, but I still appreciate his perspective. Our personal choices are heavily influenced by incentives in our economic system -- pushing people to sacrifice family, friends, and fun (the very essence of life, in my opinion) for pecuniary gain. Public choices pertain to altering those incentives in our economic system. I'm almost finished reading his section on public choices. I suspect it's all coming down to awareness by the electorate of the consequences (intended/unintended/short-term/long-term) of our political decisions in the near future. Scary....

Highly recommended.