One Day I’ll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America [Audiobook]

English | ASIN: B0CSH3323T | 2024 | 8 hours and 5 minutes | M4B@64 kbps | 231 MB

What makes the dream of self-employment so alluring, so pervasive in today’s world Benjamin C. Waterhouse offers a provocative argument: the modern cult of the hustle is a direct consequence of economic failuresbad jobs, stagnant wages, and inequalitysince the 1970s. With original research, Waterhouse traces a new narrative history of business in America, populated with vivid charactersfrom the activists, academics, and work-from-home gurus who hailed business ownership as our economic salvation to the upstarts who took the plunge. Some flourish; some squeak by.
Some fail. As Waterhouse shows, the go-it-alone movement that began in the 1970s laid the political and cultural groundwork for today’s gig economy and its ethos: everyone should be their own boss. While some people find success in that world, countless others are left bouncing from gig to gig-exploited, underpaid, or conned by get-rich-quick scams. And our politics doesn’t know how to respond. Accessible, fast-paced, and eye-opening, One Day I’ll Work for Myself offers a fresh, insightful cultural history of the US economy from the perspective of the people within it, asking urgent questions about why we’re clinging to old strategies for progressand at what cost.