Book Audits

SUPPLY-SIDE SLEEPER

At first glance, Supply-Side Economics: A Critical Appraisal (University Publications of America; 488 pages; $27.50) seems arcane and forbidding. But look again. As edited by Richard Fink of George Mason University in Virginia, this new collection of essays by 25 economic experts turns out to be a lively debate on supply-side theory and on its application in Ronald Reagan's Washington.

These ruminations are not marked by an excess of politesse. Nobel Laureate James Tobin, for example, has some scorching opinions about the current Administration. Reaganomics, Tobin declares, has little to do with supply-side theory or any other coherent system. Instead, it is a hodgepodge of measures designed to shift resources from the public to the private sector, and from the poor to the rich, without careful regard for the effect on G.N.P. Says Tobin: "The program will not fulfill the promises that have led the country to support it."

Another chapter, on the Laffer curve, features Arthur Laffer defending his famous doodle, and David Henderson, senior staff economist for the Council of Economic Advisers, concluding that any case for tax cuts based on that model "is a castle made of sand." Whoever is right, the arguments are worth reading.

COMBAT ZONES

Paul Solman and Thomas Friedman started out in business as editors of Boston's now defunct counterculture weekly, the Real Paper. There they learned, the hard way, their first lesson in management: somebody has to be in charge. They are not so naive any more. In Life and Death on the Corporate Battlefield (Simon & Schuster; 248 pages; $13.95), the two examine competition in American business. The rise and fall of the Real Paper is but one of the case histories that they crack open to extract the techniques of corporate survival.

The authors make no attempt here to pass judgment on American-style capitalism, or to find perfect corporate strategies. Their concern is the uncertainty of the market place, and how businessmen cope with it.

The uneven quality of the writing, which sometimes reads like a TV show without the pictures, is more than compensated for by the conclusions reached. We may think of ourselves as a society of entrepreneurs, for instance, but the risk takers, according to this battlefield survey, are often among the bodies left behind. As one financial expert interviewed by the authors put it, "Gold rushes finish ugly." Even so, in a business environment where the average corporation survives just six years, little companies with wit and guts can still occasionally outmaneuver corporate goliaths. Stories of a few that have provide some of the most entertaining and enlightening moments here.

BLEAK HOUSE

Until now, the Japanese industrial rise has been depicted largely in terms of a work force that labors with an almost cultish devotion to the common economic good. That was before a Japanese journalist named Satoshi Kamata went to work on a Toyota assembly line and kept a diary. The brutal conditions he describes in Japan in the Passing Lane (Pantheon; 211 pages; $14.95) seem like something from a Charles Dickens novel.

At Kamata's plant, the employees saw a certain irony in the company motto, "Toyota: Cars to Love." Instead of a benevolent management philosophy, the author found complete disregard for the mental or physical health of workers. Scheduled days off were routinely canceled to keep up with production quotas; equipment was outmoded and unsafe. Though industrial accidents were commonplace, even the injured tended to cover them up. Reason: their pay, as well as their foreman's, was docked whenever output slowed. There was a union, but its officers were all company officials. Company security agents openly snooped around worker dormitories; one even appeared at Kamata's bedside one night to inquire about another employee who was late for his shift. Not surprisingly, Kamata was careful to keep his diaries concealed.

Thanks to Kamata's skills as a reporter, Japan in the Passing Lane survives his occasionally excessive commentaries on dehumanization in the technological age. His stark anecdotes need no overblown interpretation. On their own, they are a powerful indictment of the conditions that he discovered. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.