If you believe it’s getting harder to both earn a living and produce a lifestyle, economist and former secretary of labor Robert Reich will abide by you. Americans may be earning as part of your before, but we’re paying a steep price: we’re functioning longer, seeing our families less, and our neighborhoods are fragmenting.

Using the clarity and insight that are his hallmarks, Reich delineates what success has come to mean in our time. He demonstrates that although we’ve more choices as customers, and investors, the choices themselves are undermining the rest of our lives. It is getting harder for people to be assured of what they will be generating next year, and even next month. At the same time, our society is certainly splitting into socially stratified enclaves–the wealthier walled off and gated, the poorer isolated and ignored. Even though trends he discusses are effective, they aren’t irreversible, and Reich makes provocative ideas for how we might create a far more balanced society and more satisfying lives. Some of his tips may surprise you; all should spark a healthy-and essential-national debate.