Fixing Capitalism
Saving Capitalism
Robert Reich20164.6 stars/275 reviews15 copies
America was once celebrated for and defined by its large and prosperous middle class. Now, this middle class is shrinking, a new oligarchy is rising, and the country faces its greatest wealth disparity in eighty years. Why is the economic system that made America strong suddenly failing us, and how can it be fixed? Leading political economist and bestselling author Robert B. Reich presents a paradigm-shifting, clear-eyed examination of a political and economic status quo that no longer serves the people, exposing one of the most pernicious obstructions to progress today: the enduring myth of the “free market” when, behind the curtain, it is the powerful alliances between Washington and Wall Street that control the invisible hand. Laying to rest the specious dichotomy between a free market and “big government,” Reich shows that the truly critical choice ahead is between a market organized for broad-based prosperity and one designed to deliver ever more gains to the top. Visionary and acute, Saving Capitalism illuminates the path toward restoring America’s fundamental promise of opportunity and advancement.
The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism
ArunSundararajan20164.6 stars/27 reviewsnot yet in the library
Sharing isn't new. Giving someone a ride, having a guest in your spare room, running errands for someone, participating in a supper club -- these are not revolutionary concepts. What is new, in the "sharing economy," is that you are not helping a friend for free; you are providing these services to a stranger for money. In this book, ArunSundararajan, an expert on the sharing economy, explains the transition to what he describes as "crowd-based capitalism" -- a new way of organizing economic activity that may supplant the traditional corporate-centered model. As peer-to-peer commercial exchange blurs the lines between the personal and the professional, how will the economy, government regulation, what it means to have a job, and our social fabric be affected? Drawing on extensive research and numerous real-world examples -- including Airbnb, Lyft, Uber, Etsy, TaskRabbit, France's BlaBlaCar, China's DidiKuaidi, and India's Ola, Sundararajan explains the basics of crowd-based capitalism. He describes the intriguing mix of "gift" and "market" in its transactions, demystifies emerging blockchain technologies, and clarifies the dizzying array of emerging on-demand platforms. He considers how this new paradigm changes economic growth and the future of work. Will we live in a world of empowered entrepreneurs who enjoy professional flexibility and independence? Or will we become disenfranchised digital laborers scurrying between platforms in search of the next wedge of piecework? Sundararajan highlights the important policy choices and suggests possible new directions for self-regulatory organizations, labor law, and funding our social safety net.
Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity
Joseph Stiglitz20164.3 stars/26 reviews5 copies in the library
It’s time to rewrite the rules―to curb the runaway flow of wealth to the top one percent, to restore security and opportunity for the middle class, and to foster stronger growth rooted in broadly shared prosperity.Inequality is a choice.The United States bills itself as the land of opportunity, a place where anyone can achieve success and a better life through hard work and determination. But the facts tell a different story―the U.S. today lags behind most other developed nations in measures of inequality and economic mobility. For decades, wages have stagnated for the majority of workers while economic gains have disproportionately gone to the top one percent. Education, housing, and health care―essential ingredients for individual success―are growing ever more expensive. Deeply rooted structural discrimination continues to hold down women and people of color, and more than one-fifth of all American children now live in poverty. These trends are on track to become even worse in the future.Some economists claim that today’s bleak conditions are inevitable consequences of market outcomes, globalization, and technological progress. If we want greater equality, they argue, we have to sacrifice growth. This is simply not true. American inequality is the result of misguided structural rules that actually constrict economic growth. We have stripped away worker protections and family support systems, created a tax system that rewards short-term gains over long-term investment, offered a de facto public safety net to too-big-to-fail financial institutions, and chosen monetary and fiscal policies that promote wealth over full employment.
Beyond Outrage: What Has Gone Wrong With Our Economy and Our Democracy, How to Fix It
Robert Reich20124.5 stars/348 reviews3 copies in the library
America’s economy and democracy are working for the benefit of an ever-fewer privileged and powerful people. But rather than just complain about it or give up on the system, we must join together and make it work for all of us. In this timely book, Robert B. Reich argues that nothing good happens in Washington unless citizens are energized and organized to make sure Washington acts in the public good. The first step is to see the big picture. Beyond Outrage connects the dots, showing why the increasing share of income and wealth going to the top has hobbled jobs and growth for everyone else, undermining our democracy; caused Americans to become increasingly cynical about public life; and turned many Americans against one another. He also explains why the proposals of the “regressive right” are dead wrong and provides a clear roadmap of what must be done instead.
Democracy at Work: A Cure of Capitalism
Richard Wolff20124.3 stars/123 reviews6 copies in the library
Reviewer: Simply and intelligently written, Richard Wolff plots a way out of our economic malaise by centering on Worker Self-Directed Enterprises (WSDEs). He contends there is no denying that the world-wide recession we face demonstrates the failure of capitalism as a system of production. The New Deal attempts to "fix" and tame capitalism in the 1930s have failed. Capitalists will always have the ability to defeat any attempt to control or limit its predatory reach. It is time to look for a better alternative. As Marx and many others have taught, work is central to our lives. Separating workers from the products of their labor is deeply alienating and vastly dysfunctional for both the individual and society. The author shows how both capitalism and state socialism have failed by failing to observe Marx's central teaching on the surpluses created in production. Under capitalism, those surpluses are appropriated and distributed by capitalists, people who do not produce them. The socialist experiments in USSR and China also failed for the same reason. While they nationalized industries and used central planning, they failed to engage the workers in the in the appropriation and distribution of their surpluses. It was a form of state capitalism, in which the surpluses of production were appropriated and distributed by party officials and other apparatchiks of government. This led to precisely the same dissatisfaction and inequalities experienced by workers in capitalist societies. Wolff's solution is found in the workers' appropriating and distributing the surpluses they have created.
The Reckoning: Debt, Democracy, and the Future of American Power
Michael Moran20124.5 stars/10 reviews2 copies in the library
The age of American global dominance is ending. In recent years, risky economic and foreign policies have steadily eroded the power structure in place since the Cold War. And now, staggering under a huge burden of debt, the country must make some tough choices--or watch its creditors walk away. In The Reckoning, Michael Moran, longtime foreign policy journalist and geostrategy analyst at Renaissance Capital, Roubini Global Economics, the Council on Foreign Relations, and other leading institutions, explores how a variety of forces are converging to challenge U.S. leadership--including unprecedented information technologies, the growing prosperity of countries like China, India, Brazil, and Turkey, and the diminished importance of Wall Street in the face of global markets. This shift will have serious consequences for the wider world as well. Countries that have traditionally depended on the United States for protection will have to adjust their policies to reality. Each nation will be responsible for its own human rights record, energy production, and environmental policy, and revolutions will succeed or fail unaided. Moran describes how, with a bit of political leadership, America can transition to this new world order gracefully--by managing entitlements, reigniting sustainable growth, reforming immigration policy, and breaking the poisonous deadlock in Washington. If not, he warns, the new era will arrive on its own terms and provide a nasty shock to those clinging to the 20th century.
Capitalism's Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown
Richard D Wolff20164.3 stars/6 reviewsnot yet in the library
While most mainstream commentators view the crisis that provoked the Great Recession as having passed, these essays from Richard Wolff paint a far less rosy picture. Drawing attention to the extreme downturn in most of capitalism's old centers, the unequal growth in its new centers, and the resurgence of a global speculative bubble, Wolff—in his uniquely accessible style—makes the case that the crisis should be grasped not as a passing moment, but as an evolving stage in capitalism's history.
Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business
RanaForoohar20164.2 stars/124 reviews4 copies in the library
Eight years on from the biggest market meltdown since the Great Depression, the key lessons of the crisis of 2008 still remain unlearned—and our financial system is just as vulnerable as ever. Many of us know that our government failed to fix the banking system after the subprime mortgage crisis. But what few of us realize is how the misguided financial practices and philosophies that nearly toppled the global financial system have come to infiltrate ALL American businesses, putting us on a collision course for another cataclysmic meltdown. Drawing on in-depth reporting and exclusive interviews at the highest rungs of Wall Street and Washington, Time assistant managing editor and economic columnist RanaForoohar shows how the “financialization of America” - the trend by which finance and its way of thinking have come to reign supreme - is perpetuating Wall Street's reign over Main Street, widening the gap between rich and poor, and threatening the future of the American Dream.
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
Acemoglu and Robinson20134.2 stars/711 reviews6 copies in the library
Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? DaronAcemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories.
The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government
Mike Lofgren20164.1 stars/71 reviews1 copy in the library
Every Four years, tempers are tested and marriages fray as Americans head to the polls to cast their votes. But does anyone really care what we think? Has our vaunted political system become one big, expensive, painfully scriped reality TV show? In this cringe-inducing expose of the sins and excesses of Beltwayland, a longtime Republican party insider argues that we have become an oligarchy in form if not in name. Hooked on war, genuflecting to big donors, in thrall to discredited economic theories and utterly bereft of a moral compass, America’s governing classes are selling their souls to entrenched interest while our bridges collapse, wages, stagnate, and our water is increasingly undrinkable. Drawing on insights gleaned over three decades on Capitol Hill, much of it on the Budget Committee, Lofgren paints a gripping portrait of the dismal swamp on the Potomac and the revolution it will take to reclaim our government and set us back on course.
The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Net Collapse
Mohammed A El-Erian20163.7 stars/121 reviews7 copies in the library
Dr. Mohamed A. El-Erian, one of the world’s most influential economic thinkers and theauthor of When Markets Collide, has written a roadmap to what lies ahead and the decisions we must make now to stave off the next global economic and financial crisis. Our current economic path is coming to an end. The signposts are all around us: sluggish growth, rising inequality, stubbornly high pockets of unemployment, and jittery financial markets, to name a few. Soon we will reach a fork in the road: One path leads to renewed growth, prosperity, and financial stability, the other to recession and market disorder. In The Only Game in Town, El-Erian casts his gaze toward the future of the global economy and markets, outlining the choiceswe face both individually and collectively in an era of economic uncertainty and financial insecurity. Beginning with their response to the 2008 global crisis, El-Erian explains how and why our central banks became the critical policy actors—and, most important, why they cannot continue is this role alone. They saved the financial system from collapse in 2008 and a multiyear economic depression, but lack the tools to enable a return to high inclusive growth and durable financial stability. The time has come for a policy handoff, from a prolonged period of monetary policy experimentation to a strategy that better targets what ails economies and distorts the financial sector—before we stumble into another crisis.
Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction
Barry Lynn20114.6 stars/38 reviews3 copies in library
Barry C. Lynn, one of the most original and surprising students of the American economy, paints a genuinely alarming picture: most of our public debates about globalization, competitiveness, creative destruction, and risky finance are nothing more than a cover for the widespread consolidation of power in nearly every imaginable sector of the American economy. Cornered strips the camouflage from the secret world of twenty-first-century monopolies-neofeudalist empires whose sheer size, vast resources, and immense political power enable the people who control to direct virtually every major industry in America in an increasingly authoritarian manner. Lynn reveals how these massive juggernauts, which would have been illegal just thirty years ago, came into being, how they have destroyed or devoured their competition, and how they collude with one another to maintain their power and create the illusion of open, competitive markets.
The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World
DaniRodrik20124.4 stars/46 reviews2 copies in the library
In this eloquent challenge to the reigning wisdom on globalization, DaniRodrik reminds us of the importance of the nation-state, arguing forcefully that when the social arrangements of democracies inevitably clash with the international demands of globalization, national priorities should take precedence. Combining history with insight, humor with good-natured critique, Rodrik’s case for a customizable globalization supported by a light frame of international rules shows the way to a balanced prosperity as we confront today’s global challenges in trade, finance, and labor markets.
1
29 Aug 2016