Dr. Makary, one of the nation's leading health care experts, travels across America and details why health care has become a bubble. Drawing from on-the-ground stories, his research, and his own experience, The Price We Pay paints a vivid picture of price-gouging, middlemen, and a series of elusive money games in need of a serious shake-up. Dr. Makary shows how so much of health care spending goes to things that have nothing to do with health and what you can do about it. Dr. Makary challenges the medical establishment to remember medicine's noble heritage of caring for people when they are vulnerable.The Price We Pay offers a roadmap for everyday Americans and business leaders to get a better deal on their health care, and profiles the disruptors who are innovating medical care. The movement to restore medicine to its mission, Makary argues, is alive and well--a mission that can rebuild the public trust and save our country from the crushing cost of health care.

    Much greater than space travel or perhaps even the next revolutionary medical breakthrough, what is at stake is the whole idea of the good life as we have known it.Immigration and inequality, globalization and technological disruption, slowing growth and accelerating climate change--these are sources of great anxiety across the world, from New Delhi and Dakar to Paris and Washington, DC. The resources to address these challenges are there--what we lack are ideas that will help us jump the wall of disagreement and distrust that divides us. If we succeed, history will remember our era with gratitude; if we fail, the potential losses are incalculable.In this revolutionary book, renowned MIT economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo take on this challenge, building on cutting-edge research in economics explained with lucidity and grace. Original, provocative, and urgent, Good Economics for Hard Times makes a persuasive case for an intelligent interventionism and a society built on compassion and respect and show how economics, when done right, can help us solve the thorniest social and political problems of the day. It is an extraordinary achievement, one that shines a light to help us appreciate and understand our precariously balanced world.

    There, the vending machines were stocked with painkillers, and the staff turnover was dizzying. In the new year, she traveled to North Carolina to work at a call center, a place where even bathroom breaks were timed to the second. And finally, Guendelsberger was hired at a San Francisco McDonald's, narrowly escaping revenge-seeking customers who pelted her with condiments.Across three jobs, and in three different parts of the country, Guendelsberger directly took part in the revolution changing the U.S. workplace. On the Clock takes us behind the scenes of the fastest-growing segment of the American workforce to understand the future of work in America--and its present. Until robots pack boxes, resolve billing issues, and make fast food, human beings supervised by AI will continue to get the job done. Guendelsberger shows us how workers went from being the most expensive element of production to the cheapest--and how low-wage jobs have been remade to serve the ideals of efficiency, at the cost of humanity.On the Clock explores the lengths that half of Americans will go to to make a living, offering not only a better understanding of the modern workplace, but also surprising solutions to make work more humane.

    In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system.Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity.Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new "participatory" socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it.

    Meanwhile, working-class Americans have been asked to pay more. The Triumph of Injustice presents a forensic investigation into this dramatic transformation, written by two economists who revolutionized the study of inequality. Eschewing anecdotes and case studies, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman offer a comprehensive view of America’s tax system, based on new statistics covering all taxes paid at all levels of government. Their conclusion? For the first time in more than a century, billionaires now pay lower tax rates than their secretaries.Blending history and cutting-edge economic analysis, and writing in lively and jargon-free prose, Saez and Zucman dissect the deliberate choices (and sins of indecision) that have brought us to today: the gradual exemption of capital owners; the surge of a new tax avoidance industry; and the spiral of tax competition among nations. With clarity and concision, they explain how America turned away from the most progressive tax system in history to embrace policies that only serve to compound the wealth of a few.But The Triumph of Injustice is much more than a laser-sharp analysis of one of the great political and intellectual failures of our time. Saez and Zucman propose a visionary, democratic, and practical reinvention of taxes, outlining reforms that can allow tax justice to triumph in today’s globalized world and democracy to prevail over concentrated wealth.A pioneering companion website allows anyone to evaluate proposals made by the authors, and to develop their own alternative tax reform at taxjusticenow.org.

    Is it magical Internet money? Where does it come from? Who controls it? Why is it important? For me, understanding all the things that come together to make Bitcoin work - the physics, math, cryptography, game theory, economics, and computer science - was a profound moment. In this book, I hope to share this knowledge with you in a very simple and easy to understand way. With nothing but a high school level math background, we will walk through inventing bitcoin, step by step.

    Acemoglu and Robinson are intellectual heavyweights of the first rank . . . erudite and fascinating' Paul Collier, Guardian, on Why Nations FailBy the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail, based on decades of research, this powerful new big-picture framework explains how some countries develop towards and provide liberty while others fall to despotism, anarchy or asphyxiating norms- and explains how liberty can thrive despite new threats.Liberty is hardly the 'natural' order of things; usually states have been either too weak to protect individuals or too strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. There is also a happy Western myth that where liberty exists, it's a steady state, arrived at by 'enlightenment'. But liberty emerges only when a delicate and incessant balance is struck between state and society - between elites and citizens. This struggle becomes self-reinforcing, inducing both state and society to develop a richer array of capacities, thus affecting the peacefulness of societies, the success of economies and how people experience their daily lives.Explaining this new framework through compelling stories from around the world, in history and from today - and through a single diagram on which the development of any state can be plotted - this masterpiece helps us understand the past and present, and analyse the future.'An intellectually rich book that develops an important thesis with verve' Martin Wolf, Financial Times, on Why Nations Fail

    Presenting the foundational ideas of the Strong Towns movement he co-founded, Charles Marohn explains why cities of all sizes continue to struggle to meet their basic needs, and reveals the new paradigm that can solve this longstanding problem.Inside, you'll learn why inducing growth and development has been the conventional response to urban financial struggles--and why it just doesn't work. New development and high-risk investing don't generate enough wealth to support itself, and cities continue to struggle. Read this book to find out how cities large and small can focus on bottom-up investments to minimize risk and maximize their ability to strengthen the community financially and improve citizens' quality of life.Develop in-depth knowledge of the underlying logic behind the "traditional" search for never-ending urban growth Learn practical solutions for ameliorating financial struggles through low-risk investment and a grassroots focus Gain insights and tools that can stop the vicious cycle of budget shortfalls and unexpected downturns Become a part of the Strong Towns revolution by shifting the focus away from top-down growth toward rebuilding American prosperity Strong Towns acknowledges that there is a problem with the American approach to growth and shows community leaders a new way forward. The Strong Towns response is a revolution in how we assemble the places we live.

    

    Christensen, the author of such business classics as The Innovator’s Dilemma and the New York Times bestseller How Will You Measure Your Life, and co-authors Efosa Ojomo and Karen Dillon reveal why so many investments in economic development fail to generate sustainable prosperity, and offers a groundbreaking solution for true and lasting change.Global poverty is one of the world’s most vexing problems. For decades, we’ve assumed smart, well-intentioned people will eventually be able to change the economic trajectory of poor countries. From education to healthcare, infrastructure to eradicating corruption, too many solutions rely on trial and error. Essentially, the plan is often to identify areas that need help, flood them with resources, and hope to see change over time.But hope is not an effective strategy.Clayton M. Christensen and his co-authors reveal a paradox at the heart of our approach to solving poverty. While noble, our current solutions are not producing consistent results, and in some cases, have exacerbated the problem. At least twenty countries that have received billions of dollars’ worth of aid are poorer now.Applying the rigorous and theory-driven analysis he is known for, Christensen suggests a better way. The right kind of innovation not only builds companies—but also builds countries. The Prosperity Paradox identifies the limits of common economic development models, which tend to be top-down efforts, and offers a new framework for economic growth based on entrepreneurship and market-creating innovation. Christensen, Ojomo, and Dillon use successful examples from America’s own economic development, including Ford, Eastman Kodak, and Singer Sewing Machines, and shows how similar models have worked in other regions such as Japan, South Korea, Nigeria, Rwanda, India, Argentina, and Mexico.The ideas in this book will help companies desperate for real, long-term growth see actual, sustainable progress where they’ve failed before. But The Prosperity Paradox is more than a business book; it is a call to action for anyone who wants a fresh take for making the world a better and more prosperous place.

    What do these people not know? Socialism has killed millions, but it’s now the ideology du jour on American college campuses and among many leftists. Reintroduced by leaders such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the ideology manifests itself in starry-eyed calls for free-spending policies like Medicare-for-all and student loan forgiveness.In The Case Against Socialism, Rand Paul outlines the history of socialism, from Stalin’s gulags to the current famine in Venezuela. He tackles common misconceptions about the “utopia” of socialist Europe. As it turns out, Scandinavian countries love capitalism as much as Americans, and have, for decades, been cutting back on the things Bernie loves the most.Socialism’s return is only possible because many Americans have forgotten the true dangers of the twentieth-century’s deadliest ideology. Paul reveals the devastating truth: for every college student sporting a Che Guevara T-shirt, there’s a Venezuelan child dying of starvation. Desperate refugees flee communist Cuba to escape oppressive censorship, rationed food and squalid hospitals, not “free” healthcare. Socialist dictatorships like the People’s Republic of China crush freedom of speech and run massive surveillance states while masquerading as enlightened modern nations. Far from providing economic freedom, socialist governments enslave their citizens. They offer illusory promises of safety and equality while restricting personal liberty, tightening state power, sapping human enterprise and making citizens dependent on the dole.If socialism takes hold in America, it will imperil the fate of the world’s freest nation, unleashing a plague of oppressive government control. The Case Against Socialism is a timely response to that threat and a call to action against the forces menacing American liberty.

    Those in favor of welcoming more immigrants often cite humanitarian reasons, while those in favor of more restrictive laws argue the need to protect native citizens.But economist Bryan Caplan adds a new, compelling perspective to the immigration debate: He argues that opening all borders could eliminate absolute poverty worldwide and usher in a booming worldwide economy—greatly benefiting humanity.With a clear and conversational tone, exhaustive research, and vibrant illustrations by Zach Weinersmith, Open Borders makes the case for unrestricted immigration easy to follow and hard to deny.

    A concentration of power, whether in the hands of a military dictator or a JP Morgan, was understood as autocratic and dangerous to individual liberty and democracy. This idea stretched back to the country’s founding. In the 1930s, people observed that the Great Depression was caused by financial concentration in the hands of a few whose misuse of their power induced a financial collapse. They drew on this tradition to craft the New Deal. In Goliath, Matt Stoller explains how authoritarianism and populism have returned to American politics for the first time in eighty years, as the outcome of the 2016 election shook our faith in democratic institutions. It has brought to the fore dangerous forces that many modern Americans never even knew existed. Today’s bitter recriminations and panic represent more than just fear of the future, they reflect a basic confusion about what is happening and the historical backstory that brought us to this moment. The true effects of populism, a shrinking middle class, and concentrated financial wealth are only just beginning to manifest themselves under the current administrations. The lessons of Stoller’s study will only grow more relevant as time passes. Building upon his viral article in The Atlantic, “How the Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul,” Stoller illustrates in rich detail how we arrived at this tenuous moment, and the steps we must take to create a new democracy.

    This is the history of how England's elite came to own our land, and an inspiring manifesto for how to open up our countryside once more. This book has been a long time coming. Since 1086, in fact. For centuries, England's elite have covered up how they got their hands on millions of acres of our land, by constructing walls, burying surveys and more recently, sheltering behind offshore shell companies. But with the dawn of digital mapping and the Freedom of Information Act, it's becoming increasingly difficult for them to hide.Trespassing through tightly-guarded country estates, ecologically ravaged grouse moors and empty Mayfair mansions, writer and activist Guy Shrubsole has used these 21st century tools to uncover a wealth of never-before-seen information about the people who own our land, to create the most comprehensive map of land ownership in England that has ever been made public.From secret military islands to tunnels deep beneath London, Shrubsole unearths truths concealed since the Domesday Book about who is really in charge of this country - at a time when Brexit is meant to be returning sovereignty to the people. Melding history, politics and polemic, he vividly demonstrates how taking control of land ownership is key to tackling everything from the housing crisis to climate change - and even halting the erosion of our very democracy.It's time to expose the truth about who owns England - and finally take back our green and pleasant land.

    Famously bipartisan, he advised presidents and Congress on health reform and originated central features of the Affordable Care Act. In Priced Out, Reinhardt offers an engaging and enlightening account of today's U.S. health care system, explaining why it costs so much more and delivers so much less than the systems of every other advanced country, why this situation is morally indefensible, and how we might improve it.The problem, Reinhardt says, is not one of economics but of social ethics. There is no American political consensus on a fundamental question other countries settled long ago: to what extent should we be our brothers' and sisters' keepers when it comes to health care? Drawing on the best evidence, he guides readers through the chaotic, secretive, and inefficient way America finances health care, and he offers a penetrating ethical analysis of recent reform proposals. At this point, he argues, the United States appears to have three stark choices: the government can make the rich help pay for the health care of the poor, ration care by income, or control costs. Reinhardt proposes an alternative path: that by age 26 all Americans must choose either to join an insurance arrangement with community-rated premiums, or take a chance on being uninsured or relying on a health insurance market that charges premiums based on health status.An incisive look at the American health care system, Priced Out dispels the confusion, ignorance, myths, and misinformation that hinder effective reform.

    From war zones, natural disasters and failed states, to aging societies and the challenges of technological advancement, every life in this book has been hit by a seismic shock, violently broken or changed in some way.People living in these odd and marginal places are ignored by number crunching economists and political pollsters alike. Science suggests this is a mistake. This book tells the personal stories of humans living in extreme situations, and of the financial infrastructure they create. Here, economies are not concerned with the familiar stock market crashes, housing crises, or banking scandals of the financial pages.In his quest for a purer view of how economies succeed and fail, Richard Davies takes the reader off the beaten path to places where part of the economy has been repressed, removed, destroyed or turbocharged. By travelling to each of them and discovering what life is really like, Extreme Economies tells small stories that shed light on today’s biggest economic questions, with vital lessons for our future.

    By lobbying against competition, the biggest firms drive profits higher while depressing wages and limiting opportunities for investment, innovation, and growth.Why are cell-phone plans so much more expensive in the United States than in Europe? It seems a simple question. But the search for an answer took Thomas Philippon on an unexpected journey through some of the most complex and hotly debated issues in modern economics. Ultimately he reached his surprising conclusion: American markets, once a model for the world, are giving up on healthy competition. Sector after economic sector is more concentrated than it was twenty years ago, dominated by fewer and bigger players who lobby politicians aggressively to protect and expand their profit margins. Across the country, this drives up prices while driving down investment, productivity, growth, and wages, resulting in more inequality. Meanwhile, Europe--long dismissed for competitive sclerosis and weak antitrust--is beating America at its own game.Philippon, one of the world's leading economists, did not expect these conclusions in the age of Silicon Valley start-ups and millennial millionaires. But the data from his cutting-edge research proved undeniable. In this compelling tale of economic detective work, we follow him as he works out the basic facts and consequences of industry concentration in the U.S. and Europe, shows how lobbying and campaign contributions have defanged antitrust regulators, and considers what all this means for free trade, technology, and innovation. For the sake of ordinary Americans, he concludes, government needs to return to what it once did best: keeping the playing field level for competition. It's time to make American markets great--and free--again.

    It clearly serves the 1% far, far better than what it is doing to the vast mass of the people.Marx was a social critic for whom capitalism was not the end of human history. It was just the latest phase and badly needed the transition to something better. We offer this essay now because of the power and usefulness today of Marx’s criticism of the capitalist economic system.

    How come the price keeps changing? Is Bitcoin a good investment? How does it even have value? Why do people keep talking about it like it’s going to change the world? The Little Bitcoin Book tells the story of what’s wrong with money today, and why Bitcoin was invented to provide an alternative to the current system. It describes in simple terms what Bitcoin is, how it works, why it’s valuable, and how it affects individual freedom and opportunities of people everywhere - from Nigeria to the Philippines to Venezuela to the United States. This book also includes a Q & A section with some of the most frequently asked questions about Bitcoin. If you want to learn more about this new form of money which continues to gain interest and adoption around the world, then this book is for you.

    Two years before the housing market collapsed in 2008, Donald Trump looked forward to a crash: “I sort of hope that happens because then people like me would go in and buy,” he said. But our future president wasn’t alone. While millions of Americans suffered financial loss, tycoons pounced to heartlessly seize thousands of homes—their profiteering made even easier because, as prize-winning investigative reporter Aaron Glantz reveals in Homewreckers, they often used taxpayer money—and the Obama administration’s promise to cover their losses.In Homewreckers, Glantz recounts the transformation of straightforward lending into a morass of slivered and combined mortgage “products” that could be bought and sold, accompanied by a shift in priorities and a loosening of regulations and laws that made it good business to lend money to those who wouldn’t be able to repay. Among the men who laughed their way to the bank: Trump cabinet members Steve Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross, Trump pal and confidant Tom Barrack, and billionaire Republican cash cow Steve Schwarzman. Homewreckers also brilliantly weaves together the stories of those most ravaged by the housing crisis. The result is an eye-opening expose of the greed that decimated millions and enriched a gluttonous few.

    Engrossing, character-driven, panoramic." --Zephyr Teachout, The New York Times Book ReviewWe live in an era of soaring corporate profits and anemic wage gains, one in which low-paid jobs and blighted blue-collar communities have become a common feature of our nation's landscape. Behind these trends lies a little-discussed problem: the decades-long decline in worker power.Award-winning journalist and author Steven Greenhouse guides us through the key episodes and trends in history that are essential to understanding some of our nation's most pressing problems, including increased income inequality, declining social mobility, and the concentration of political power in the hands of the wealthy few. He exposes the modern labor landscape with the stories of dozens of American workers, from GM employees to Uber drivers to underpaid schoolteachers. Their fight to take power back is crucial for America's future, and Greenhouse proposes concrete, feasible ways in which workers' collective power can be--and is being--rekindled and reimagined in the twenty-first century.Beaten Down, Worked Up is a stirring and essential look at labor in America, poised as it is between the tumultuous struggles of the past and the vital, hopeful struggles ahead.A PBS NewsHour Now Read This Book Club Pick

    In the four decades between 1969 and 2008, these economists played a leading role in reshaping taxation and public spending and clearing the way for globalization. They reshaped the government's approach to regulation, assigning a value to human life to determine which rules are worthwhile. Economists even convinced President Nixon to end military conscription.The United States was the epicenter of the intellectual ferment, but the embrace of markets was a global phenomenon, seizing the imagination of politicians in countries including the United Kingdom, Chile and New Zealand.This book is also a reckoning. The revolution failed to deliver on its central promise of increased prosperity. In the United States, growth has slowed in every successive decade since the 1960s. And the cost of the failure was steep. Policymakers traded well-paid jobs for low-cost electronics; the loss of work weakened the fabric of society and of democracy. Soaring inequality extends far beyond incomes: Life expectancy for less affluent Americans has declined in recent years. And the focus on efficiency has come at the expense of the future: Lower taxes instead of education and infrastructure; limited environmental regulation as oceans rise and California burns.

    We need profound, radical change. A Green New Deal can tackle the climate emergency and rampant inequality at the same time. Cutting carbon emissions while winning immediate gains for the many is the only way to build a movement strong enough to defeat big oil, big business, and the super-rich—starting right now.A Planet to Win explores the political potential and concrete first steps of a Green New Deal. It calls for dismantling the fossil fuel industry and building beautiful landscapes of renewable energy, guaranteeing climate-friendly work and no-carbon housing and free public transit. And it shows how a Green New Deal in the United States can strengthen climate justice movements worldwide. We don’t make politics under conditions of our own choosing, and no one would choose this crisis. But crises also present opportunities. We stand on the brink of disaster—but also at the cusp of wondrous, transformative change.

    But is that really true? This important book takes readers behind the closed doors of elite employers to reveal how class affects who gets to the top. Friedman and Laurison show that a powerful ‘class pay gap’ exists in Britain’s elite occupations. Even when those from working-class backgrounds make it into prestigious jobs, they earn, on average, 16% less than colleagues from privileged backgrounds. But why is this the case? . Drawing on 175 interviews across four case studies - television, accountancy, architecture, and acting – they explore the complex barriers facing the upwardly mobile. This is a rich, ambitious book that demands we take seriously not just the glass but also the class ceiling.

    For the first time in human history, the globe is dominated by one economic system. In Capitalism, Alone, leading economist Branko Milanovic explains the reasons for this decisive historical shift since the days of feudalism and, later, communism. Surveying the varieties of capitalism, he asks: What are the prospects for a fairer world now that capitalism is the only game in town? His conclusions are sobering, but not fatalistic. Capitalism gets much wrong, but also much right--and it is not going anywhere. Our task is to improve it.Milanovic argues that capitalism has triumphed because it works. It delivers prosperity and gratifies human desires for autonomy. But it comes with a moral price, pushing us to treat material success as the ultimate goal. And it offers no guarantee of stability. In the West, liberal capitalism creaks under the strains of inequality and capitalist excess. That model now fights for hearts and minds with political capitalism, exemplified by China, which many claim is more efficient, but which is more vulnerable to corruption and, when growth is slow, social unrest. As for the economic problems of the Global South, Milanovic offers a creative, if controversial, plan for large-scale migration. Looking to the future, he dismisses prophets who proclaim some single outcome to be inevitable, whether worldwide prosperity or robot-driven mass unemployment. Capitalism is a risky system. But it is a human system. Our choices, and how clearly we see them, will determine how it serves us.

    We've been told this since the beginning of civilisation. But what if we stopped to question our antiquated system? Is it fair? And is it capable of serving the needs of our rapidly-changing, modern society? In Daylight Robbery, Dominic Frisby traces the origins of taxation, from its roots in the ancient world, through to today. He explores the role of tax in the formation of our global religions, the part tax played in wars and revolutions throughout the ages, why, at one stage, we paid tax for daylight or for growing a beard. Ranging from the despotic to the absurd, the tax laws of the past reveal so much about how we got to where we are today and what we can do to build a system fit for the future.'This entertaining, surprising, contrarian book is a tour de force!' - Matt Ridley, author of The Evolution of Everything'In this spectacular gallop through history, Frisby shows how taxation has warped, stunted and thwarted human progress' - Mark Littlewood, Director General, Institute of Economic Affairs'Against all expectations, Dominic's book on tax is a real page-turner. His historical interpretation and utopian ideas will outrage Left and Right. Both should read the book' - Steve Baker, MP for Wycombe and Member of the House of Commons Treasury Committee 'Fascinating book which exposes the political and economic basis of tax. A must read for those of us who believe in simpler, lower taxes' - Rt Hon Liz Truss, MP for South West Norfolk, Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade'Both amusing and informative, it's a romp' - Bill Bonner, author of Empire of Debt

    But the full ramifications of that event are only now becoming apparent, as the Chinese economic juggernaut has evolved in unanticipated and profoundly troublesome ways. In this book, journalist Paul Blustein chronicles the contentious process resulting in China's WTO membership and the transformative changes that followed, both good and bad - for China, for its trading partners, and for the global trading system as a whole. The book recounts how China opened its markets and underwent far-reaching reforms that fuelled its economic takeoff, but then adopted policies - a cheap currency and heavy-handed state intervention - that unfairly disadvantaged foreign competitors and circumvented WTO rules. Events took a potentially catastrophic turn in 2018 with the eruption of a trade war between China and the United States, which has brought the trading system to a breaking point. Regardless of how the latest confrontation unfolds, the world will be grappling for decades with the challenges posed by China Inc." China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 was heralded as historic, and for good reason: the world's most populous nation was joining the rule-based system that has governed international commerce since World War II. But the full ramifications of that event are only now becoming apparent, as the Chinese economic juggernaut has evolved in unanticipated and profoundly troublesome ways. In this book, journalist Paul Blustein chronicles the contentious process resulting in China's WTO membership and the transformative changes that followed, both good and bad - for China, for its trading partners, and for the global trading system as a whole. The book recounts how China opened its markets and underwent far-reaching reforms that fuelled its economic takeoff, but then adopted policies - a cheap currency and heavy-handed state intervention - that unfairly disadvantaged foreign competitors and circumvented WTO rules. Events took a potentially catastrophic turn in 2018 with the eruption of a trade war between China and the United States, which has brought the trading system to a breaking point. Regardless of how the latest confrontation unfolds, the world will be grappling for decades with the challenges posed by China Inc.

    Another popular movement succeeded in establishing Canada’s public broadcasting system to counter American dominance of the airwaves. And a Canadian doctor created a publicly-owned laboratory that saved countless lives by producing affordable medications, contributing to medical breakthroughs and helping eradicate smallpox throughout the world.In recent decades, however, Canadians have allowed their inspiring public enterprises to be privatized and their vital public programs downsized, leaving them increasingly dominated by the forces of private greed that rule the marketplace.In this provocative book, Linda McQuaig challenges the dogma of privatization that has defined our political age. She argues that, particularly now as we grapple with climate change and income inequality, we need to expand, not shrink, our public sphere.

    

    No other investor--Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Ray Dalio, Steve Cohen, or George Soros--can touch his record. Since 1988, Renaissance's signature Medallion fund has generated average annual returns of 66 percent. The firm has earned profits of more than $100 billion; Simons is worth twenty-three billion dollars.Drawing on unprecedented access to Simons and dozens of current and former employees, Zuckerman, a veteran Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, tells the gripping story of how a world-class mathematician and former code breaker mastered the market. Simons pioneered a data-driven, algorithmic approach that's sweeping the world.As Renaissance became a market force, its executives began influencing the world beyond finance. Simons became a major figure in scientific research, education, and liberal politics. Senior executive Robert Mercer is more responsible than anyone else for the Trump presidency, placing Steve Bannon in the campaign and funding Trump's victorious 2016 effort. Mercer also impacted the campaign behind Brexit.The Man Who Solved the Market is a portrait of a modern-day Midas who remade markets in his own image, but failed to anticipate how his success would impact his firm and his country. It's also a story of what Simons's revolution means for the rest of us.

    The monograph vociferouslydemanded that socialism be sacrificed for a competitive market economic system, so India cangrow at 10 per cent per year, achieve self-reliance, full employment and produce nuclear weaponry.The then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi denounced the plan as dangerous.Fifty years later, Swamy redefines his path-breaking ideas on India-specific economic developmentin his seminal work, Reset. It undertakes a nuanced analysis of the manner in which the highlyprosperous Indian economy witnessed a long, accelerated decline due to persistent British imperialistaggression, and compares the distinctive manner in which Asian giants—India and China—sufferedat the hands of imperialism. He critically analyses the highs and lows of the Nehruvian model ofcentralized economic planning borrowed from the Soviet Union, and the debilitating circumstancesthat impelled him, as Commerce Minister in Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar’s government, todraw up a blueprint for economic reforms.

    We see them as truth. They're not. They're a point of view that previous generations accepted. It's time we replace them with something new.This Could Be Our Future is about how we got here, and how we change course. While the pursuit of wealth has produced innovation and prosperity, it also established an implicit belief that the right choice in every decision is whichever option makes the most money. This belief in financial maximization has produced dire consequences: environmental collapse, corruption, inequality, and a growing dissatisfaction around the world. The answer isn't to get rid of money; it's to expand our concept of value. By assigning rational value to other values besides money--things like community, purpose, and sustainability--we can refocus our energies to build a society that's generous, fair, and ready for the future. By recalibrating our definition of value, a world of scarcity can become a world of abundance.Hopeful but firmly grounded, full of concrete solutions and bursting with creativity, This Could Be Our Future brilliantly dissects the world we live in and shows us a road map to the world we are capable of making.

    The global elites are ready to protect their wealth. Are you?In Aftermath, bestselling financial expert James Rickards sketches the harrowing economic crisis that's right around the corner and identifies the asset classes that are most-and least-exposed. Provocative, stirring, and full of counterintuitive advice, Aftermath is the book every smart investor needs to get their hands on - as soon as possible.

    Then, in 2008, on the brink of collapse after lending too much money to mortgage-hungry customers, Northern Rock was saved in the largest bank bail-out in history. But why, over one hundred years later, did the Bank of England change tack and intervene?The answer is that, in the years between 1886 and 2008, the UK economy had transformed, and was now more reliant on banks than ever before -- without them, almost every area of economic activity would have ground to a halt. This signifies a fundamental change in the UK's economic model, and this fundamental change has a name: financialisation.Stolen tells the story of how and why this financialisation occurred, what it means for our society and politics, and what the left can do to fight it. At present, the odds are stacked against labour and in favour of finance capital. But what follows it will be determined by which group - the many or the few - manages to take power in this moment of crisis. How we understand this moment, and what we do with it, will determine the course of the future.

    

    As Carl Benedikt Frey shows, the Industrial Revolution created unprecedented wealth and prosperity over the long run, but the immediate consequences of mechanization were devastating for large swaths of the population. Middle-income jobs withered, wages stagnated, the labor share of income fell, profits surged, and economic inequality skyrocketed. These trends, Frey documents, broadly mirror those in our current age of automation, which began with the Computer Revolution.Just as the Industrial Revolution eventually brought about extraordinary benefits for society, artificial intelligence systems have the potential to do the same. But Frey argues that this depends on how the short term is managed. In the nineteenth century, workers violently expressed their concerns over machines taking their jobs. The Luddite uprisings joined a long wave of machinery riots that swept across Europe and China. Today’s despairing middle class has not resorted to physical force, but their frustration has led to rising populism and the increasing fragmentation of society. As middle-class jobs continue to come under pressure, there’s no assurance that positive attitudes to technology will persist.The Industrial Revolution was a defining moment in history, but few grasped its enormous consequences at the time. The Technology Trap demonstrates that in the midst of another technological revolution, the lessons of the past can help us to more effectively face the present.

    Is this phenomenon the end of neoliberalism or its monstrous offspring?In the Ruins of Neoliberalism casts the hard-right turn as animated by socioeconomically aggrieved white working- and middle-class populations but contoured by neoliberalism’s multipronged assault on democratic values. From its inception, neoliberalism flirted with authoritarian liberalism as it warred against robust democracy. It repelled social-justice claims through appeals to market freedom and morality. It sought to de-democratize the state, economy, and society and re-secure the patriarchal family. In key works of the founding neoliberal intellectuals, Wendy Brown traces the ambition to replace democratic orders with ones disciplined by markets and traditional morality and democratic states with technocratic ones.Yet plutocracy, white supremacy, politicized mass affect, indifference to truth, and extreme social disinhibition were no part of the neoliberal vision. Brown theorizes their unintentional spurring by neoliberal reason, from its attack on the value of society and its fetish of individual freedom to its legitimation of inequality. Above all, she argues, neoliberalism’s intensification of nihilism coupled with its accidental wounding of white male supremacy generates an apocalyptic populism willing to destroy the world rather than endure a future in which this supremacy disappears.

    Eugene McCarraher reveals how mammon ensnared us and how we can find a more humane, sacramental way of being in the world.If socialists and Wall Street bankers can agree on anything, it is the extreme rationalism of capital. At least since Max Weber, capitalism has been understood as part of the "disenchantment" of the world, stripping material objects and social relationships of their mystery and sacredness. Ignoring the motive force of the spirit, capitalism rejects the awe-inspiring divine for the economics of supply and demand.Eugene McCarraher challenges this conventional view. Capitalism, he argues, is full of sacrament, whether or not it is acknowledged. Capitalist enchantment first flowered in the fields and factories of England and was brought to America by Puritans and evangelicals whose doctrine made ample room for industry and profit. Later, the corporation was mystically animated with human personhood, to preside over the Fordist endeavor to build a heavenly city of mechanized production and communion. By the twenty-first century, capitalism has become thoroughly enchanted by the neoliberal deification of "the market."Informed by cultural history and theology as well as economics, management theory, and marketing, The Enchantments of Mammon looks not to Marx and progressivism but to nineteenth-century Romantics for salvation. The Romantic imagination favors craft, the commons, and sensitivity to natural wonder. It promotes labor that, for the sake of the person, combines reason, creativity, and mutual aid. In this impassioned challenge, McCarraher makes the case that capitalism has hijacked and redirected our intrinsic longing for divinity--and urges us to break its hold on our souls.

    "Richard Wolff's book is the best accessible and reliable treatment we have of what socialism is, was, and should be.” - Cornel West“In the same accessible style that has made his programs and lectures such a hit, he explains his subject in a way that's not only smart, but makes the rest of us feel smart. It's actionable intelligence for the every person.” - Laura Flanders“Lucid, brilliant and uncompromising in his dissection of the capitalist system he also provides a sane and just socialist alternative to capitalist exploitation, one we must all fight to achieve.” - Chris Hedges

    What is it, exactly, that transforms mere wealth into an asset that automatically creates more wealth? The Code of Capital explains how capital is created behind closed doors in the offices of private attorneys, and why this little-known fact is one of the biggest reasons for the widening wealth gap between the holders of capital and everybody else.In this revealing book, Katharina Pistor argues that the law selectively "codes" certain assets, endowing them with the capacity to protect and produce private wealth. With the right legal coding, any object, claim, or idea can be turned into capital-and lawyers are the keepers of the code. Pistor describes how they pick and choose among different legal systems and legal devices for the ones that best serve their clients' needs, and how techniques that were first perfected centuries ago to code landholdings as capital are being used today to code stocks, bonds, ideas, and even expectations-assets that exist only in law.A powerful new way of thinking about one of the most pernicious problems of our time, The Code of Capital explores the different ways that debt, complex financial products, and other assets are coded to give financial advantage to their holders. This provocative book paints a troubling portrait of the pervasive global nature of the code, the people who shape it, and the governments that enforce it.

    Heather Boushey, one of Washington's most influential economic voices, insists nothing could be further from the truth. Presenting cutting-edge economics with journalistic verve, she shows how rising inequality has become a drag on growth and an impediment to a competitive United States marketplace for employers and employees alike.Boushey argues that inequality undermines growth in three ways. It obstructs the supply of talent, ideas, and capital as wealthy families monopolize the best educational, social, and economic opportunities. It also subverts private competition and public investment. Powerful corporations muscle competitors out of business, in the process costing consumers, suppressing wages, and hobbling innovation, while governments underfund key public goods that make the American Dream possible, from schools to transportation infrastructure to information and communication technology networks. Finally, it distorts consumer demand as stagnant wages and meager workplace benefits rob ordinary people of buying power and pushes the economy toward financial instability.Boushey makes this case with a clear, accessible tour of the best of contemporary economic research, while also injecting a passion for her subject gained through years of research into the economics of work-life conflict and policy work in the trenches of federal government. Unbound exposes deep problems in the U.S. economy, but its conclusion is optimistic. We can preserve the best of our nation's economic and political traditions, and improve on them, by pursuing policies that reduce inequality--and by doing so, boost broadly shared economic growth.

    We also have the necessary scientific skills. Australia could be the natural home for an increasing proportion of global industry. But how do we make this happen?In this crisp, compelling book, Australia’s leading thinker about climate and energy policy offers a road map for progress, covering energy, transport, agriculture, the international scene and more. Rich in ideas and practical optimism, Superpower is a crucial, timely contribution to this country’s future.

    Yet, rather than rejecting rights, they developed a distinctive account of human rights as tools to depoliticise civil society, protect private investments and shape liberal subjects. Honing in on neoliberal political thought, Whyte shows that the neoliberals developed a stark dichotomy between politics, conceived as conflictual, coercive and violent, and civil society, which they depicted as a realm of mutually-beneficial, voluntary, market relations between individual subjects of rights. In mobilising human rights to provide a moral language for a market society, neoliberals contributed far more than is often realised to today’s politics of human rights.

    Because today millions of Americans—young and old—are flocking to the socialist banner and chanting, “What do we want? Socialism—the economic system that has impoverished people everywhere and resulted in the deaths of tens of millions! And when do we want it? Now!” Really? Most people seem somehow to have missed Economics 101 and don’t understand that socialism isn’t nice, cuddly government that takes care of everything for you so that you can remain an adolescent forever. No, we’ve seen it tried over and over again with catastrophic consequences. Luckily, two semi-sober economists have toured the socialist world so you don’t have to. And they’ve come back with this stunning report: Socialism Sucks! Along the way, you’ll learn: • Why the so-called Swedish model might be attractive, but sure isn’t socialism (Sweden is capitalism with a big welfare state) • How socialist Venezuela went from being the toast of liberals everywhere—Viva Venezuela!—to being just toast • Why you never see new cars in Cuba • Why no one forgets to turn out the lights in North Korea (hint: there aren’t any) • Why American socialists have no idea what socialism really is How hard it is to find good beer—or sometimes any beer at all—in socialist countries Irreverent but honest economists Robert Lawson and Benjamin Powell have all the data—and even more important, the firsthand global experience—to affirm that socialism fails to deliver on any of the utopian promises it makes and instead is very bad for your economic (and other) health. This is a book that every American who values freedom and sound economics (and good beer) needs to read.

    But despite being declared dead many times by the mainstream media, Bitcoin grows stronger every year. What’s going on? It’s not too late to learn about Bitcoin and invest. Bitcoin’s value has grown exponentially over multiple boom and bust cycles spanning a decade. Bitcoin is an Internet-native phenomenon like Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Microsoft, and Tencent. It therefore benefits from the “network effect” which makes it dramatically more valuable as the network grows. But its potential value is much larger than the giant Internet companies we know so well. If Bitcoin reaches that potential, its value could rise by 50 times its current price in the coming decade. This book will help you understand the role of money in our society, the current state of debt in our economy, and how Bitcoin provides a better solution.

    The book covers some of the most vital aspects of the Microsoft, from how it was formed, the Piracy Threat it is facing, How microsoft is still the leader inspite of the piracy, etc. It also discusses about its most successful product -Office 365. The book covers an indepth knowledge about the professional life of Mr. Gates, the revenues of Microsoft, how he will remain the ultimate legend in the business world and what makes him so Rich. The readers are to get acquainted with the Marketing Tactics used by Microsoft and how it fights with challenges (like piracy), its market shares and love of Mr. Gates Towards his company. 1. Read about the Rise of Microsoft 2. Professional Life of Mr. Gates 3. How Microsoft is Using Piracy to its advantage 4. Also know why other OS couldn't have such larger market scale 5. The marketing strategies used by Microsoft 6. How it was, is and will remain the legend of business world 7. Learn about the wealth of Mr. Gates and what makes him so rich, also learn why he will remain rich forever.

    How can a country that developed the most advanced socialist society in the history of the world change directions so quickly and so completely? In From Victory to Defeat Pao-yu Ching dissects this question, providing economic analysis of what it means to actually “build socialism” with all of the necessary contradictions and obstacles that must be overcome.Addressing seven commonly asked questions, Pao-yu Ching gives accesible explanations to the complicated issues China faced in its socialist transition and the material basis for its capitalist reversal.

    The probability-based approach is generally better understood by the public. It advocates using an aggressive investment portfolio with a large allocation to stocks to meet retirement goals. My earlier book How Much Can I Spend in Retirement? A Guide to Investment-Based Retirement Strategies provides an extensive investigation of probability-based approaches. But this investments-only attitude is not the optimal way to build a retirement income plan. There are pitfalls in retirement that we are less familiar with during the accumulation years. The nature of risk changes. Longevity risk is the possibility of living longer than planned, which could mean not having resources to maintain the retiree’s standard of living. And once retirement distributions begin, market downturns in the early years can disproportionately harm retirement sustainability. This is sequence-of-returns risk, and it acts to amplify the impacts of market volatility in retirement. Traditional wealth management is not equipped to handle these new risks in a fulfilling way. More assets are required to cover spending goals over a possibly costly retirement triggered by a long life and poor market returns. And yet, there is no assurance that assets will be sufficient. For retirees who are worried about outliving their wealth, probability-based strategies can become excessively conservative and stressful.This book focuses on the other option: safety-first retirement planning. Safety-first advocates support a more bifurcated approach to building retirement income plans that integrates insurance with investments, providing lifetime income protections to cover spending. With risk pooling through insurance, retirees effectively pay an insurance premium that will provide a benefit to support spending in otherwise costly retirements that could deplete an unprotected investment portfolio. Insurance companies can pool sequence and longevity risks across a large base of retirees, much like a traditional defined-benefit company pension plan or Social Security, allowing for retirement spending that is more closely aligned with averages. When bonds are replaced with insurance-based risk pooling assets, retirees can improve the odds of meeting their spending goals while also supporting more legacy at the end of life, especially in the event of a longer-than-average retirement. We walk through this thought process and logic in steps, investigating three basic ways to fund a retirement spending goal: with bonds, with a diversified investment portfolio, and with risk pooling through annuities and life insurance. We consider the potential role for different types of annuities including simple income annuities, variable annuities, and fixed index annuities. I explain how different annuities work and how readers can evaluate them. We also examine the potential for whole life insurance to contribute to a retirement income plan. When we properly consider the range of risks introduced after retirement, I conclude that the integrated strategies preferred by safety-first advocates support more efficient retirement outcomes. Safety-first retirement planning helps to meet financial goals with less worry. This book explains how to evaluate different insurance options and implement these solutions into an integrated retirement plan.

    By that standard, Milton Friedman was one of the most influential economists of all time. He revolutionized the way economists think about consumption, about money, about stabilization policy, and about unemployment. He demonstrated the power of committing oneself to a few simple assumptions about human behaviour and then relentlessly pursuing their logical implications. He developed and taught new ways of interpreting data, testing his theories by their ability to explain multiple disparate phenomena. His successes were spectacular and his techniques were widely emulated. It would take several large volumes to do justice to Friedman’s extraordinary contributions to economic theory, economic practice, economic policy, and economic literacy. Th e few brief chapters that follow will give an overview of what those volumes might contain.

    Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen attempts to build a socialist society, from the Soviet Union to Maoist China to Venezuela. All of them have ended in varying degrees of failure. But, according to socialism's adherents, that is only because none of these experiments were "real socialism". This book documents the history of this, by now, standard response. It shows how the claim of fake socialism is only ever made after the event. As long as a socialist project is in its prime, almost nobody claims that it is not real socialism. On the contrary, virtually every socialist project in history has gone through a honeymoon period, during which it was enthusiastically praised by prominent Western intellectuals. It was only when their failures became too obvious to deny that they got retroactively reclassified as "not real socialism".

    Too many investment advisors have taken the path of least resistance, not aware of the risk in systematically withdrawing from what, at times, will be a declining portfolio. Investors seeking to accumulate money for their future needs, and investors needing to withdraw money now for a present need, both have one thing in common: Dividend Growth investing represents a powerful weapon in the achievement of their objectives.  Market volatility is not something any investor can escape, but benefitting from it (for accumulators reinvesting dividends), and being insulated from it (for withdrawers taking only from a growing flow of dividend income), are achievable results for those who understand the time-tested, sustainable, intelligent strategy of investing that is Dividend Growth.

    But none has revealed just how significant a role it plays in the global economy--until now.A groundbreaking book sure to leave its mark in the canon of investing literature, The Rise of Carry explains how carry trading has virtually shaped the global economic picture--one of decaying economic growth, recurring crises, wealth disparity, and, in too many places, social and political upheaval. The authors explain how carry trades work--particularly in the currency and stock markets--and provide a compelling case for how carry trades have come to dominate the entire global business cycle. They provide thorough analyses of critical but often overlooked topics and issues, including:-The active role stock prices play in causing recessions--as opposed to the common belief that recessions cause price crashes-The real driving force behind financial asset prices-The ways that carry, volatility selling, leverage, liquidity, and profitability affect the business cycle-How positive returns to carry over time are related to market volatility--and how central bank policies have supercharged these returnsSimply put, carry trading is now the primary determinant of the global business cycle--a pattern of long, steady but unspectacular expansions punctuated by catastrophic crises.The Rise of Carry provides foundational knowledge and expert insights you need to protect yourself from what have come to be common market upheavals--as well as the next major crisis.

    It turns conventional business wisdom on its head and presents you with some radical alternatives.Since founding their companies, Naomi Ryland and Lisa Jaspers have been on the lookout for meaningful business advice. Advice that helps to build great companies but that also reflects the challenges of our times: climate change, deeply divided societies, growing inequality, and a disillusioned and burnt-out workforce. Hardly any of the advice they heard from the startup world, and read in business books, seemed up to the challenge. Most business advice is built on the paradigms of ‘growth at all costs’, competition and pressure. It felt outdated.So they went on the lookout for new ideas and new role models, choosing to focus on a group of people who have been previously underrepresented in business (literature): women.Over the last year, Naomi and Lisa have interviewed some of the most progressive female founders in the world. What they learned has radically changed how they run their own businesses, and now they want to share this vision of the future with you. Covering topics such as organisational development, leadership, recruitment, personal development, team building, innovation and fundraising, this is a hands-on business book for everybody who wants to rethink the world of work.This is a book for founders, investors, managers, business students and anybody who thinks the world of work needs a reboot. We believe that together we can start a revolution. And we hope that you will join us.

    The American economy glitters on the outside, but the reality is quite different. Job opportunities and economic growth are increasingly concentrated in a few crowded coastal enclaves. Corporations and investors are disproportionately developing technologies that benefit the wealthiest Americans in the most prosperous areas -- and destroying middle class jobs elsewhere. To turn this tide, we must look to a brilliant and all-but-forgotten American success story and embark on a plan that will create the industries of the future -- and the jobs that go with them. Beginning in 1940, massive public investment generated breakthroughs in science and technology that first helped win WWII and then created the most successful economy the world has ever seen. Private enterprise then built on these breakthroughs to create new industries -- such as radar, jet engines, digital computers, mobile telecommunications, life-saving medicines, and the internet-- that became the catalyst for broader economic growth that generated millions of good jobs. We lifted almost all boats, not just the yachts. Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson tell the story of this first American growth engine and provide the blueprint for a second. It's a visionary, pragmatic, sure-to-be controversial plan that will lead to job growth and a new American economy in places now left behind.

    While nursing their wounds in Ibiza, they accidentally run into an eccentric character who tells them about a brand-new idea: cryptocurrency. Immersing themselves in what is then an obscure and sometimes sinister world, they begin to realize “crypto” is, in their own words, "either the next big thing or total bulls--t." There’s nothing left to do but make a bet.From the Silk Road to the halls of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bitcoin Billionaires will take us on a wild and surprising ride while illuminating a tantalizing economic future. On November 26, 2017, the Winklevoss brothers became the first bitcoin billionaires. Here’s the story of how they got there—as only Ben Mezrich could tell it.

    Austerity and neoliberal policies have depleted our shared wealth; our national utilities have been sold off to foreign conglomerates, social housing is almost non-existent, our parks are cordoned off for private events and our national art galleries are sponsored by banks and oil companies. This plunder deprives us all of our common rights, recognized as far back as the Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest of 1217, to share fairly and equitably in our public wealth.Guy Standing leads us through a new appraisal of the commons, stemming from the medieval concept of common land reserved in ancient law from marauding barons, to his modern reappraisal of the resources we all hold in common - a brilliant new synthesis that crystallises quite how much public wealth has been redirected to the 1% in recent decades through the state-approved exploitation of everything from our land to our state housing, health and benefit systems, to our justice system, schools, newspapers and even the air we breathe. Plunder of the Commons proposes a charter for a new form of commoning, of remembering, guarding and sharing that which belongs to us all, to slash inequality and soothe our current political instability.

    Authоr Rachel Mаddоw looks at evidence of thіѕ іn the US, along with the соrruрt dеаlѕ bеіng made іn Russia аnd Eԛuаtоrіаl Guіnеа, and mаkеѕ a ѕtrоng саѕе fоr whу big gаѕ аnd оіl needs to bе hеld ассоuntаblе fоr its actions – before thіngѕ get аnу worse.   ABOUT THЕ AUTHОR: Rachel Mаddоw is a political commentator аnd host of the lоng-runnіng аnd аwаrd-wіnnіng Rасhеl Mаddоw Show оn MSNBC. Shе hаѕ a dосtоrаtе іn роlіtісаl science frоm Oxfоrd Unіvеrѕіtу and іѕ аlѕо a bеѕt-ѕеllіng wrіtеr whоѕе wоrk includes thе bооk Drift: The Unmооrіng оf Amеrісаn Military Pоwеr (2012). Disclaimer: This bооk іѕ nоt mеаnt tо rерlасе thе оrіgіnаl bооk but tо ѕеrvе аѕ a companion tо іt.

    In the 40 years since Dan’s book was published the grain markets have changed almost beyond recognition. So too have the merchants of grain. Once shadowy figures, grain merchants have now come out of the shadows. Almost everything that you eat or drink today will contain something bought, stored, transported, processed, shipped, distributed or sold by one of the seven giants of the agricultural supply chain. The media often refers to them as the ABCD group of international grain-trading companies, with ABCD standing for ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Dreyfus. The acronym, though, ignores the other three giants of the food supply: Glencore, COFCO International and Wilmar. Together, they handle 50 percent of the international trade in grain and oilseeds. In this book’s series of exclusive and unprecedented interviews, CEOs and senior traders from these seven giants describe in their own words how the agricultural markets are changing, and how they are adapting to those changes. Accompanying text explains how grain trading works, what grain traders do, and the journey that your food takes before arriving on your plate.This is the inside story of the grain market and of the seven companies at the centre of the world’s food supply.

     What was the impact of the decision to leave the gold standard? How did soaring interest rates in the US trigger the Latin American Debt crisis in the 1980s? Why did Japan’s central bank continue to fuel one of the most epic real estate bubbles of all time? How did NAFTA wreck Mexico’s currency in 1994? How may the unique policy decisions enacted following the Great Recession of 2008 impact the economy in years to come? Brady Raanes covers a wide array of behind-the-scene events in an entertaining and fundamental way. The stories within are more than simply interesting antidotes; they also offer valuable insight into how current events can shape the future in unanticipated ways. In Light of Yesterday is a must read for anyone wishing to gain a deeper understanding of today’s global economic landscape, and provides insight into the question, “What can be done today, in light of yesterday, to prepare for tomorrow?”

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    Why Not Default? unravels a striking puzzle at the heart of these debates--why, despite frequent crises and the immense costs of repayment, do so many heavily indebted countries continue to service their international debts?In this compelling and incisive book, Jerome Roos provides a sweeping investigation of the political economy of sovereign debt and international crisis management. He takes readers from the rise of public borrowing in the Italian city-states to the gunboat diplomacy of the imperialist era and the wave of sovereign defaults during the Great Depression. He vividly describes the debt crises of developing countries in the 1980s and 1990s and sheds new light on the recent turmoil inside the Eurozone--including the dramatic capitulation of Greece's short-lived anti-austerity government to its European creditors in 2015.Drawing on in-depth case studies of contemporary debt crises in Mexico, Argentina, and Greece, Why Not Default? paints a disconcerting picture of the ascendancy of global finance. This important book shows how the profound transformation of the capitalist world economy over the past four decades has endowed private and official creditors with unprecedented structural power over heavily indebted borrowers, enabling them to impose painful austerity measures and enforce uninterrupted debt service during times of crisis--with devastating social consequences and far-reaching implications for democracy.

    Smith’s 1776 book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, is often cited as the beginning of both economics and capitalism, and its influence since its publication ranks it among the most important works of the last millennium.

    Holistic Wealth will teach you to master these tenets of a happy and joyful life, giving you a greater sense of wholeness and resilience in times of difficulty.By expanding on the teachings shared in her viral article My Husband Died at 34. Here Are 40 Life Lessons I Learned From It, author Keisha Blair presents revolutionary strategies that will help you find balance and success. By following actionable, comprehensive steps from experts in a wide array of fields, this engaging book will guide you on your path to serenity.Holistic Wealth teaches you how to find prosperity in key aspects of life, from financial stability and physical health to your emotional and spiritual connections with others. Cultivating these strengths will build the mental toughness and grit you need to weather life’s inevitable storms and setbacks.

    Behaviour that to our grandparents' generation might have seemed stupid, harmful or simply wicked now seems rational, natural, woven into the very logic of things. And, asserts Jonathan Aldred in this revelatory new book, it's economics that's to blame.Licence to be Bad tells the story of how a group of economics theorists changed our world, and how a handful of key ideas, from free-riding to Nudge, seeped into our decision-making and, indeed, almost all aspects of our lives. Aldred reveals the extraordinary hold of economics on our morals and values. Economics has corrupted us. But if this hidden transformation is so recent, it can be reversed. Licence to be Bad shows us where to begin.Over the past fifty years, the way we value what is 'good' and 'right' has changed dramatically. Behaviour that to our grandparents' generation might have seemed stupid, harmful or simply wicked now seems rational, natural, woven into the very logic of things. And, asserts Jonathan Aldred in this revelatory new book, it's economics that's to blame.Licence to be Bad tells the story of how a group of economics theorists changed our world, and how a handful of key ideas, from free-riding to Nudge, seeped into our decision-making and, indeed, almost all aspects of our lives. Aldred reveals the extraordinary hold of economics on our morals and values. Economics has corrupted us. But if this hidden transformation is so recent, it can be reversed. Licence to be Bad shows us where to begin.

    The economic boom impacted a large section of Indians, even if unequally. With sustained high growth over an extended period, India could have achieved what economists call a 'take-off' (rapid and self-sustained GDP growth). The global financial meltdown disrupted this momentum in 2008. In the decade that followed, each time the country's economy came close to returning to that growth trajectory, political events knocked it off course.In 2019, India's GDP is growing at the rate of 7 per cent, making it the fastest-growing major economy in the world, but little on the ground suggests that Indians are actually better off. Economic discontent and insecurity are on the rise, farmers are restive and land-owning classes are demanding quotas in government jobs. The middle class is palpably disaffected, the informal economy is struggling and big businesses are no longer expanding aggressively.India is not the star it was in 2008 and in effect, the 'India growth story' has devolved into 'growth without a story'. The Lost Decade tells the story of the slide and examines the political context in which the Indian economy failed to recover lost momentum.

    In 7 pithy chapters, the BBC TV veteran reveals the impact of leaving the European Union on:Food and dietHealth and the NHSJobs and industryEducationTravel to EuropeFrom the food markets of Kent to NHS operating theatres to the boardrooms of big employers, he finds many surprises.Brexit Without the Bullshit is not about the Brexit you were told you were getting.It is about the one that is arriving.______________________________________________ Reviews Everything a good Remainer needs to persuade the Brexiters, punchy, pithy and short - Polly Toynbee, Guardian columnistIf you want a pithy, sober, clear-headed summary of what Brexit is actually likely to look like, this new book is spot on. Such a welcome antidote to all the whipped up sentiment - calm, factual, rigorous. - Dr Rachel Clarke, NHS campaignerIn this timely and incisive book, Gavin Esler dispels the myth that delivering a Brexit deal, or no deal, would bring an 'end' to Brexit. On the contrary, on everything from trade negotiations to decisions over our food standards and public services, getting Brexit 'over the line' would be just the start. - Francis Grove White, Peoples Vote CampaignEsler provides the evidence of what Brexit has already done to Britain and the harm that it s causing and will cause, in particular to the poorest in our society. A guide for all who want to understand what Brexit really means. - Jessica Simor QC, Change UK candidateA brilliant demolition of the lies and liars that created the Brexit mess. Should be required reading at his old stamping ground, the BBC - Alastair Campbell, writer and broadcaster Inside flap Gavin Esler is a journalist, broadcaster and author.He was a main presenter of the BBC current affairs show Newsnight for 12 years until 2014. He is a public speaker, a political commentator and Chancellor of the University of Kent.In 2019, he stood for Change UK in elections to the European Parliament, arguing that Britain is better than Brexit. Contents IntroductionChapter 1. Brexit & Our FoodChapter 2. Brexit, Our Health & the NHSChapter 3. Brexit, Our Money & Our JobsChapter 4. Brexit & Our Childrens EducationChapter 5. Brexit & TravelChapter 6. Brexit & Our CountryChapter 7. A No Deal BrexitThe Boring Bits: Glossary and Endnotes Extract: Introduction What is Brexit really going to look like? After 50 years of Britain arguing about Europe, what does leaving the European Union mean for you, me, our families, children, jobs, healthcare, and our daily lives?Shorn of the posturing and the promises, what are the profound changes that lie ahead? This book is not about the endless arguments over Brexit. It is about facts which will mould the future of our country.

    Nobody is against the Good Samaritan because being against the Good Samaritan is like being against Mother Theresa or Oskar Schindler or the firefighters who ran into the World Trade Center. In that same popularity contest, the Shrewd Manager would probably finish last. The Shrewd Manager is lazy, deceitful, and double-crossing. Yet in this alluringly freakish parable, Jesus actually holds up the Shrewd Manager as an example, as he does with the Good Samaritan.This book is about learning to live the message of the Good Samaritan in the context of the globalized world of the twenty-first century. This means learning to love our global neighbor wisely by harnessing the resources at our disposal—our time, talents, opportunities, and money—on behalf of those who are victims of injustice, disease, violence, and poverty.The early disciples were pretty clueless about worldly resources such as time, talent, and money—and unfortunately today we still don’t really get it. There are too many kind, well-intentioned twenty-first-century people with indisputably good intentions but whose impact on the needy is hampered by their inability to diagnose problems properly, harness the resources available to them to solve the right problems, and understand cause-and-effect relationships.Shrewd Samaritan will help develop a framework to better love and care for our neighbors in an age of globalization, when the people in our neighborhoods, or at least those in our potential sphere of influence, has expanded dramatically. Increasingly it will become our global neighbor who takes us out of our comfort zone and challenges us with the needs of a broken world.

    Sweezy--Paul A. Baran Memorial Award for original work regarding the political economy of imperialism, Value Chains examines the exploitation of labor in the Global South. Focusing on the issue of labor within global value chains, this book offers a deft empirical analysis of unit labor costs that is closely related to Marx's own theory of exploitation.Value Chains uncovers the concrete processes through which multinational corporations, located primarily in the Global North, capture value from the Global South. We are brought face to face with various state-of-the-art corporate strategies that enforce "economical" and "flexible" production, including labor management methods, aimed to reassert the imperial dominance of the North, while continuing the dependency of the Global South and polarizing the global economy. Case studies of Indonesian suppliers exemplify the growing burden borne by the workers of the Global South, whose labor creates the surplus value that enriches the capitalists of the North, as well as the secondary capitals of the South. Today, those who control the value chains and siphon off the profits are primarily financial interests with vast economic and political power--the power that must be broken if the global working class is to liberate itself. Suwandi's book depicts in concrete detail the relations of unequal exchange that structure today's world economy. This study, up-to-date and richly documented, puts labor and class back at the center of our understanding of the world capitalist system.

    financial sector struck a grand bargain with the federal government. Bankers gained a safety net in exchange for certain curbs on their freedom: transparency rules, record-keeping and antifraud measures, and fiduciary responsibilities. Despite subsequent periodic changes in these regulations, the underlying bargain played a major role in preserving the stability of the financial markets as well as the larger economy. By the free-market era of the 1980s and 90s, however, Wall Street argued that rules embodied in New Deal–era regulations to protect consumers and ultimately taxpayers were no longer needed—and government agreed.   This engaging history documents the country’s financial crises, focusing on those of the 1920s, the 1980s, and the 2000s, and reveals how the two more recent crises arose from the neglect of this fundamental bargain, and how taxpayers have been left with the bill.

     A clear, readable analysis of the inescapable fact that Generation Y (and subsequent generations) will be poorer than their parents, and how we should pursue other economic paths. If you are part of the 99% – and there is a 99% chance that you are – then you are one of the first generation in living memory who can expect to be poorer than your parents, even as the economy continues to grow. And you could be quite a lot poorer. If we continue as we are going, the civilisation we enjoy today will not last until 2050. Buying their own house is a distant dream for most young people; their wages are failing to keep pace with inflation; and more and more people are having to rely on food banks. Our age is one of chronic anxiety. If the economy is doing so well, how can most people not be doing well? If the pie is growing, why aren't we all getting bigger slices? This book shows what we, the 99%, can do to end mass impoverishment and build a society worth living in: an age of abundance, in which everyone benefits.

    Using a rigorous political economic framework, he lays bare the vast ongoing transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest countries through the mechanisms of monopoly rent, unequal exchange, and colonial tribute. The result is a polarized international class structure with a relatively rich Global North and an impoverished, exploited Global South.             Cope makes the controversial claim that it is because of these conditions that workers in rich countries benefit from higher incomes and welfare systems with public health, education, pensions, and social security. As a result, the internationalism of populations in the Global North is weakened and transnational solidarity is compromised. The only way forward, Cope argues is through a renewed anti-imperialist politics rooted in a firm commitment to a radical labor internationalism.

    What’s the Most Important Fact About the Heathcare Crisis? That We Already Know the Cure!  Whole Foods Markets, the State of Indiana, and innovators around the world have used forgotten American ideas to slash healthcare costs by 75 percent while simultaneously delivering true universal access, coverage for preexisting conditions, and an ironclad safety net.  Economics for Dummies author Sean Flynn explains that simple things—like price tags, competition, and plentiful health savings contributions—crush costs while granting everyone equal access to the world’s best healthcare services.

    It is based on R, a statistical programming language that has powerful data processing, visualization, and geospatial capabilities. The book equips you with the knowledge and skills to tackle a wide range of issues manifested in geographic data, including those with scientific, societal, and environmental implications. This book will interest people from many backgrounds, especially Geographic Information Systems (GIS) users interested in applying their domain-specific knowledge in a powerful open source language for data science, and R users interested in extending their skills to handle spatial data.The book is divided into three parts: (I) Foundations, aimed at getting you up-to-speed with geographic data in R, (II) extensions, which covers advanced techniques, and (III) applications to real-world problems. The chapters cover progressively more advanced topics, with early chapters providing strong foundations on which the later chapters build. Part I describes the nature of spatial datasets in R and methods for manipulating them. It also covers geographic data import/export and transforming coordinate reference systems. Part II represents methods that build on these foundations. It covers advanced map making (including web mapping), "bridges" to GIS, sharing reproducible code, and how to do cross-validation in the presence of spatial autocorrelation. Part III applies the knowledge gained to tackle real-world problems, including representing and modeling transport systems, finding optimal locations for stores or services, and ecological modeling. Exercises at the end of each chapter give you the skills needed to tackle a range of geospatial problems. Solutions for each chapter and supplementary materials providing extended examples are available at https: //geocompr.github.io/geocompkg/articles/. Dr. Robin Lovelace is a University Academic Fellow at the University of Leeds, where he has taught R for geographic research over many years, with a focus on transport systems. Dr. Jakub Nowosad is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geoinformation at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, where his focus is on the analysis of large datasets to understand environmental processes. Dr. Jannes Muenchow is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the GIScience Department at the University of Jena, where he develops and teaches a range of geographic methods, with a focus on ecological modeling, statistical geocomputing, and predictive mapping. All three are active developers and work on a number of R packages, including stplanr, sabre, and RQGIS.

    But in this groundbreaking book, Walter Scheidel argues that Rome's dramatic collapse was actually the best thing that ever happened, clearing the path for Europe's economic rise and the creation of the modern age. Ranging across the entire premodern world, Escape from Rome offers new answers to some of the biggest questions in history: Why did the Roman Empire appear? Why did nothing like it ever return to Europe? And, above all, why did Europeans come to dominate the world?In an absorbing narrative that begins with ancient Rome but stretches far beyond it, from Byzantium to China and from Genghis Khan to Napoleon, Scheidel shows how the demise of Rome and the enduring failure of empire-building on European soil ensured competitive fragmentation between and within states. This rich diversity encouraged political, economic, scientific, and technological breakthroughs that allowed Europe to surge ahead while other parts of the world lagged behind, burdened as they were by traditional empires and predatory regimes that lived by conquest. It wasn't until Europe "escaped" from Rome that it launched an economic transformation that changed the continent and ultimately the world.What has the Roman Empire ever done for us? Fall and go away.

    By granting exclusive rights to publish, manufacture, copy, or distribute information and technology, IP laws shape our cultures, our industries, and our politics in countless ways, with consequences for everyone, including artists, inventors, entrepreneurs, and citizens at large. In this engaging, accessible study, Aram Sinnreich uncovers what’s behind current debates and what the future holds for copyrights, patents, and trademarks.

    Our shared values - equality and fairness, democracy and freedom, community and solidarity - can both provide the basis for a critique of capitalism, and help to guide us towards a socialist and democratic society.In this elegant book, Erik Olin Wright has distilled decades of work into a concise and tightly argued manifesto - analyzing the varieties of anti-capitalism, assessing different strategic approaches, and laying the foundations for a society dedicated to human flourishing. How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century is an urgent and powerful argument for socialism, and a unparalleled guide to help us get there. Another world is possible.

    Social structures determine who has power and influence, can explain why people fail to assimilate basic facts, and can help us understand patterns of contagion--from the spread of disease to financial crises. Despite their primary role in shaping our lives, human networks are often overlooked when we try to account for our most important political and economic behaviors and trends. This book illuminates the complexity of the social networks in which we are positioned, sometimes unwittingly, and can help us to better undertstand why we are who we are as individuals. Ranging across disciplines--psychology, behavioral economics, sociology, and business--and rich with historical analogies and anecdotes, The Human Network provides an eye-opening and fascinating account of what can drive success or failure in life.

    Big Food companies have largely replaced the nation’s school cooks by supplying cafeterias with cheap, precooked hamburger patties and chicken nuggets chock-full of industrial fillers. Yet it’s no secret that meals cooked from scratch with nutritious, locally sourced ingredients are better for children, workers, and the environment. So why not empower “lunch ladies” to do more than just unbox and reheat factory-made food? And why not organize together to make healthy, ethically sourced, free school lunches a reality for all children?  The Labor of Lunch aims to spark a progressive movement that will transform food in American schools, and with it the lives of thousands of low-paid cafeteria workers and the millions of children they feed. By providing a feminist history of the US National School Lunch Program, Jennifer E. Gaddis recasts the humble school lunch as an important and often overlooked form of public care. Through vivid narration and moral heft, The Labor of Lunch offers a stirring call to action and a blueprint for school lunch reforms capable of delivering a healthier, more equitable, caring, and sustainable future.

    The first such textbook to develop a heterodox model from the ground up, it is based on the principles of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) as derived from the theories of Keynes, Kalecki, Veblen, Marx, and Minsky, amongst others.

    Voters, however, must rise above the partisan rhetoric to reexamine the most basicquestions: How well has my elected official represented me? Is my elected officialacting in a way consistent with my values? This book will help you answer thesequestions by concisely and clearly outlining the most significant issues of the day:Climate Change, Government Regulation, National Debt, Healthcare, Taxes, the Trade War, the Stock Market, and Net Neutrality. The outcome of the upcoming elections will shape America’s role in the worldand impact most major aspects of life in the US, potentially for decades tocome.

    What makes Bitcoin so special? What sets Bitcoin apart from every other monetary asset that preceded it? What is a monetary asset in the first place? What is money? What is inflation? Who benefits from it? What is scarcity? Is Bitcoin's mining process wasteful? Is Bitcoin a religion or a rejection of religious beliefs? All of this and more, inside.

    Building on insights gleaned from many years of work in the banking industry and drawing on a vast trove of data, Richard Vague argues that such crises follow a pattern that makes them both predictable and avoidable.A Brief History of Doom examines a series of major crises over the past 200 years in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Japan, and China--including the Great Depression and the economic meltdown of 2008. Vague demonstrates that the over-accumulation of private debt does a better job than any other variable of explaining and predicting financial crises. In a series of clear and gripping chapters, he shows that in each case the rapid growth of loans produced widespread overcapacity, which then led to the spread of bad loans and bank failures. This cycle, according to Vague, is the essence of financial crises and the script they invariably follow.The story of financial crisis is fundamentally the story of private debt and runaway lending. Convinced that we have it within our power to break the cycle, Vague provides the tools to enable politicians, bankers, and private citizens to recognize and respond to the danger signs before it begins again.

    An insider’s story and lessons on leaving the evangelical Left.

    Since Roths were created in 1997, six subsequent laws make it now possible for wealthy investors to put over $100,000 into a Roth every year. This book builds the case why everyone should take advantage of Roths to protect their wealth, and it explains how this can be done.

    What is happening and a what is coming has never happened since Modern Humanity has been on Earth. Who better that a futurist to address this? Futurist David Houle has spent the last four years deep into global warming and climate change. He spent two years researching, writing and co-authoring "This Spaceship Earth". What occurred just during those two years prompted Houle to co-found a global non-profit thispaceshipearth.org. Houle was invited to speak at the EPA and at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and numerous other environmental gatherings and conferences. In this, Book 1, the first of a three-eBook trilogy, Houle frames the situation, what must be done and then looks at Growth, Circular and Finite Earth Economies to state that moving to the third will allow humanity to survive and thrive for the rest of the century. This is a short book, as will be Book 2 and Book 3 of this trilogy. It can be read quickly and yet there are dozens of links to research and charts in this book, leading to hours of inquiry and learning should the reader wish to do so. This is NOT another long, dense hard to read book arguing that there is climate change. It accepts that there is and sets forth what to do. In this book, Houle makes the case for humanity to move to a Finite Earth Economy as fully as possible by 2030. The next two books will be fully about solutions and the necessary big steps to take to slow global warming and thus face climate change. Solutions and necessary bold actions. The macro answers and directions for anyone who says "we have to do something about climate change". If those who say this want to "walk the talk" this first book and the trilogy provides the way to do so. Books 2 and 3 will get into the details of what must be done and how to accomplish it. Houle has said about this book and the two that will follow. "It is my fundamental responsibility as a futurist to be right about the future and to offer possible suggestions on how best to navigate it. This trilogy is just that for the existential threat of climate change"

    United by the view that there is something importantly right—though perhaps also much wrong—in Rand’s political philosophy, contributors reflect on her views with the hope of furthering our understandings of what sort of society is best and why. The volume provides a robust elaboration and defense of the foundation of Rand’s political philosophy in the principle that force paralyzes and negates the functioning of reason; it offers an in-depth scholarly discussion of Rand’s view on the nature of individual rights and the role of government in defending them; it deals extensively with the similarities and differences between Rand’s thought and the libertarian tradition (to which she is often assimilated) and objections to her positions arising from this tradition; it explores Rand’s relation to the classical liberal tradition, specifically with regard to her defense of freedom of the intellect; and it discusses her views on the free market, with special attention to the relation between these views and those of the Austrian school of economics.

    Business Data Science takes you through the steps of using machine learning to implement best-in-class business data science. Whether you are a business leader with a desire to go deep on data, or an engineer who wants to learn how to apply Machine Learning to business problems, you'll find the information, insight, and tools you need to flourish in today's data-driven economy. You'll learn how to:- Use the key building blocks of Machine Learning: sparse regularization, out-of-sample validation, and latent factor and topic modeling- Understand how use ML tools in real world business problems, where causation matters more that correlation- Solve data science programs by scripting in the R programming languageToday's business landscape is driven by data and constantly shifting. Companies live and die on their ability to make and implement the right decisions quickly and effectively. Business Data Science is about doing data science right. It's about the exciting things being done around Big Data to run a flourishing business. It's about the precepts, principals, and best practices that you need know for best-in-class business data science.

     From Occupy groups to global trade demonstrations, from American middle class angst to yellow vest frustration in France to the Arab Spring, a common feeling unites them that something in the system is unfair. Blue-collar supporters of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump use remarkably similar language to express a core belief: that the establishment’s economic model is rigged against them. The same protest sentiment is expressed globally. Statistically, these movements are correct: inequality is rising in all developed economies around the world. But, what is the common cause? This book shows that the structure of the banking system is the cause of inequality in society. But, it isn’t a protest book. It isn’t meant to make you feel outraged or to provide an historical account of inequality or a lot of statistics. It is more useful than that. This book demonstrates technically how inequality is caused by the banking system. This is the first book ever that gives a genuine behind-the-curtain look at how banks really function and their impact on society. It reveals that banks create most of the money in an economy, not the state. It shows why inequality and discrimination against out-groups are institutional. It explains the banking mechanism that transfers wealth from the many to the few over time. It shows that, unlike almost all other industries, the banking sector enjoys unparalleled protection by the establishment against competition. This book solves some mysteries, like the following: - Why is fractional reserve banking like a distorted version of the game Monopoly? - Why does the establishment find women’s sexual education repugnant? - Why does the economy blow up from time to time? - Why was Karl Marx so pissed off? - What does Professor Sybill Trelawney have in common with the governors of the Federal Reserve? It shows that the 1% derive much of their power from their preferential access to bank-created money. Money and the banking system underlie inequality and discrimination in society; if you want to address these issues, you have to start at the source. In the end, this is not really a book about money and banking; it is more about our values as a society.

    

    In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto published a revolutionary white paper that described a simple peer-to-peer electronic cash system that would later become Bitcoin. In the decade since the launch of the digital currency, the nascent blockchain technology behind Bitcoin has been heralded as having the same radical potential as the printing press or the Internet, in particular presenting extraordinary challenges to traditional banking. Yet the paper contains no reference to existing political ideas, monetary or economic knowledge. Why? The White Paper returns to Nakamoto's canonical text as a Rosetta Stone that can serve as the compass for a rapidly shifting terrain of contemporary techno-politics. Crypto-economist Jaya Klara Brekke provides a guide and commentary, contextualising the paper for a wide readership and revealing the far-reaching implications of decentralisation. Also includes an introduction by acclaimed artist and technologist James Bridle situating Bitcoin within an obscure historical movement of decentralisation, showing how blockchain is part of a wider project to redraw the maps of political possibility.

    His story is set against the backdrop of inspirations that are deep and varied: from Vipassana meditation to Alexander the Great, from Ashoka to Chuck Feeney, from the pioneers of trusteeship like Jamsetji Tata to a deep analysis of the relevance of trusteeship to modern-day inequality across the globe. Myth of the Entrepreneur is an intimate exploration of Kailas's journey to understand what constitutes true value, and how each of us can interrogate this concept of 'value' to lead more fruitful, connected and liberated lives. For today's young executives, this book will be an indispensable guide as they search for satisfaction in an ambitious, sometimes ruthless, world.

    At the micro level, every flaw in consumers is worse, and in fact much worse, in voters. Unless you are willing to advocate monarchism, or actual communist dictatorship, markets and democracy are the only two mechanisms we have for organizing society.So while Marx’s theory about the flaws of capitalism has some merit, he was utterly blind to the problems of democracy. Looking back now, with the benefit of the contributions of the Public Choice branch of political economy, we are in a position to evaluate markets and democracy on an even playing field.And most of the time, for most purposes, capitalism wins.Michael Munger is a Professor of Political Science, Economics, and Public Policy at Duke University. His Economics PhD was awarded from Washington University in St. Louis in 1984. He worked as a Staff Economist for Dr. Wendy Gramm at the Federal Trade Commission in the first Reagan Administration, and has had academic appointments at Dartmouth College, University of Texas-Austin, and University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He directed the MPA Program at UNC, and chaired the Political Science Department at Duke from 2000 to 2010. He currently directs the interdisciplinary Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program at Duke.His research interests include regulation, political institutions, and political economy. His most recent book was Tomorrow 3.0: Transaction Costs and the Sharing Economy, published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. Munger is a Senior Fellow of the Independent Institute and the AIER, and is a former President of the Public Choice Society (1996-1998). He served as an editor of Public Choice (2005-2010) and Independent Review (2015 to present). He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with wife Donna Gingerella and loyal dogs Murphy and Skippy Squirrelbane.

    From asymmetric, business cycle, and capital, all the way to zero sum. It's never too early to become an economist!With scientific and mathematical information from an expert, this is the perfect book for enlightening the next generation of geniuses.

    The growing sense that many published results are potentially erroneous has made those conducting social science research more determined to ensure the underlying research is sound.  Transparent and Reproducible Social Science Research is the first book to summarize and synthesize new approaches to combat false positives and non-reproducible findings in social science research, document the underlying problems in research practices, and teach a new generation of students and scholars how to overcome them. Understanding that social science research has real consequences for individuals when used by professionals in public policy, health, law enforcement, and other fields, the book crystallizes new insights, practices, and methods that help ensure greater research transparency, openness, and reproducibility. Readers are guided through well-known problems and are encouraged to work through new solutions and practices to improve the openness of their research. Created with both experienced and novice researchers in mind, Transparent and Reproducible Social Science Research serves as an indispensable resource for the production of high quality social science research.

    Based on extensive research in a Wall Street derivatives-trading room, Taking the Floor considers how the culture of financial organizations might change in order for them to remain healthy, even in times of crises. In particular, Daniel Beunza explores how the extensive use of financial models and trading technologies over the recent decades has exerted a far-ranging and troubling influence on Wall Street. How have models reshaped financial markets? How have models altered moral behavior in organizations?Beunza takes readers behind the scenes in a bank unit that, within its firm, is widely perceived to be "a class act," and he considers how this trading room unit might serve as a blueprint solution for the ills of Wall Street's unsustainable culture. Beunza demonstrates that the integration of traders across desks reduces the danger of blind spots created by models. Warning against the risk of moral disengagement posed by the use of models, he also contends that such disengagement could be avoided by instituting moral norms and social relations.Providing a unique perspective on a complex subject, Taking the Floor profiles what an effective, responsible trading room can and should look like.

    The widening gap between the very rich and everyone else is often portrayed as an unexpected outcome or as the tradeoff we must accept to achieve economic growth. In this book, three International Monetary Fund economists show that this increase in inequality has in fact been a political choice--and explain what policies we should choose instead to achieve a more inclusive economy.Jonathan D. Ostry, Prakash Loungani, and Andrew Berg demonstrate that the extent of inequality depends on the policies governments choose--such as whether to let capital move unhindered across national boundaries, how much austerity to impose, and how much to deregulate markets. While these policies do often confer growth benefits, they have also been responsible for much of the increase in inequality. The book also shows that inequality leads to weaker economic performance and proposes alternative policies capable of delivering more inclusive growth. In addition to improving access to health care and quality education, they call for redistribution from the rich to the poor and present evidence showing that redistribution does not hurt growth. Accessible to scholars across disciplines as well as to students and policy makers, Confronting Inequality is a rigorous and empirically rich book that is crucial for a time when many fear a new Gilded Age.

    Commentary on politics

    For decades, we have been led to believe that the private sector does everything better, that governments can’t afford to provide the high-quality services they once did, but that security and prosperity for all are just around the corner. In fact, Australians are now less equal, millions of workers have no sick leave or paid holidays, and housing is unaffordable for many. Deregulation, privatisation and trickle-down economics have, we are told, delivered us twenty-seven years of growth ... but to what end?Denniss looks at ways to renew our democracy and discusses everything from the fragmenting Coalition to an idea of the national interest that goes beyond economics. This is a sparkling book of ideas, and the perfect starting point for thinking about how we can best shape Australia’s future.

     Trying to make a decent return on your nest egg but don’t know how? Have you avoided putting resource stocks and bonds in your portfolio because you’re unsure how they work? Want to make your money work harder and smarter? Every month, nearly half a million readers count on author Robert Moriarty’s website for key information on resource investments and mining. Now the experienced investor is here to share his expertise to increase both your confidence and your profit.Basic Investing in Resource Stocks: The Idiot's Guide is a down-and-dirty approach to help you understand the foundations of the resources sector share markets. Using historical data and his own wins and losses, Moriarty clearly sets out the best way to approach this complex marketplace. Armed with up-to-date knowledge, you’ll soon have a clear understanding of precious metal trends and be ready to invest like a pro. In Basic Investing in Resource Stocks, you’ll discover: The state of the current market and how to ensure it makes sense What expert advice to avoid and which advice will make you money Various pros and cons of each of the resource stocks and how to use both to your benefit Why 85-95% of investors lose money and how to make sure you’re not one of them Helpful hints, tools to simplify the process, and much, much more! Basic Investing in Resource Stocks is your ultimate handbook for grasping the valuable gold and silver markets. If you like straight-to-the-point advice, easy-to-understand language, and expert tips and techniques, then you’ll love Robert Moriarty’s invaluable tool. Buy Basic Investing in Resource Stocks to build your confidence and your returns today!

    This book magnificently explores how, after the upheavals of industrialisation, a truly global capitalism followed. For the first time in the history of humanity, there was a social system able to provide a high level of consumption for the majority of those who lived within its bounds. Today, capitalism dominates the world.With wide-ranging scholarship, Donald Sassoon analyses the impact of capitalism on the histories of many different states, and how it creates winners and losers by constantly innovating. This chronic instability, he writes, 'is the foundation of its advance, not a fault in the system or an incidental by-product'. And it is this instability, this constant churn, which produces the anxious triumph of his title. To control or alleviate such anxieties it was necessary to create a national community, if necessary with colonial adventures, to develop a welfare state, to intervene in the market economy, and to protect it from foreign competition. Capitalists needed a state to discipline them, to nurture them, and to sacrifice a few to save the rest: a state overseeing the war of all against all.Vigorous, argumentative, surprising and constantly stimulating, The Anxious Triumph gives a fresh perspective on all these questions and on its era. It is a masterpiece by one of Britain's most engaging and wide-ranging historians.