The New Empire of Debt


William Bonner - 2009
    Along the way, Bonner and Wiggin cast a wide angle lens that looks back in history and ahead to the coming century: showing how dramatic changes in the economic power of the United States will inevitably impact every American.Reveals the financial realities the United States currently faces and what the ultimate outcome may be Weaves together the worlds of politics, economics, and personal finance in a way that underscores the severity of the situation Addresses the events leading up to the implosion of the U.S. financial system Looks ahead to help you avoid the pitfalls presented by a weaker United States Other titles by Bonner: Empire of Debt, Financial Reckoning Day, and Mobs, Messiahs, and MarketsOther titles by Wiggin: I.O.U.S.A., Demise of the Dollar, and Financial Reckoning DayThe United States is heading down a difficult path. The New Empire of Debt clearly shows how this has happened and discusses what you can do to overcome the financial challenges that will arise as the situation deteriorates.

The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor


William Easterly - 2014
    Yet all too often, experts recommend solutions that fix immediate problems without addressing the systemic political factors that created them in the first place. Further, they produce an accidental collusion with "benevolent autocrats,” leaving dictators with yet more power to violate the rights of the poor.In The Tyranny of Experts, economist William Easterly, bestselling author of The White Man’s Burden, traces the history of the fight against global poverty, showing not only how these tactics have trampled the individual freedom of the world’s poor, but how in doing so have suppressed a vital debate about an alternative approach to solving poverty: freedom. Presenting a wealth of cutting-edge economic research, Easterly argues that only a new model of development—one predicated on respect for the individual rights of people in developing countries, that understands that unchecked state power is the problem and not the solution —will be capable of ending global poverty once and for all.

Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism


Anne Case - 2020
    In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year--and they're still rising. Anne Case and Angus Deaton, known for first sounding the alarm about deaths of despair, explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class. They demonstrate why, for those who used to prosper in America, capitalism is no longer delivering.Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline. For the white working class, today's America has become a land of broken families and few prospects. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. In this critically important book, Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and, above all, to a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. Capitalism, which over two centuries lifted countless people out of poverty, is now destroying the lives of blue-collar America.This book charts a way forward, providing solutions that can rein in capitalism's excesses and make it work for everyone.

The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past


Jarrett Stepman - 2019
    . . Columbus statues attacked with red paint. They started with slave-owning Confederate generals, but they’re not stopping there. The vandals are only pretending to care about the character of particular American heroes. In reality, they hate what those heroes represent: the truths asserted in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Constitution. And they are bent on taking America down and replacing our free society with a socialist utopia. All that stands in their way is Americans’ reverence for our history of freedom. Which is why that history simply has to go. Now, Jarrett Stepman, editor at The Daily Signal and host of Right Side of History, exposes the true aims of the war on our history:The war on America: World history is full of conquests and suffering indigenous peoples. Why target Christopher Columbus? What they really want to tear down is America.The war on Thanksgiving: World history is full of colonists. Why target the Pilgrims? What they really want to tear down is American freedom and prosperity.The war on the Founding: World history is full of slavery. Why target Thomas Jefferson? What they really want to tear down are the rights endowed by our Creator.The war on the common man: World history is full of victorious generals and populist politicians. Why target Andrew Jackson? What they really want to tear down is democracy.The war on the South: World history is full of civil strife. Why target Confederate heroes like Robert E. Lee? What they really want to tear down is respect for America’s past and the reconciliation that renewed our Union.The war on patriotism: World history is full of national pride. Why target Teddy Roosevelt? What they really want to tear down is the idea of American greatness.The war on the American century: World history is full of bloody wars. What they really want to tear down is America’s defeat of totalitarianism. If America is to survive this assault, we must rally to the defense of our illustrious history. The War on History is the battle plan.

The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite


Daniel Markovits - 2019
    Even as the country divides itself at every turn, the meritocratic ideal - that social and economic rewards should follow achievement rather than breeding - reigns supreme. Both Democrats and Republicans insistently repeat meritocratic notions. Meritocracy cuts to the heart of who we are. It sustains the American dream.But what if, both up and down the social ladder, meritocracy is a sham? Today, meritocracy has become exactly what it was conceived to resist: a mechanism for the concentration and dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations. Upward mobility has become a fantasy, and the embattled middle classes are now more likely to sink into the working poor than to rise into the professional elite. At the same time, meritocracy now ensnares even those who manage to claw their way to the top, requiring rich adults to work with crushing intensity, exploiting their expensive educations in order to extract a return. All this is not the result of deviations or retreats from meritocracy but rather stems directly from meritocracy's successes.This is the radical argument that Daniel Markovits prosecutes with rare force. Markovits is well placed to expose the sham of meritocracy. Having spent his life at elite universities, he knows from the inside the corrosive system we are trapped within. Markovits also knows that, if we understand that meritocratic inequality produces near-universal harm, we can cure it. When The Meritocracy Trap reveals the inner workings of the meritocratic machine, it also illuminates the first steps outward, towards a new world that might once again afford dignity and prosperity to the American people.

Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right


Jennifer Burns - 2009
    Drawing on unprecedented access to Rand's private papers and the original, unedited versions of Rand's journals, Jennifer Burns offers a groundbreaking reassessment of this key cultural figure, examining her life, her ideas, and her impact on conservative political thought.Goddess of the Market follows Rand from her childhood in Russia through her meteoric rise from struggling Hollywood screenwriter to bestselling novelist, including the writing of her wildly successful The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Burns highlights the two facets of Rand's work that make her a perennial draw for those on the right: her promotion of capitalism, and her defense of limited government. Both sprang from her early, bitter experience of life under Communism, and became among the most deeply enduring of her messages, attracting a diverse audience of college students and intellectuals, business people and Republican Party activists, libertarians and conservatives. The book also traces the development of Rand's Objectivist philosophy and her relationship with Nathaniel Branden, her closest intellectual partner, with whom she had an explosive falling out in 1968.One of the Denver Post's Great Reads of 2009One of Bloomberg News's Top Nonfiction Books of 2009Excellent.--Time magazineA terrific book--a serious consideration of Rand's ideas, and her role in the conservative movement of the past three quarters of a century.--The American ThinkerA wonderful book: beautifully written, completely balanced, extensively researched. The match between author and subject is so perfect that one might believe that the author was chosen by the gods to write this book. She has sympathy and affection for her subject but treats her as a human being, with no attempt to cover up the foibles.--Mises Economics Blog

Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition


Charles Eisenstein - 2011
    Today, these trends have reached their extreme—but in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being.   This book is about how the money system will have to change—and is already changing—to embody this transition. A broadly integrated synthesis of theory, policy, and practice, Sacred Economics explores avant-garde concepts of the New Economics, including negative-interest currencies, local currencies, resource-based economics, gift economies, and the restoration of the commons. Author Charles Eisenstein also considers the personal dimensions of this transition, speaking to those concerned with "right livelihood" and how to live according to their ideals in a world seemingly ruled by money. Tapping into a rich lineage of conventional and unconventional economic thought, Sacred Economics presents a vision that is original yet commonsense, radical yet gentle, and increasingly relevant as the crises of our civilization deepen.Sacred Economics official website: http://sacred-economics.com/About the Imprint: EVOLVER EDITIONS promotes a new counterculture that recognizes humanity's visionary potential and takes tangible, pragmatic steps to realize it. EVOLVER EDITIONS explores the dynamics of personal, collective, and global change from a wide range of perspectives. EVOLVER EDITIONS is an imprint of North Atlantic Books and is produced in collaboration with Evolver, LLC.

The Coming Insurrection


The Invisible Committee - 2007
    We have to see that the economy is itself the crisis. It's not that there's not enough work, it's that there is too much of it. The Coming Insurrection is an eloquent call to arms arising from the recent waves of social contestation in France and Europe. Written by the anonymous Invisible Committee in the vein of Guy Debord—and with comparable elegance—it has been proclaimed a manual for terrorism by the French government (who recently arrested its alleged authors). One of its members more adequately described the group as “the name given to a collective voice bent on denouncing contemporary cynicism and reality.” The Coming Insurrection is a strategic prescription for an emergent war-machine capable of “spreading anarchy and live communism.” Written in the wake of the riots that erupted throughout the Paris suburbs in the fall of 2005 and presaging more recent riots and general strikes in France and Greece, The Coming Insurrection articulates a rejection of the official Left and its reformist agenda, aligning itself instead with the younger, wilder forms of resistance that have emerged in Europe around recent struggles against immigration control and the “war on terror.” Hot-wired to the movement of '77 in Italy, its preferred historical reference point, The Coming Insurrection formulates an ethics that takes as its starting point theft, sabotage, the refusal to work, and the elaboration of collective, self-organized life forms. It is a philosophical statement that addresses the growing number of those—in France, in the United States, and elsewhere—who refuse the idea that theory, politics, and life are separate realms.

After America: Get Ready for Armageddon


Mark Steyn - 2010
    Now, he adds, America has caught up with Europe on the great rush to self-destruction.It’s not just our looming financial collapse; it’s not just a culture that seems on a fast track to perdition, full of hapless, indulgent, childish people who think government has the answer for every problem; it’s not just America’s potential eclipse as a world power because of the drunken sailor policymaking in Washington—no, it’s all this and more that spells one word for America: Armageddon.What will a world without American leadership look like? It won’t be pretty—not for you and not for your children. America’s decline won’t be gradual, like an aging Europe sipping espresso at a café until extinction (and the odd Greek or Islamist riot). No, America’s decline will be a wrenching affair marked by violence and possibly secession.With his trademark wit, Steyn delivers the depressing news with raw and unblinking honesty—but also with the touch of vaudeville stand-up and soft shoe that makes him the most entertaining, yet profound, columnist on the planet. And as an immigrant with nowhere else to go, he offers his own prescription for winning America back from the feckless and arrogant liberal establishment that has done its level best to suffocate the world’s last best hope in a miasma of debt, decay, and debility. You will not read a more important—or more alarming, or even funnier—book all year than After America.

Foundations of Economic Prosperity


Daniel W. Drezner - 2013
    Professor Drezner takes you behind the headlines and into the debates to dispel common myths about prosperity and get at deeper truths. By taking a broad view of economics that includes psychology, sociology, political science, and history, his lectures lead you to fundamental insights about how the modern world works and a deeper understanding of the functioning of the U.S., European, Chinese, and other major economies, as well as an appreciation for the special problems faced by underdeveloped nations. You'll examine dozens of case histories that illustrate what works and doesn't work in the drive to increase economic growth. You'll also learn about intriguing examples of prosperity won or lost, including the Dutch tulip mania in 1637, the era of globalization that started in the 1850s and lasting through World War I, and Ukraine's economic missteps after the breakup of the Soviet Union. As a start on your own road to greater prosperity, take this step to invest in an unparalleled explanation of the prerequisites to achieve it.

Zero Hour: Turn the Greatest Political and Financial Upheaval in Modern History to Your Advantage


Harry S. Dent - 2017
    Dent Jr., bestselling author of The Demographic Cliff and The Sale of a Lifetime, predicted the populist wave that has driven the Brexit vote, the election of Donald Trump, and other recent shocks around the world. Now he returns with the definitive guide to protect your investments and prosper in the age of the anti-globalist backlash.The turn of the 2020s will mark an extremely rare convergence of low points for multiple political, economic, and demographic cycles. The result will be a major financial crash and global upheaval that will dwarf the Great Recession of the 2000s—and maybe even the Great Depression of the 1930s. We’re facing the onset of what Dent calls “Economic Winter.”   In Zero Hour, he and Andrew Pancholi (author of The Market Timing Report newsletter) explain all of these cycles, which influence everything from currency valuations to election returns, from economic growth rates in Asia to birthrates in Europe. You’ll learn, for instance:   • Why the most-hyped technologies of recent years (self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, blockchain) won’t pay off until the 2030s.    • Why China may be the biggest bubble in the global economy (and you’d be a fool to invest there).    • Why you should invest in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, and pull out of real estate and automotive.    • Why putting your faith in gold is a bad idea.   Fortunately, Zero Hour includes a range of practical strategies to help you turn the upheaval ahead to your advantage, so your family can be prepared and protected.

Libertarian Anarchy: Against the State


Gerard Casey - 2012
    The state is considered necessary for the provision of many things, but primarily for peace and security. In this provocative book, Gerard Casey argues that social order can be spontaneously generated, that such spontaneous order is the norm in human society and that deviations from the ordered norms can be dealt with without recourse to the coercive power of the state.Casey presents a novel perspective on political philosophy, arguing against the conventional political philosophy pieties and defending a specific political position, which he identifies as 'libertarian anarchy'. The book includes a history of the concept of anarchy, an examination of the possibility of anarchic societies and an articulation ofthe nature of law and order within such societies. Casey presents his specific form of anarchy, undergirded by a theory of human action that prioritises liberty, as a philosophically and politically viable alternative to the standard positions in political theory."

The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era


Michael Grunwald - 2012
    Grunwald’s meticulous reporting shows how the stimulus, though reviled on the right and the left, helped prevent a depression while jump-starting the president’s agenda for lasting change. As ambitious and far-reaching as FDR’s New Deal, the Recovery Act is a down payment on the nation’s economic and environmental future, the purest distillation of change in the Obama era. The stimulus has launched a transition to a clean-energy economy, doubled our renewable power, and financed unprecedented investments in energy efficiency, a smarter grid, electric cars, advanced biofuels, and green manufacturing. It is computerizing America’s pen-and-paper medical system. Its Race to the Top is the boldest education reform in U.S. history. It has put in place the biggest middle-class tax cuts in a generation, the largest research investments ever, and the most extensive infrastructure investments since Eisenhower’s interstate highway system. It includes the largest expansion of antipoverty programs since the Great Society, lifting millions of Americans above the poverty line, reducing homelessness, and modernizing unemployment insurance. Like the first New Deal, Obama’s stimulus has created legacies that last: the world’s largest wind and solar projects, a new battery industry, a fledgling high-speed rail network, and the world’s highest-speed Internet network. Michael Grunwald goes behind the scenes—sitting in on cabinet meetings, as well as recounting the secret strategy sessions where Republicans devised their resistance to Obama—to show how the stimulus was born, how it fueled a resurgence on the right, and how it is changing America. The New New Deal shatters the conventional Washington narrative and it will redefine the way Obama’s first term is perceived.

Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism


Sean Hannity - 2004
    Since then, our wounds have healed, but our senses and memories have dulled.At first, the nation rallied behind its leader. But by the time the confrontation with Iraq presented itself, our courage and moral certainty seemed to fade in the face of partisan bickering and posturing.Now the political left and the Democratic Party are trying to use the demanding aftermath of the war to exploit our national cause for their own political advantage.How could we allow ourselves to forget so soon?--from Deliver Us from EvilSean Hannity's first blockbuster book, the New York Times bestseller Let Freedom Ring, cemented his place as the freshest and most compelling conservative voice in the country. As the host of the phenomenally successful Hannity & Colmes on the Fox News Channel and The Sean Hannity Show on ABC Radio, Hannity has won a wildly devoted fan base. Now he brings his plainspoken, take-no-prisoners style to the continuing War on Terror abroad -- and liberalism at home -- in Deliver Us from Evil."Evil exists," Hannity asserts. "It is real, and it means to harm us." And in these pages he revisits the harsh lessons America has learned in confronting evil in the past and the present, to illuminate the course we must take in the future. Tracing a direct line from Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin through Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, he reminds us of the courage and moral clarity of our great leaders. And he reveals how the disgraceful history of appeasement has reached forward from the days of Neville Chamberlain and Jimmy Carter to corrupt the unrepentant leftists of the modern Democratic Party -- from Howard Dean and John Kerry to Bill and Hillary Clinton.As Americans face the ongoing war against terrorists and their state sponsors around the world, Sean Hannity reminds us that we must also cope with the continuing scourge of accommodation and cowardice at home. With his trademark blend of passion and hard-hitting commentary, he urges Americans to recognize the dangers of putting our faith in toothless "multilateralism" when the times call for decisive action. For only through strong defense of our freedoms, at home and around the world, can we preserve America's security and liberty in the dangerous twenty-first century.

The 1619 Project: A Critique


Phillip W. Magness - 2020
    Comprising an entire magazine feature and a sizable advertising budget, the newspaper’s initiative conveyed a serious attempt to engage the public in an intellectual exchange about the history of slavery in the United States and its lingering harms to our social fabric. It also seemed to avoid the superficiality of many public history initiatives, which all too often reduce over 400 complex years of slavery’s history and legacy to sweeping generalizations. Instead, the Times promised detailed thematic explorations of topics ranging from the first slave ship’s arrival in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619 to the politics of race in the present day.At the same time, however, certain 1619 Project essayists infused this worthy line of inquiry with a heavy stream of ideological advocacy. Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones announced this political intention openly, pairing progressive activism with the initiative’s stated educational purposes.In assembling these essays, I make no claim of resolving what continues to be a vibrant and ongoing discussion. Neither should my work be viewed as the final arbiter of historical accuracy, though I do evaluate a number of factual and interpretive claims made by the project’s authors. Rather, the aim is to provide an accessible resource for readers wishing to navigate the scholarly disputes, offering my own interpretive take on claims pertaining to areas of history in which I have worked." -- Phil Magness