Wealth Poverty And Politics

Author : Thomas Sowell
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 576 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2016-09-06
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780465096770

Get Book

Wealth, Poverty and Politics by Thomas Sowell Pdf

In Wealth, Poverty, and Politics, Thomas Sowell, one of the foremost conservative public intellectuals in this country, argues that political and ideological struggles have led to dangerous confusion about income inequality in America. Pundits and politically motivated economists trumpet ambiguous statistics and sensational theories while ignoring the true determinant of income inequality: the production of wealth. We cannot properly understand inequality if we focus exclusively on the distribution of wealth and ignore wealth production factors such as geography, demography, and culture. Sowell contends that liberals have a particular interest in misreading the data and chastises them for using income inequality as an argument for the welfare state. Refuting Thomas Piketty, Paul Krugman, and others on the left, Sowell draws on accurate empirical data to show that the inequality is not nearly as extreme or sensational as we have been led to believe. Transcending partisanship through a careful examination of data, Wealth, Poverty, and Politics reveals the truth about the most explosive political issue of our time.

Author : Thomas Sowell
Publisher : Hachette UK
Page : 576 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2016-09-06
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780465096770

Get Book

Wealth, Poverty and Politics by Thomas Sowell Pdf

In Wealth, Poverty, and Politics, Thomas Sowell, one of the foremost conservative public intellectuals in this country, argues that political and ideological struggles have led to dangerous confusion about income inequality in America. Pundits and politically motivated economists trumpet ambiguous statistics and sensational theories while ignoring the true determinant of income inequality: the production of wealth. We cannot properly understand inequality if we focus exclusively on the distribution of wealth and ignore wealth production factors such as geography, demography, and culture. Sowell contends that liberals have a particular interest in misreading the data and chastises them for using income inequality as an argument for the welfare state. Refuting Thomas Piketty, Paul Krugman, and others on the left, Sowell draws on accurate empirical data to show that the inequality is not nearly as extreme or sensational as we have been led to believe. Transcending partisanship through a careful examination of data, Wealth, Poverty, and Politics reveals the truth about the most explosive political issue of our time.

Author : Thomas Sowell
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2016-09-06
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 046509676X

Get Book

Wealth, Poverty and Politics by Thomas Sowell Pdf

A revised and enlarged edition of Thomas Sowell's essential examination of differences of wealth and income between nations and within nations Wealth, Poverty and Politics challenges the assumptions, the definitions, the evidence and the reasoning of most of what is said about differences of income and wealth by people in the media, in academia and in politics. After an extensive examination of factors behind the economic differences between nations and within nations -- including geographic, demographic, cultural and political factors -- the last section of the book is a searching critique of leading income redistributionists, from John Rawls to Thomas Piketty and Nobel laureates in economics Paul Krugman, Angus Deaton and Joseph Stiglitz. Among the more heartening findings from history are the individuals, groups and nations that have risen from poverty and backwardness to prosperity and achievements on the frontiers of human progress. Among the more painful findings are counterproductive creeds and policies that have needlessly prolonged poverty and dependency among lagging groups in countries around the world, and whipped up resentments -- and sometimes violence -- against more productive and successful minorities in many places and times. Although Wealth, Poverty and Politics offers many new analyses and insights, it is essentially a fact-based study which subjects many beliefs, from various parts of the ideological spectrum, to the ultimate test of empirical evidence. These challenged beliefs about the causes of economic differences range from genetic determinism to exploitation and discrimination. In each case, the analysis follows where the facts lead, whether that is verification, refutation or some combination of the two. Its guiding principle is expressed in a quotation from the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan that opens the final section of the book: "You're entitled to your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts."

Author : Sarah Babb
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2009-08-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780226033679

Get Book

Behind the Development Banks by Sarah Babb Pdf

The World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) carry out their mission to alleviate poverty and promote economic growth based on the advice of professional economists. But as Sarah Babb argues in Behind the Development Banks, these organizations have also been indelibly shaped by Washington politics—particularly by the legislative branch and its power of the purse. Tracing American influence on MDBs over three decades, this volume assesses increased congressional activism and the perpetual “selling” of banks to Congress by the executive branch. Babb contends that congressional reluctance to fund the MDBs has enhanced the influence of the United States on them by making credible America’s threat to abandon the banks if its policy preferences are not followed. At a time when the United States’ role in world affairs is being closely scrutinized, Behind the Development Banks will be necessary reading for anyone interested in how American politics helps determine the fate of developing countries.

Author : David L. Blaney,Naeem Inayatullah
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 247 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2010-01-04
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781135265045

Get Book

Savage Economics by David L. Blaney,Naeem Inayatullah Pdf

Challenges the powerful and pervasive ideas concerning political economy, international relations, and ethics in the modern world. This title provides a fundamental cultural critique of political economy and critically describes the nature of the mainstream understanding of economics.

Author : Doug Bandow,David Schindler
Publisher : Open Road Media
Page : 471 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2014-05-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9781497646803

Get Book

Wealth, Poverty, and Human Destiny by Doug Bandow,David Schindler Pdf

The rapid spread of the liberal market order across the globe poses a host of new and complex questions for religious believers—indeed, for anyone concerned with the intersection of ethics and economics. Is the market economy, particularly as it affects the poor, fundamentally compatible with Christian moral and social teaching? Or is it in substantial tension with that tradition? In Wealth, Poverty, and Human Destiny, editors Doug Bandow and David L. Schindler bring together some of today’s leading economists, theologians, and social critics to consider whether the triumph of capitalism is a cause for celebration or concern. Michael Novak, Richard John Neuhaus, Max Stackhouse, and other defenders of democratic capitalism marshal a number of arguments in an attempt to show that, among other things, capitalism is more Christian in its foundation and consequences than is conceded by its critics—that, as Stackhouse and Lawrence Stratton write, “the roots of the modern corporation lie in the religious institutions of the West,” and that, as Novak contends, “globalization is the natural ecology” of Christianity. The critics of liberal economics argue, on the other hand, that it is historically and theologically shortsighted to consider the global capitalist order and the liberalism that sustains it as the only available option. Any system which has as its implicit logic that “stable and preserving relationships among people, places, and things do not matter and are of no worth,” in the words of Wendell Berry, should be regarded with grave suspicion by religious believers and all men and women of goodwill. Bandow and Schindler take up these arguments and many others in their responses, which carefully consider the claims of the essayists and thus pave the way for a renewed dialogue on the moral status of capitalism, a dialogue only now re-emerging from under the Cold War rubble. The contributors’ fresh, insightful examinations of the intersection between religion and economics should provoke a healthy debate about the intertwined issues of the market, globalization, human freedom, the family, technology, and democracy.

Author : Daron Acemoglu,James A. Robinson
Publisher : Currency
Page : 546 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2013-09-17
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780307719225

Get Book

Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu,James A. Robinson Pdf

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions? Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.

Author : Thomas Sowell
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0465073484

Get Book

Wealth, Poverty and Politics by Thomas Sowell Pdf

In Wealth, Poverty, and Politics, Thomas Sowell, one of the foremost conservative public intellectuals in this country, argues that political and ideological struggles have led to dangerous confusion about income inequality in America. Pundits and politically motivated economists trumpet ambiguous statistics and sensational theories while ignoring the true determinant of income inequality: the production of wealth. We cannot properly understand inequality if we focus exclusively on the distribution of wealth and ignore wealth production factors such as geography, demography, and culture. Sowell contends that liberals have a particular interest in misreading the data and chastises them for using income inequality as an argument for the welfare state. Refuting Thomas Piketty, Paul Krugman, and others on the left, Sowell draws on accurate empirical data to show that the inequality is not nearly as extreme or sensational as we have been led to believe. Transcending partisanship through a careful examination of data, Wealth, Poverty, and Politics reveals the truth about the most explosive political issue of our time.

Author : Jacob S. Hacker,Paul Pierson
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781416588702

Get Book

Winner-Take-All Politics by Jacob S. Hacker,Paul Pierson Pdf

Analyzes the growing divide between the incomes of the wealthy class and those of middle-income Americans, exonerating popular suspects to argue that the nation's political system promotes greed and under-representation.

Author : David S. Landes
Publisher : Hachette UK
Page : 672 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2015-04-20
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780349141442

Get Book

Wealth And Poverty Of Nations by David S. Landes Pdf

The history of nations is a history of haves and have-nots, and as we approach the millennium, the gap between rich and poor countries is widening. In this engrossing and important new work, eminent historian David Landes explores the complex, fascinating and often startling causes of the wealth and poverty of nations. The answers are found not only in the large forces at work in economies: geography, religion, the broad swings of politics, but also in the small surprising details. In Europe, the invention of spectacles doubled the working life of skilled craftsmen, and played a prominent role in the creation of articulated machines, and in China, the failure to adopt the clock fundamentally hindered economic development. The relief of poverty is vital to the survival of us all. As David Landes brilliantly shows, the key to future success lies in understanding the lessons the past has to teach us - lessons uniquely imparted in this groundbreaking and vital book which exemplifies narrative history at its best.

Author : Chad Brand,Tom Pratt
Publisher : Kregel Academic & Professional
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0825443040

Get Book

Seeking the City by Chad Brand,Tom Pratt Pdf

Author : Ray Bush
Publisher : Pluto Press (UK)
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2007-05-25
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : STANFORD:36105123284411

Get Book

Poverty and Neoliberalism by Ray Bush Pdf

Why do so many people worldwide suffer hunger and poverty when there is enough food and other resources globally to prevent it? This book shows how famine and food insecurity is an essential part of modern capitalism. Although trade, debt relief, and development initiatives are important, they do not alter the structure of the global economy and the poverty that is created by processes like privatization, trade liberalization, and market reform. Despite the rhetoric of the World Bank and the G8, high levels of poverty actually sustain western wealth and power. But there is some hope for change. Using case studies from Egypt and North Africa, Nigeria, Sudan, and elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, Ray Bush illustrates that there is resistance to neoliberal policies, and that struggles over line, mining, and resources can shape real alternatives to existing globalization.

Author : Mario Polèse
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2019-09-02
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780190053734

Get Book

The Wealth and Poverty of Cities by Mario Polèse Pdf

That some cities are vibrant while others are in decline is starkly apparent. In The Wealth and Poverty of Cities, Mario Polèse argues that focusing on city attributes is too narrow. Cities do not control the basic conditions that determine their success or failure as sources of economic growth and well-being. Nations matter because successful metropolitan economies do not spring forth spontaneously. The values, norms, and institutions that shape social relationships are national attributes. The preconditions for the creation of wealth-the rule of law, public education, and sound macroeconomic management among the most fundamental-are the responsibility of the state. By considering national fiscal and monetary policies and state policies governing the organization of cities, this book disentangles two processes: the mechanics of creating wealth and the mechanics of agglomeration or capturing wealth. Polèse explains the two-stage process in which the proper conditions must first be in place for the benefits of agglomeration to fully flower. Polèse interweaves evocative descriptions of various cities, contrasting cities that have been helped or hurt by local and national policies wise or ill-advised. From New York to Vienna, Buenos Aires to Port au Prince, the cities come to life. Throughout the book Polèse highlights four factors that help explain strengths and weaknesses of cities as foci of economic opportunity and social cohesion: institutions, people, centrality, and chance. The result is a nuanced and accessible introduction to the economy of cities and an original perspective on what needs to improve. Cities that have managed to produce livable urban environments for the majority of their citizens mirror the societies that spawned them. Similarly, cities that have failed are almost always signs of more deep-rooted failures. If the nation does not work, neither will its cities.

Author : Peter Edelman
Publisher : New Press, The
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2013-09-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781595589576

Get Book

So Rich, So Poor by Peter Edelman Pdf

“A competent, thorough assessment from a veteran expert in the field.” —Kirkus Reviews Income disparities in our wealthy nation are wider than at any point since the Great Depression. The structure of today’s economy has stultified wage growth for half of America’s workers—with even worse results at the bottom and for people of color—while bestowing billions on the few at the very top. In this “accessible and inspiring analysis”, lifelong anti-poverty advocate Peter Edelman assesses how the United States can have such an outsized number of unemployed and working poor despite important policy gains. He delves into what is happening to the people behind the statistics and takes a particular look at young people of color, for whom the possibility of productive lives is too often lost on the way to adulthood (Angela Glover Blackwell). For anyone who wants to understand one of the critical issues of twenty-first century America, So Rich, So Poor is “engaging and informative” (William Julius Wilson) and “powerful and eloquent” (Wade Henderson).

Author : Andrew Sayer
Publisher : Policy Press
Page : 456 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2015-11-11
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781447320869

Get Book

Why We Can't Afford the Rich by Andrew Sayer Pdf

Even as inequalities widen, the effects of austerity deepen, and the consequences of recession linger, in many countries the wealth of the rich has soared. Why We Can't Afford the Rich exposes the unjust and dysfunctional mechanisms that allow the top 1% to siphon off wealth produced by others through the control of property and money. Leading social scientist Andrew Sayer shows how over the past three decades the rich worldwide have increased their ability to hide their wealth, create indebtedness, and expand their political influence. Aimed at all engaged citizens, this important and accessible book uses simple distinctions to burst the myth of the rich as especially talented wealth creators. But more than this, as the risk of runaway climate change grows, it shows how the rich are threatening the planet by banking on unsustainable growth. Forcefully arguing that the crises of economy and climate can only be resolved by radical change, Sayer makes clear that we must make economies sustainable, fair, and conducive to well being for all.