Against Economic Ideology
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"Wrong" presents nine historical examples of bad economic policy and ascribes an underlying cause: economic ideology.  Grossman contends that, "Ideologically based policy comes about when decision makers grab hold of a key idea and use it as their one and only guide to economic policy" to the exclusion of "sound economic analysis."  Grossman cites as examples of these flawed intellectual guideposts outdated ideas such as mercantilism, war reparations, and the gold standard among others.  Is there a solution?  Grossman argues that transparency of process, diversity of decision makers, and a willingness to reconsider long-held beliefs are all necessary to resist the urge of policymakers to defer to conventional wisdom.  If bad policy still results from this improved process, it must be recognized and reversed as soon as possible.

This book can be revelatory or glib depending on a reader's familiarity with economics and economic history.  Grossman patiently describes economic concepts to make the book accessible to a wide audience.  Some chapters, like those on the Irish famine and the early United States central banks, were more interesting for their historical facts than for Grossman's economic analysis.  The book is a quick read and will broaden a reader's appreciation of economic history, but it lacks any new or significant ideas.
3190632
Business people find themselves under continual assault from government regulations, threats of lawsuits and under-appreciation of their positive role.  The media, activists, politicians and even many religious officials cling to the clich of business people as greedy, selfish or operating at the expense of others.  The positive virtues of business people-self-sufficiency, responsibility and investment in the future--often are ignored by those who see business people as exploiters, cash cows for the government, or guinea pigs for government social policies.
Those suffering under the weight of such attacks will find encouragement and articulate arguments on their behalf in Why Businessmen Need Philosophy, a book-collection of essays that champions the free market and individual rights.  Published by the Ayn Rand Institute, a free market and individualism advocacy group, the book lays a solid foundation of reasoned argument of how business people in a free economy exemplify the positive principles on which this country was founded.
"Some critics point to the homeless and blame their poverty on greedy private businessmen who exploit the public.  Others, such as [economist] John Kenneth Galbraith, say that American are too affluent and too materialistic, and blame greedy private businessmen...," says philosopher and commentator Leonard Peikoff, who forcefully argues against this negative attitude.  "Who are the most denounced and vilified men in the country?  You are-you, the businessmen."
The book is an exuberant, enthusiastic reaffirmation of the business person as providing the moral and economic foundation to the country. It provides a spirited defense of small and large business, argues the necessity of a foundation of honesty and fair dealing as growing from a free market economy and states the philosophical basis of why no one has a right to take the earnings of another.
The book argues against the welfare state that relies on the false premise that the desire for another's property creates a right to take it.  "The (American) system guarantees you the chance to work for what you want-not to be given it without effort by somebody else," Peikoff says. "We are seeing a total abandonment by the intellectuals and the politicians of the moral principles on which the U.S. was founded.  The rule now is for politicians to ignore and violate men's actual rights, while arguing about a whole list of rights never dreamed of in this country's founding documents-rights...."
For those weary of overflowing government regulations and laws dictating their professional lives and businesses, and for those working people who need reaffirmation of their vital role in society, this book serves them well.
1740466
We can almost all agree that--in our society--racism is an evil, just like drug abuse is an evil. But how to combat it? Taylor shows that the way we have chosen to combat it, through statist policies, is ineffective, creates pernicious unintended consequences, and leads to a creeping totalitarianism, where those who merely speak out against the policies face ostracism and punishment. This book provides one of the best contemporary illustrations of Friedrich Hayek's thesis that using the state to further "social justice" will destroy the foundations of a free society.
3239504
Piketty is an apologist for the very people he supposedly decries.

For two contrary views, see

[...]

[...]

The problem is that although his research is excellent, the framework within which he places it still frames the debate to ignore real remedies. For example, nowhere does he suggest taxing capital gains as much as ordinary income.
1514220
This book is more of an inflamatory phamphlet than an intellectual overview of an ideology. But still it is unique and pretty interesting. The bourgeoisie, having taken control from the feudal structures the means of production in the unrestrained capitalist system, overproduces, overextends, speculates itself into great trouble and has to compete with new foreign markets. During this process the proletariat has its wages forced downward, becomes nothing more than appendages of machines. The proletariat become united in their increasing oppression and increasingly organise to fight the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoise is overthrown, with the petite bourgeois somewhere in between depending on the circumstances. It is inevitable that the proletariat will overthrow the bourgeoisie and set up a "dictatorship of the proletariat" which will transition society to one which will be "an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."
It is pretty clear, regardless of Bakunin's fulminations, that Marx and Engels hardly had in mind the dictatorship "of the proletariat" that Lenin set up. They seemed to have had in mind the Paris Commune of 1871.
979867
This is a book about failed economic policies. Those bad policies are the result of incompetence and the malign influence of powerful special interests, and have ruined the lives of millions while slowing the global economy since 2010 - despite powerful trade unions and developed welfare states. In the U.S., those bad policies are forcefully implemented by a Congress now controlled by a climate change deniers, blockers of gun-control research, flat-taxers, and devotees of the ideology of Ayn Rand and selective pickings from long-deceased Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Thus, we continue with prescriptions for cutting public pension, healthcare, and other social expenditures, reducing public sector employment, increasing labor supply, reducing taxes (while also railing against deficits), and reducing employment protections that can be expected to redistributed income upward.

The author asserts that it is not only the late-comers like South Korea and China that have violated the 'creation myths' of modern economics en route to a developed economy - protection and state-sponsored development were essential to the success of almost all of today's high-income countries. The first was Britain, protecting its woolen industry with high tariffs from the 1720s onward, and making certain that its colonies (including America) would not compete with British industry. When America was freed from British domination, its first Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton,  became the world's leading protagonist of protecting 'infant industries,' advocating tariffs, subsidies, import bans, etc. Abraham Lincoln succeeded in raising U.S. tariffs to the highest in the world while the U.S. was the fastest-growing economy in the world (end of the Civil War to WWI). Northern industrial interests favored protectionism, while Southern slave-holders wanted free trade. The Americans, like the British before them, only supported 'free trade' when they could do so and still dominate the world economy. Yet, most of this history doesn't trickle down to today's students of economics, and thus there's little objection when recent and current events are reshaped to fit a fictional narrative.

The IMF, World Bank, and the World Trade Organization have formed an 'unholy trinity' and led a long, failed experiment in dozens of countries. After 20 years of nearly worldwide neoliberal reforms and economic failure, the one big country (China) that chose a sharply different economic path became the world's largest economy and helped pull dozens of others out of their long slump in its wake. In recent months, China has also pulled off an unprecedented diplomatic coup by getting America's closed allies, including the U.K., Germany, and France, to ignore Washington and join 40 countries in founding China's $100 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. It is clear that Washington will not succeed in remaking the planet in its own economic image.

The U.S. was the epicenter of the global 2008 'Great Recession' that lasted officially 18 months in the U.S. It was the worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression, and the U.S. recovery was nothing to brag about - only the vastly worse results in the Eurozone could make it look good. (By February 2014, the Eurozone was still close to record unemployment of 12% - compared with 6.7% in the U.S. In the harder hit countries like Greece and Spain, unemployment passed 27 and 26 percent, respectively, with youth unemployment at 58% and 53%.
4227667
Professor Stiglitz seems to believe, like Hillary Clinton, that you should "never waste a good crisis".  This book uses the events leading to the Great Recession as a framework for well-supported criticisms of the mortgage and banking industries, the federal reserve, presidents and treasury secretaries, economists, politicians and global leaders.  Stiglitz believes that the ideology of market fundamentalism applied to macroeconomics, industrial policy, regulation, finance, monetary policy and politics has created and shaped the poor handling of the crisis (Obama is not spared).

The author documents an impressive history of sins and failures that have allegedly resulted from over reliance on a simplistic free market approach: fraud, recession, unfair policies, slow growth, less innovation, greater income disparities, corporate welfare, increased volatility/risk/insecurity, unemployment, protectionism and waste.  He provides historical context, analyzing situations and recommending policies and solutions.

The Economics Nobel laureate is a believer in the free market as an engine of growth and progress for domestic and global economies.  However, he argues that research, statistics, theory and history consistently demonstrate the inadequacy of the Chicago school's approach as popularized by the Reagan and Thatcher governments and increasingly applied since then.

The author is most passionate about the negative impact of market fundamentalism in the political and cultural spheres.  He says that the emphasis on material goods, profits and self-interest alone leads to a weaker economy and society.  He reminds the reader that economic and social institutions are created and justified by the political process to meet community needs and reflect community values.  Professor Stiglitz believes that a values based vision needs to guide future choices, which include a balance between market and government roles.

The author applies economic theory and political views in equal parts.  Left-center readers will enjoy this comprehensive summary of what is wrong with the world.  Right-center readers will struggle to separate the politics from the well-grounded economic recommendations.  This is a well-written book that addresses many important current topics in a coherent manner.  Stiglitz takes a critical and negative approach to most topics.  He may be surprised by the amount of "progress" currently being made in the political arena to transform this crisis into a new balance between markets and governments.  His critics may blame him for an unwarranted growth of government power and interference with the free market.
3919842
Some interesting thoughts here.  Unfortunately, he makes a good case for the "tyrrany of the majority" school of sales and marketing, which for those of us who don't march to the beat of the mainstream, is without solace.  Armies of market researchers test political language for effectiveness and have found that the term "pro-life" sells better than "anti-abortion," that "climate change" can be more effective than "global warming."  The A-B-Cs of how to manipulate the public-- how to ask the question in order to get the answer you want.  And all in the name of, "give the public what they want," leaving us with the same moral compass as that of a crack dealer.  Welcome to Modern Capitalism 101.  Is this a good thing?  Not if you like your ice cream in a box...
2726320
Michael Harringtons book sets itself two important goals. First, it seeks to provide an overview of the basic workings of modern economies. Second it proposes a thesis about what are the fundamental forces in economics in order to propose solutions to the problems that ail modern economies. This is a quite a challenge for any author. I believe he succeeds admirably on the levels that count, but I disagree with some of his views on what are the most important features of modern economies (have you ever heard of two economists agreeing?).

As concerns the first challenge of giving a basic overview of modern economies, with special reference to the US, Harringtons book is a very fast and pleasant and informative read. It is a mix of journalism, scholarship, and the evident personal experience he has had of financial markets. For in financial markets is where his heart lies and where he sees the central danger to the US economy. He is no conspiracy theorist, but he paints a picture of a financial system that under fragmented and confused political pressure has evolved into a malign symbiosis between large financial institutions and a grossly centralized federal reserve. These mighty groupings of financial condotierri impress the media and the public but they are actually extremely fragile, by virtue of their lack of diversity. Diversity of course costs money, and whenever a capitalist can take a short-cut, he or she will. These shortcuts are known as principal-agent problems and arise from improper oversight of the financial sector by government, a situation which is perhaps an inevitable pathology arising from the symbiosis of those two entities. The book does a good job of explaining the situation and, a great bonus for me, of explaining how the 2008 financial crisis came about, in an intelligible manner, without forcing the reader to keep track of impossibly long chains of causality between this and that sector.

Like most serious scholars Harrington is not content just to explain. He also has a thesis to present. But thesis sounds pretentious. I would say, it is more an accent he wants to give. In his view the problem of how to allocate resources across time is the central problem of economics and all serious government policy hinges on the power of this analysis. My quibble with this view is that there are other facets of economics that call for equal attention. The problem of the spatial allocation of goods is key to understanding markets with tied-sales. A central problem of game-theory is the self-fulfilling equilibrium, which is weird and powerful, but has no direct relation to time. Still, I must admit a personal bias towards the time thesis. I have long believed that the development of storage technologies is one of the driving forces behind the development of civilization. Storage allows us to pace our consumption and investment decisions to take advantage of the best circumstances, when they arise.

There is much that Harrington does not discuss here. He does not talk about Taylor rules, or real business cycle models, or CAPM. So you should not approach this book as a comprehensive survey of the role of financial markets in economic development. It is not meant as such (though alot is happening in the background and is not explicitly cited).

All in all an informative read and a much needed corrective to more jokey pop-econ books that in my view are presently making a farce of the science.
4026147
Zingales puts forward an important idea: markets should not trust capitalists. If markets are to flourish and benefit the people, much care must be taken to keep them from curbing. But a lot is needed beyond this book if progress will be made (in America or anywhere) towards freer markets. Implementation is the book's greatest weakness: politically and technically, Zingales will be far from the last word.
3653769
The chapter on the economic ethics is more conservative republicanism than it is biblical . For instance, there is no mention of the biblical prohibition to Usery when describing the American economic system as somehow  Biblical .
1870982
I ordered Glaeser's ode to cities based on a positive Economist review, and I was not disappointed.

Like any good history or anthropology book, it offers a thesis, and relates all subsequent discussion towards Glaeser's main point: countries should promote dense urbanization and discourage sprawl, by allowing buildings to grow taller. He makes great arguments for his point, and tells some great stories along the way.

However, he often stretches too far for examples to support his reasoning. Sometimes, he says things are are plainly false, in order to support arguments that are sensible, and could have been supported by my boring, but also more accurate, examples.

He claims that goods in the Soviet Union were priced very cheaply, and were thus often unavailable (relating this to subsidies' distortions of the affordable housing market). Soviet goods were actually not cheap at all, in relation to incomes. Shoes might cost 1/5 of monthly incomes; new cars typically cost 5-10 years' worth (!) of wages. He writes that the TriBeCa neighborhood of Manhattan was re-vitalized by people moving there in order to *walk* to their Wall St jobs. That is simply not true. Most finance jobs are in midtown, and most TriBeCa resident take the subway or a 15 minute cab ride to work. As a native New Yorker, Mr. Glaeser should know better.

You can't help to think at times that the author is trying to be a little too clever.
1502410
The Communist Manifesto spells out the plan of the architects of communism (Marx & Engels). This economic model was doomed to failure. It goes against innate human nature. Their ideas on family and the elimination of personal property are simply untenable. However, their position on the money class exploiting the working class, and the resultant effect of this exploitation is evident in today's America. More and more money is in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Regardless of your political views, Read this and see if capitalism needs a revamping. My guess you'll say yes... Unless you're in the 2%, of course.
417541
This book is a collection of essays authored by economists, anthropologists, journalists and others who participated in a symposium on culture and economics sponsored by Harvard University's Academy for International and Area Studies.
The majority of essays defend the idea that culture directly affects the ways economic development and prosperity operate in human societies.  Although some essays present counter agruments, these serve primarily to provide a framework for the debate.
First, some thoughts on criticisms of this book.  The book is Eurocentric - no.  The book is academic and focuses on economic development.  While economic strategies vary from country to country, there are fairly well understood strategies that are common to all countries that prosper in a global economy.
Cultural values can't be changed without being destroyed.  What idiocy!  Cultures, including Western cultures, change all the time.  England is no longer feudal, Sweden is no longer Lutheran, Germany is no longer militaristic and I can and do vote even though I am female.
All cultures deserve equal appreciation.  Even though some cultures promote values (like female genital mutalation) that appear "bad" to outsiders, these values are good for "insiders".  No.  Just because a value or practice has been around a long time doesn't make it good (although it may become tolerable).  Female illiteracy is widely tolerated but it's not good.
One of the things this book does well to point out the incongruous attitudes prosperous people hold about non-prosperous people.  The flip-side of cultural relativism is frankly evil.  It states that it's perfectly okay for people with "traditional" values to starve, multilate, rape and kill each other if "it's right for them".
Another great thing these essays show is that cultural values that promote human well-being can be found in many cultures.  Confucian values that underly the success of Chinese immigrants are similar to the Protestant values that propelled Northern Europe (and the USA, Australia, etc.) into prosperity.  The Japanese and immigrant Sikhs both know more than a little about how work ethics shape material success.
Read this book to balance out the current bias toward cultural romanticism.  The world is getting too small to let some people fall out of the lifeboat just because "it's right for them".
4345261
We are accustomed in the West to "conservatives" on television who are basically liberals who really love capitalism and want us to conquer most of the world to "spread freedom."

This situation exists because, since 1945, conservatism has been in disarray. Its fundamental idea is to learn from the past and what works (e.g. ends before means) instead of what is morally or politically correct, which is the foundation of liberalism.

As a result, conservatism endorses some things that are not very polite. It endorses nationalism, or delineation of nations by self-ruling ethnic groups; it supports a caste or class hierarchy; it endorses social Darwinism, or giving more wealth to those who are more competent; finally, it denies social equality, that "freedom" is a definable goal, or that we can all get along.

To a modern person, conservatism is apostasy and a denial of all the television, rock stars and Hollywood stars, writers, friends and gurus tell us is true.

While we might see modern television conservatives as essentially liberals with the methods of the right, the New Right is an attempt to make conservatives with the values of the right and the methods of the liberals. However, it has taken many years to flower and even be defined; Guillaume Faye's "Archeofuturism" is an attempt not only to define it, but to give it a creative ideal toward which to reach.

The book starts by re-capping the history you will not find in textbooks, namely that liberalism started in 1789, causes two centuries of wars trying to establish the nation state and now, thanks to atomizing individualism, has created societies where no one has anything in common and so chaos is the norm and heavy Nanny State enforcement is necessary.

Faye posits that as ongoing time proves that liberalism has not delivered on its promise of a world of peace and equality, and this causes further inner instability, we will face a "convergence of catastrophes" in which the ill-guided policies of liberalism show their consequences. For example, overpopulation, pollution, climate change, racial strife and proliferation of nuclear weapons will, in Faye's view, come due at about the same time.

Against this Faye posits "archaeofuturism," or a belief system that applies the values of the past to a forward and creative goal. This in itself is a big step for conservatism, which has essentially been a rearguard action since 1789 when politics fragmented with the French Revolution.

This book is an engaging read and, while it will offend most modern readers, is hard to deny as far as a realistic look at politics on the one thousand year scale, instead of the four-year election cycle. It is engagingly written, thoughtful and witty, as well as being informative to those of us who grew up on the filtered pro-liberal media.

Whether you're left or right, this is a "different" view of history that does not have the failings of the official-and/or-popular view. It may even portray a world we'd rather live in.
3852561
Thomas Frank has produced a well-written account of the collapse of moderate political forces and the rise of extreme Republican conservatism in his home state of Kansas.  The state that was the progenitor of 19th century radicalism and leftist populism has replaced that with a right-wing form of populism.  This populism screams about pseudo-threats to a (mythical) American way of life, such as gay marriage and the United Nations while continuing to cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans and generally having all of their economic priorities dictated by the elite business class.

Frank has written a damning condemnation of many GOP politicians who spout off about American moral decline and their own strong Christian beliefs while simultaneously cutting taxes on the wealthiest, which inevitably leads to cuts in programs benefiting the least among them.  Frank also meets many working class people who used to vote with their wallets but are now more concerned with cultural wedge issues.  He is beside himself that these people consistently vote against their economic interests in electing the most conservative politicians.  It quickly becomes apparent that Frank clearly distains the people he claims to be most concerned about.  This obvious contempt weakens what is otherwise a fine book.

I would recommend it to those who have the time and can make it through the many biases Frank openly displays.
709943
Ha-Joon Chang's iconoclastic book on the follies of untrammelled free-market economics was published shortly after the financial meltdown of 2008, but its messages remain relevant today: we still live in a world that teeters on the brink of monetary collapse. The damage wrought by the global crash was second only to the Great Depression, and its legacy - in terms of poverty, social stability and the impact on economic growth - may last for decades.

The author's premise is that thirty years of free-market ideology was at the root of the catastrophe and that, worryingly, the world has not learned from the experience. The next disaster may be just around the corner.

In spite of what the title suggests, "23 Things" is not a rabid attack on capitalism itself. There is much here to anger those from both the Political Left and the Political Right. It is more a thoughtful analysis of some of the underlying assumptions relating to the American 'brand' of capitalism, how they have spread across the globe and how such underpinning philosophies can be short-sighted and dangerous.

Ha-Joon Chang (who teaches at the Faculty of Economics at Cambridge, if you're interested) slices and dices economic statistics from the 1960s to the present day to show us that many of our deeply-held beliefs about education, the world's poor and the so-called 'post-industrial age' contain fatal flaws. Tellingly, he points out that the very free-market policies being forced on the developing nations are precisely NOT the policies pursued by the developed countries of the world while they were building their wealth.

The author is an economist who knows the limitations of economics as a means of building a world fit for people to live in. He echoes Winston Churchill's view on democracy by asserting, "Capitalism is the worst economic system except for all the others", but unlike many merchants of doom he offers eight concrete suggestions on how to rebuild the world economy.

All in all, "23 Things" is a thought-provoking book and one which is written in a style that makes it accessible to the general reader not just to the disciples of the 'dismal science' of economics.