A concise guide to personal finance and investing.
Investment expert and CEO Pecaut (University of Berkshire Hathaway, 2017, etc.) states at the book’s outset that he’s aiming to present timeless principles about how to think about and handle money. The book’s first section includes basic concepts, such as compound interest and the importance of saving. The second section is aimed at readers looking for a deeper dive into investment. The author writes from the perspective of a Warren Buffett-inspired investor who looks at the fundamentals of a company (such as price-to-earnings ratios) to find moneymaking opportunities. The third section takes a turn away from other, more traditional books on money management to offer insight on giving to charity. This advice is far from abstract and draws, in part, on the author’s own experiences with micro-lending. Taken as a whole, this book is a well-rounded guide to personal finance. Although some elements are familiar from other, similar works (including Albert Einstein’s oft-cited quote about compound interest being the eighth wonder of the world), the book offers nuanced advice that goes beyond simply getting out of debt and saving 10 percent of one’s income. For instance, Pecaut advises would-be investors to look hard at specifics of a company other than the raw numbers. For example, who’s in charge of the company? Is it just a hired hand or someone fully concerned with the company’s success? The book’s surprisingly personal section on giving is another highlight. Regardless of the topic, it unfolds in simple, straightforward language throughout.
A brisk, practical take on money management.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5192-1545-1
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL BUSINESS | BUSINESS | PERSONAL FINANCE
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A massive investigation of economic history in the service of proposing a political order to overcome inequality.
Readers who like their political manifestoes in manageable sizes, à la Common Sense or The Communist Manifesto, may be overwhelmed by the latest from famed French economist Piketty (Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century: Inequality and Redistribution, 1901-1998, 2014, etc.), but it’s a significant work. The author interrogates the principal forms of economic organization over time, from slavery to “non-European trifunctional societies,” Chinese-style communism, and “hypercapitalist” orders, in order to examine relative levels of inequality and its evolution. Each system is founded on an ideology, and “every ideology, no matter how extreme it may seem in its defense of inequality, expresses a certain idea of social justice.” In the present era, at least in the U.S., that idea of social justice would seem to be only that the big ones eat the little ones, the principal justification being that the wealthiest people became rich because they are “the most enterprising, deserving, and useful.” In fact, as Piketty demonstrates, there’s more to inequality than the mere “size of the income gap.” Contrary to hypercapitalist ideology and its defenders, the playing field is not level, the market is not self-regulating, and access is not evenly distributed. Against this, Piketty arrives at a proposed system that, among other things, would redistribute wealth across societies by heavy taxation, especially of inheritances, to create a “participatory socialism” in which power is widely shared and trade across nations is truly free. The word “socialism,” he allows, is a kind of Pandora’s box that can scare people off—and, he further acknowledges, “the Russian and Czech oligarchs who buy athletic teams and newspapers may not be the most savory characters, but the Soviet system was a nightmare and had to go.” Yet so, too, writes the author, is a capitalism that rewards so few at the expense of so many.
A deftly argued case for a new kind of socialism that, while sure to inspire controversy, bears widespread discussion.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-674-98082-2
Page Count: 976
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BUSINESS | BUSINESS | ECONOMICS
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.
Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BUSINESS | BUSINESS | ECONOMICS
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