by David R. Finch ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 31, 2015
Measured, reliable financial advice provided with a smooth overlay of Christianity.
A five-point program for Christian-themed financial security.
In his nonfiction debut, Finch expands on a nine-hour seminar he developed in the 1980s designed to give his readers a step-by-step plan for achieving first financial stability and then prosperity. Finch organizes his plan under large umbrella categories like “Principle of STEWARDSHIP,” “Principle of COMMUNICATION,” and “Principle of GIVING,” and he spices up the flow of his well-designed book with insets that bear simple mottos; e.g., “Building a lifestyle using the credit card benefits the creditor at the expense of the debtor.” Here, God and wealth are harmonized; readers are assured that God wants them to prosper but expects them to do their parts, which is where Finch and his manual come in. He presents a straightforward set of financial principles—avoid debt, set a budget and stick to it, live within your means—and reminds us that “we live in a society that emphasizes consumption.” The responsibility for resisting such acquisitiveness falls squarely on our own shoulders. Better not to rely on programs like Social Security (which Finch characterizes as a “Ponzi scheme”) or a government mired in runaway deficit spending. However, “if God wants you to have a life of abundance,” he writes, addressing the central worry of his subject, “the fact that some of this abundance is found in material possessions is not a sin.” When Finch asserts “God is not asking us to live on the edge of existence,” he’s preaching a variation of the very popular “prosperity gospel” in which “Christian” and “wealthy” aren’t contradictory concepts. Many of his Christian readers will be grateful for this, and even non-Christians can benefit from the sound financial common sense he provides.
Measured, reliable financial advice provided with a smooth overlay of Christianity.Pub Date: July 31, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4969-6642-1
Page Count: 284
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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