An impressively clear presentation that should prove useful to those looking for a one-stop primer.
Yaruss presents an introduction to economics designed to help Americans understand—and participate in—current political debates.
The author contends that rationally informed political decisions on the part of the American citizenry is the only mechanism that will usher in substantive economic progress but that many find economics a prohibitively technical discipline and do not adequately comprehend the terms of debate. He also casts a gimlet eye at the media, which he sees as being “dominated by all sorts of very serious-looking people pontificating on the future of the economy and recommending policy based on their very self-assured predictions” and failing to alleviate this collective ignorance. Yaruss aims to “demystify our economy” by providing an “easily understandable overview” of it, one that serves not to supply facile answers but to help the reader to understand the basic questions. To this end, the author takes the reader on a scrupulously thorough tour of the subject, discussing the nature of money, the inner workings of the Federal Reserve, the national debt, and the structure of corporations, among many other topics. He limns a marvelously accessible discussion of some technically formidable subjects, such as derivative securities. Yaruss doesn’t shy away from registering his own opinions; the author argues that, partly as a result of the “technological revolution,” commercial competition has increasingly become a “winner-take-all” system—a trend that has resulted in grotesque inequality—a viewpoint that informs the entire work. Only very occasionally that perspective results in some strident rhetoric: “Income taxes can discourage work, sales taxes can discourage the purchase of goods, and property taxes can discourage the development of more and better housing. What might inheritance and estate taxes discourage? Dying?” Nevertheless, this is a valuable introduction to a difficult field that accomplishes its principal objective: to educate the public so it can more fully comprehend the economic arguments of the day.
An impressively clear presentation that should prove useful to those looking for a one-stop primer.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2022
ISBN: 9781633888364
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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