by Tyler Cowen ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 9, 2019
A 2016 Gallup survey ranked big business as second only to Congress as the country’s least-trusted institution. This fawning...
A paean to large business corporations.
Many Americans are anti-business—especially young people, Bernie Sanders supporters, the media, ordinary (distrustful) citizens, and Trump supporters—because they have “negative misconceptions,” writes Cowen (Chair, Economics/George Mason Univ.; Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals, 2018, etc.). In viewing corporations as “apparently selfish, profit-maximizing, even sometimes corrupt entities,” writes the author, such critics underrate the benefits of American business, which “makes most of the stuff we enjoy and consume” and “gives most of us jobs.” Indeed, “we don’t love business enough.” A popular blogger (marginalrevolution.com) and free-marketeer who admires Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, Cowen offers a highly accessible polemic touting the wonders of corporate America, which has “never been more productive, more tolerant, and more cooperative” and provides “a ray of normalcy and predictability” at a time of “weirdness” in government. He continues, “business helps carve out spaces for love, friendship, creativity, and human caring by producing the resources that make our lives not just tolerable but comfortable.” Beyond such praises, the author offers chapters on specific areas—“Are Businesses More Fraudulent than the Rest of Us?” “Are the Big Tech Companies Evil?” and “Crony Capitalism”—in which he dismisses concerns about business monopoly, political power, and fraud, insisting that “limitations of human nature” (not inherent flaws of capitalism) drive corporate behavior. “The propensity of business to commit fraud is essentially just an extension of the propensity of people to commit fraud,” he writes. Cowen makes some concessions to critics, noting the “problematic” invasion of privacy by tech giants like Google and Facebook and the “ripping off” of consumers by entire sectors of the corporate economy. But on the whole, business remains “one of the most beneficial and fundamental institutions in American life.”
A 2016 Gallup survey ranked big business as second only to Congress as the country’s least-trusted institution. This fawning book won’t change many minds.Pub Date: April 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-11054-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
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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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SEEN & HEARD
by Enrico Moretti ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2012
A welcome contribution from a newcomer who provides both a different view and balance in addressing one of the country's...
A fresh, provocative analysis of the debate on education and employment.
Up-and-coming economist Moretti (Economics/Univ. of California, Berkeley) takes issue with the “[w]idespread misconception…that the problem of inequality in the United States is all about the gap between the top one percent and the remaining 99 percent.” The most important aspect of inequality today, he writes, is the widening gap between the 45 million workers with college degrees and the 80 million without—a difference he claims affects every area of peoples' lives. The college-educated part of the population underpins the growth of America's economy of innovation in life sciences, information technology, media and other areas of globally leading research work. Moretti studies the relationship among geographic concentration, innovation and workplace education levels to identify the direct and indirect benefits. He shows that this clustering favors the promotion of self-feeding processes of growth, directly affecting wage levels, both in the innovative industries as well as the sectors that service them. Indirect benefits also accrue from knowledge and other spillovers, which accompany clustering in innovation hubs. Moretti presents research-based evidence supporting his view that the public and private economic benefits of education and research are such that increased federal subsidies would more than pay for themselves. The author fears the development of geographic segregation and Balkanization along education lines if these issues of long-term economic benefits are left inadequately addressed.
A welcome contribution from a newcomer who provides both a different view and balance in addressing one of the country's more profound problems.Pub Date: May 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-75011-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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