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What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories.
Succinct, accessible, and authoritative, Thomas Piketty’s The Economics of Inequality is the ideal place to start for those who want to understand the fundamental issues at the heart of one the most pressing concerns in contemporary economics and politics. This work now appears in English for the first time.
Economics inequality, uneven concentration of wealth, and prospects of economic growth will stay amongst the top of the world's issues list. Modernization of economic growth as well as a more even spread of knowledge have played a great role in minimizing inequalities at least to a lesser extent than what Karl Marx predicted. However, the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the economic growth rate still adds to the creation of significant inequality.
In his best-selling 2013 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty takes issue with the idea that, despite the odd bump along the way (not least the 2007-08 global financial crisis), inequality tends to decline as capitalism matures. Piketty spent 15 years building an unparalleled database on wealth and income in France, the United States, and a number of other countries. He uses this data to argue that the opposite is true. Capitalism's natural tendency is, he says, to move toward ever-greater inequality.
Ever since we produced our course Thinking About Capitalism, customers have expressed interest in a follow-up course that could help them understand socialism in the same way. After much consideration, we determined that it actually would be more beneficial to create a course that compares and contrasts the two major global economic theories, examining them in ways that move past the polemics many of us are used to and looking at these systems as they relate to one another and the world at large.
With the warmth and lucidity that have made him one of our most important public voices, Robert B. Reich makes the case for a generous, inclusive understanding of the American project, centering on the moral obligations of citizenship. Rooting his argument in everyday reality and common sense, Reich demonstrates the existence of a common good, and argues that it is this that defines a society or a nation. Societies and nations undergo virtuous cycles that reinforce and build the common good, as well as vicious cycles that undermine it. Over the past five decades, Reich contends, America has been in a slowly accelerating vicious cycle.
What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories.
Succinct, accessible, and authoritative, Thomas Piketty’s The Economics of Inequality is the ideal place to start for those who want to understand the fundamental issues at the heart of one the most pressing concerns in contemporary economics and politics. This work now appears in English for the first time.
Economics inequality, uneven concentration of wealth, and prospects of economic growth will stay amongst the top of the world's issues list. Modernization of economic growth as well as a more even spread of knowledge have played a great role in minimizing inequalities at least to a lesser extent than what Karl Marx predicted. However, the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the economic growth rate still adds to the creation of significant inequality.
In his best-selling 2013 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty takes issue with the idea that, despite the odd bump along the way (not least the 2007-08 global financial crisis), inequality tends to decline as capitalism matures. Piketty spent 15 years building an unparalleled database on wealth and income in France, the United States, and a number of other countries. He uses this data to argue that the opposite is true. Capitalism's natural tendency is, he says, to move toward ever-greater inequality.
Ever since we produced our course Thinking About Capitalism, customers have expressed interest in a follow-up course that could help them understand socialism in the same way. After much consideration, we determined that it actually would be more beneficial to create a course that compares and contrasts the two major global economic theories, examining them in ways that move past the polemics many of us are used to and looking at these systems as they relate to one another and the world at large.
With the warmth and lucidity that have made him one of our most important public voices, Robert B. Reich makes the case for a generous, inclusive understanding of the American project, centering on the moral obligations of citizenship. Rooting his argument in everyday reality and common sense, Reich demonstrates the existence of a common good, and argues that it is this that defines a society or a nation. Societies and nations undergo virtuous cycles that reinforce and build the common good, as well as vicious cycles that undermine it. Over the past five decades, Reich contends, America has been in a slowly accelerating vicious cycle.
This is key takeaways and analysis of the book and not the original book. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty is an examination of the causes of economic inequality. Authors Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson conclude that underdevelopment is caused by political institutions and not by geography, climate, or other cultural factors. Elites in underdeveloped countries deliberately plunder their people and keep them impoverished.
The Strange Order of Things is a pathbreaking investigation into homeostasis, the condition that regulates human physiology within the range that makes possible not only the survival but also the flourishing of life. Antonio Damasio makes clear that we descend biologically, psychologically, and even socially from a long lineage that begins with single living cells; that our minds and cultures are linked by an invisible thread to the ways and means of ancient unicellular life and other primitive life-forms.
Dark Money by Jane Mayer profiles the wealthy donors who have funded and established organizations to promote libertarian ideals, particularly the brothers Charles and David Koch. They and their two other brothers were raised by parents who promoted free-market capitalism and were suspicious of anything related or sympathetic to Communism. The four Koch brothers inherited portions of their father's oil business, and later Charles and David conspired to buy out their other brothers' portions of the company....
No working journalist knows Donald Trump better than David Cay Johnston, who first met the 45th president in 1988 and has tracked him ever since. Featuring Johnston's renowned skill in bringing government policy to life, this crucial book explains how our daily lives will be affected by the actions of the Trump Administration. This book is essential listening for all Americans.
Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths is an immersive look at the history and development of several algorithms used to solve computer science problems. It also considers potential applications of algorithms in human life including memory storage and network communication.
Early in the 21st century, a quiet revolution occurred. For the first time, the major developed economies began to invest more in intangible assets, like design, branding, R&D, or software, than in tangible assets, like machinery, buildings, and computers. For all sorts of businesses, from tech firms and pharma companies to coffee shops and gyms, the ability to deploy assets that one can neither see nor touch is increasingly the main source of long-term success.
With Instaread Summaries, you can get the summary of a book in 30 minutes or less. We read every chapter, summarize, and analyze it for your convenience. This is an Instaread Summary of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the 20th century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.
David Graeber's 2011 book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, seeks to overturn hundreds of years of economic theory, specifically the idea that people have a natural inclination to trade with each other and that the concept of money developed spontaneously to overcome the inefficiencies of a bartering system. The US-born social activist uses his training as an anthropologist to trace the histories of money and of debt and reaches the conclusion that money was in fact created by the state as a means of exploiting the poor.
Neoliberalism - the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action - has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage.
A summary of Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. Predictably Irrational provides a data-driven window into the ways in which the human mind fails to make rational choices time and time again. While some of these irrational decisions are humorous or trivial, in many cases these behaviors can have far-ranging implications for governments and health care systems.
Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton is a guide to using principled negotiation techniques, rather than positional bargaining that makes for less successful negotiations. Positional bargaining occurs when two people argue over a particular concession, usually reaching an arbitrary compromise. In those instances the agreement usually does not address the interests of both negotiators. Principled negotiations find more creative, wise outcomes to conflicts....
Summary of Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty | Includes Analysis
Preview:
Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a study of inequity, both historically and in the present. The book describes how the concentration of wealth has changed over time. Its central thesis is that return on capital is greater than growth over time, which means that capital and inequality inevitably increase. The book also considers the ways governments might address the increasing concentration of wealth in the future.
Many economists have argued that increasing worker productivity in the modern era will inevitably result in reduced inequality. The historical record suggests that this is untrue. For most of history, there has been a huge gap between the rich and poor with no real middle class.
That changed in developed countries during the twentieth century for a number of reasons. First, two world wars caused massive shocks to the status quo and resulted in severe losses to many holders of capital.
PLEASE NOTE: This is key takeaways and analysis of the book and NOT the original book.
Inside this Instaread summary of Capital in the Twenty-First Century:
About the Author
With Instaread, you can get the key takeaways, summary and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.
it fulfilled my expectations and then some. brief but informative. The reader does a good job
Nicely structured summaries give a clear picture of how money works to create and maintain economic inequality. It interestingly does not pose any practical solutions to what the author describes as a political issue. If money is a political and not an economic issue then a political solution is what would seem to be needed. But none is suggested. Who then will possibly come forward to advance one? Market Capitalism and Economic Rationalism would appear to require a political breaking system, apparently from the beneficiaries of the problem! Guess that's not likely to happen any time soon. It is more than a little disturbing to think that some form of extremism may be the only way out!