Political Capitalism

In this all new collection of conversations, Noam Chomsky explores the most immediate and urgent concerns: Iran’s challenge to the United States, the deterioration of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the ongoing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the rise of China, and the growing power of the left in Latin America, as well as the Democratic victory in the U.S. midterm elections and its ramifications for the future.

Dylan Ratigan is mad as hell. Infuriated by government corruption and corporate communism, incensed by banksters shaking down taxpayers, and despairing of an ailing health care system, an age-old dependency on foreign oil, and a failing educational system, Ratigan sees an America that has allowed itself to be swindled and robbed. In this book, his first, he rips the lid off our deeply crooked system—and offers a way out.

Prejudential is a concise, authoritative exploration of America’s relationship with race and Black Americans through the lens of the presidents who have been elected to represent all of its people.

The American system is broken: our great nation has become corrupt, inefficient, and mired in ideological debate. The United States may be a global superpower, but every day we fail our own citizens. Our children do not learn what they need to in order to compete in the job market; our adults battle mental illness and addiction, and are imprisoned at staggering rates; and our elderly struggle for financial security and affordable healthcare.

From the bottom to the top of our economy, capitalism is too blunt an instrument to tackle Britain's epidemic of inequality. Soaring rents, unfair taxation and a growing gig economy have brought about unprecedented economic shame: Amazon warehouse workers living in tents, nurses turning to foodbanks, London firemen commuting hundreds of miles to work. Even those higher up the ladder are losing their grip on the life they were promised.

Does America's policy toward China make sense? In this vigorous look at China's political evolution and its future, James Mann explores two popular scenarios: a gradual spread of democracy and human rights, or an eventual upheaval. Mann poses a third scenario: What will happen if Chinese capitalism continues to evolve and expand, but the government fails to liberalize? And why should this matter to Americans? Mann explores this possibility and offers a startling vision of our future with China.

Empires rise, decline, and fall. History has witnessed this cycle with the Romans, the Ottomans, and the British. They have all toppled, and if we are not careful, the US will be the next. Many of today’s enterprises are a gaggle of debt-addicted extreme financial engineering frogs floundering in tepid snake oil. Unfortunately, many will find their demise in the clutches of IP vultures. If we don't play our trump cards right, the next voracious empire—the Middle Kingdom of China—will consume us.

The Soul of Capitalism examines how the greatest wealth-creation engine in the history of the world is failing most of us, why it must be changed, and how intrepid pioneers are beginning to transform it. Best-selling author William Greider analyzes how our relentless pursuit of unprecedented affluence has eroded family life, eaten away at our sense of personal and professional security, corroded our communities, impoverished our spiritual lives, and devastated our natural environment.

Born in Italy, University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales witnessed firsthand the consequences of high inflation and unemployment - paired with rampant nepotism and cronyism - on a country’s economy. This experience profoundly shaped his professional interests, and in 1988 he arrived in the United States, armed with a political passion and the belief that economists should not merely interpret the world, but should change it for the better.

How serious are the threats to our environment? Here is one measure of the problem: if we continue to do exactly what we are doing, with no growth in the human population or the world economy, the world in the latter part of this century will be unfit to live in. Of course human activities are not holding at current levels—they are accelerating, dramatically—and so, too, is the pace of climate disruption, biotic impoverishment, and toxification.

We all dream of the day when the majority of Americans own their own homes. A day when families are healthy, and children are loved and valued. We dream of a country where people work 20 instead of 60 hours a week to make a living. What can we do to prevent a culture ruled by the “Gospel of Greed” from imploding? Luther Wissa believes he has a new way forward. It is radical, it is neither Republican nor Democrat, left nor right, purely Christian nor atheist, and communist nor capitalist. It is a new way rather than a middle way.

This revolutionary book fuses the enduring legacy of socialism - government for the common good - with the best of the environmental movement and the newest insights from sustainability studies. The result is a manifesto in the tradition of Bill McKibben's Eaarth - a road map forward in the face of the growing environmental catastrophe, which is the most complex crisis humanity has ever faced.

Eliot Spitzer built his reputation as Attorney General of New York by redefining the role and purpose of the public prosecutor. The cases he brought against the largest corporations on Wall Street and others - both criminal and civil - targeted pervasive misconduct and structural flaws in the economy that were metastasizing in the years leading up to 2008. The cases themselves and the remedies they produced were precedent setting. Today, after the financial crisis has exposed the faults that were brewing and the ever-expanding gap between the 1% and the 99%, it is clear that Eliot Spitzer was prescient.

We see it everywhere: shady zoning regulations in a small town; taxpayer money diverted into political campaigns; deals that enrich the few at the expense of the many; billion-dollar bailouts; and much more. When private interests need a political favor, they know whom to call. When politicians need money, they also know whom to call. The people involved try to keep most of it concealed behind closed doors. This is the system that prevails in Russia after the fall of Communism. But increasingly it is America's system as well.

The 20th century witnessed the triumph of democratic capitalism in the industrialized West, with widespread popular support for both free markets and representative elections. Today, that political consensus appears to be breaking down, disrupted by polarization and income inequality, widespread dissatisfaction with democratic institutions, and insurgent populism. Tracing the history of democratic capitalism over the past two centuries, Carles Boix explains how we got here - and where we could be headed.

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