Political Finance

"Unto this last" est un essai de John Ruskin, écrivain, poète, critique d'art et peintre anglais sur l'économie, paru pour la première fois en décembre 1860 dans le mensuel Cornhill Magazine sous forme d'articles. Très critique à l'égard des économistes capitalistes du XVIIIe et du XIXe siècle, c'est un précurseur de l'économie sociale.

This is volume two—what Henry George called "the Solution to the Problem". This landmark treatise by the great economist Henry George was first published in 1879. George's work became the seminal analysis of the political economy which inspired most, if not all, the prominent thinkers of the Progressive Movement and many others of great influence: Upton Sinclair, John Dewey, George Bernard Shaw, Friedrich Hayek, H. G. Wells, Clarence Darrow, and Leo Tolstoy, to name but a few. His analyses and proposals are referred to as "Georgism".

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.

America's middle class, the driver of so much of our economic success and political stability, is rapidly disappearing, forcing us to confront the fear that we are slipping as a nation - that our children and grandchildren will enjoy fewer opportunities and face a lower standard of living than we did. It's the dark flipside of the American Dream - an American Nightmare of our own making.

We're overusing the earth's finite resources, and yet excessive consumption is failing to improve our lives. In Enough Is Enough, Rob Dietz and Dan O'Neill lay out a visionary but realistic alternative to the perpetual pursuit of economic growth-an economy where the goal is not more but enough.

Behind every financial crisis lurks a "political bubble" - policy biases that foster market behaviors leading to financial instability. Rather than tilting against risky behavior, political bubbles - arising from a potent combination of beliefs, institutions, and interests - aid, abet, and amplify risk.

Since the early days of the American republic, political thinkers have maintained that a grossly unequal division of property, wealth, and power would lead to the erosion of democratic life. Yet over the past thirty-five years, neoconservatives and neoliberals alike have redrawn the tenets of American liberalism. Nowhere is this more evident than in our current mainstream political discourse, in which the politics of economic inequality are rarely discussed.

During the last two decades, there has been much scholarly and popular interest in the financialization of the American economy-why the turn to finance has taken place, what constituted it, and what has come out of it. In Disembedded, Basak Kus draws from the theories of Karl Polanyi-one of the greatest and most influential political economists of the twentieth century-to answer these questions.

Where fresh water appears to be abundant and generally accessible, chronic pollution may be relatively ignored as a public issue. Yet there are those whose lives, livelihoods, and traditions are touched directly by the destructive albeit essential relationship between humans and water.

En Un pequeño empujón, considerado ya un clásico y uno de los mejores libros sobre economía y política de las últimas décadas, Cass R. Sunstein y Richard H. Thaler, premio Nobel de Economía, observan cómo nuestras percepciones y decisiones dependen del modo en que se organizan ante nosotros las diferentes opciones. Gobiernos y empresas, pero también padres, profesores y médicos, se convierten así en una especie de «arquitectos de la elección».

From the American Revolution through the Civil Rights movement, Americans have long mobilized against political, social, and economic privilege. Hierarchies based on inheritance, wealth, and political preferment were treated as obnoxious and a threat to democracy. Mass movements envisioned a new world supplanting dog-eat-dog capitalism. But over the last half-century that political will and cultural imagination have vanished. Why? The Age of Acquiescence seeks to solve that mystery.

We Are Better Than This fundamentally reframes budget debates in the United States. Author Edward D. Kleinbard explains how the public's preoccupation with tax policy alone has obscured any understanding of government's ability to complement the private sector through investment and insurance programs that enhance the general welfare and prosperity of our society at large.

According to business reporter Charles Gasparino, President Obama is faking his outrage at Wall Street, and his calls for new policies to rein in banks that are "too big to fail" are just pabulum. In reality, Obama has climbed into bed with Wall Street CEOs, giving them what they want so they will support his liberal, big-government agenda.

In today's economic and political climate, protecting yourself means asking the right questions. You can't ask the right questions if your mind's encumbered by what you think you may understand. Who's the man behind the curtain? What's this thing we call money? It's not what you think. We've burdened government with all our problems but do they have the capacity to solve them? Do we want them to? What's the difference between freedom "of" and freedom "from" and why's it important? Why is this one of the most important questions you can ask?

Political gridlock in Washington…the lingering effects of the financial crisis…structural problems such as unemployment and the skills gap of our work force…the mediocre K-12 educational system. Are our best days behind us? Joel Kurtzman persuasively shows why all the talk about America's decline is not only baseless but dead wrong. Our best days, are, in fact, ahead of us.

In his new book, economist Dean Baker debunks the myth that conservatives favor the market over government intervention. In fact, conservatives rely on a range of "nanny state" policies that ensure the rich get richer while leaving most Americans worse off. It's time for the rules to change. Sound economic policy should harness the market in ways that produce desirable social outcomes: decent wages, good jobs, and affordable health care.

Long before America's recent economic downturn, beltway politicians knew the U.S. was going bankrupt. Yet even after several so-called "change" elections, the government has continued its wasteful ways in the face of imminent danger. With passion and clarity, Coburn explains why Washington resists change so fiercely and offers controversial yet common-sense solutions to secure the nation's future. At a time when millions of Americans are speculating about what is broken in Washington, The Debt Bomb is a candid, thoughtful, nonpartisan exposé of the real problems inside our government.

The U.S. healthcare system is in critical condition--but this should come as a surprise to no one. Yet until now the solutions proposed have been unworkable, pie-in-the-sky plans that have had little chance of becoming law and even less of succeeding. In Code Red, David Dranove, one of the nation's leading experts on the economics of healthcare, proposes a set of feasible solutions that address access, efficiency, and quality.

Ludwig von Mises said there can never be too much of a good theory. Salerno proves it in this sweeping and nearly comprehensive audiobook on applied Austrian monetary theory. He uses the Mises/Rothbard theory of money to reinterpret historical episodes, reevaluate the history of thought, closely examine the Federal Reserve policy, seek out cause and effect in business cycles, provide a new understanding of war and social unrest, and clarify the relationship between the state and the central bank.

Based on 18 months of reporting, Woodward's 17th book The Price of Politics is an intimate, documented examination of how President Obama and the highest profile Republican and Democratic leaders in the United States Congress attempted to restore the American economy and improve the federal government's fiscal condition over three and one half years. The Price of Politics addresses the key issue of the presidential and congressional campaigns: the condition of the American economy.