Public Economics

This damning account of the forces that have hijacked progress on climate change shares a bold vision of what it will take, politically and economically, to face the existential threat of global warming head-on.

The growing wealth inequality continues to dominate headlines. The divide between the haves and have nots in America is increasingly political and tensions are rising. On one side, the wealthy wield power and advantage, keeping the system operating in their favor, all while retreating into enclaves that separate them further and further from the poor and working class.

The world is at a turning point. The benefits of globalization - through the freer flow of money, people, ideas, and trade - have been many. But rather than a world that is flat, what has emerged is one of jagged peaks and rough, deep valleys characterized by wealth inequality, indebtedness, political recession, and imbalances across the world's economies. These peaks and valleys are undergoing what Michael O'Sullivan calls "the levelling" - a major transition in world economics, finance, and power. What's next is a levelling-out of wealth....

Andy Puzder, the former CEO of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, says that "capitalism" is not a dirty word, and thankfully President Trump understands this; his pro-business policies will bring back economic growth and secure our future. Leftist forces in the United States have been seeking to tarnish the pursuit of prosperity and to paint profit as an evil motivation fit only for greedy plutocrats.

Eighteen years after the genocide that made Rwanda international news, yet left it all but abandoned by the West, the country has achieved a miraculous turnaround. Rising out of the complete devastation of a failed state, Rwanda has emerged on the world stage yet again - this time with a unique model for governance and economic development under the leadership of its strong and decisive president, Paul Kagame. Here, Patricia Crisafulli and Andrea Redmond look at Kagame’s leadership.

Hype Machine: How Greed, Fear and Free Money Crashed Crypto is the definitive take on the crypto boom and bust of the last half-decade. Expansive, compelling, nuanced and eminently entertaining, it explains and de-mystifies the cult of crypto by following the trajectory of its most enigmatic and magnetic of participants, Sam Bankman-Fried. Financial Times journalist Joshua Oliver introduces listeners to the people and ideas that made SBF's remarkable trajectory happen and reveals the hype machine that allowed him to flourish.

Journalist Nick Romeo has spent years covering the world's most innovative economic and policy ideas for the New Yorker. Romeo takes us on an extraordinary journey through the unforgettable stories and successes of people working to build economies that are more equal, just, and liveable....

For centuries, industrialization and factory-based production have been core ingredients in economic growth, development, and innovation. This symbiotic relationship between industrialization and economic prosperity is now changing.

The United States is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with few families in the middle. In this book, MIT economist Peter Temin offers an illuminating way to look at the vanishing middle class. Temin argues that American history and politics, particularly slavery and its aftermath, play an important part in the widening gap between rich and poor. Temin employs a well-known, simple model of a dual economy to examine the dynamics of the rich/poor divide in America.

New York Times best-selling author David A. Stockman is the ultimate Washington insider turned iconoclast. Here, he debunks Trump-O-Nomics and the perils of Washington's addiction to perpetual wars. Stockman says Trump is headed for a great big fall from the imminent crash of a 30-year financial bubble, which he condemned on the campaign trail, but foolishly embraced once in office. Stockman warns "the twin fiscal menace of the Warfare State and Welfare State" will be Trump's undoing.

File your taxes on a postcard? Impossible! Guess again, says Steve Forbes, in his important new audiobook Flat Tax Revolution. In fact, countries around the world have freed their taxpayers to do just that - and we can, too, with a simple flat tax that will slash tax rates, spur economic growth, and put the IRS out of business

Since the New Deal in the 1930s, there have been two eras in our political history: the liberal era, stretching up to the 1970s, followed by the neoliberal era of privatization and austerity ever since. In each period, the dominant ideology was so strong that it united even partisan opponents. But the neoliberal era is collapsing, and the central question of our time is what comes next. As acclaimed legal scholar and policy expert Ganesh Sitaraman argues, two political visions now contend for the future.

We used to make things in this country. We were the dazzling innovators, the undisputed world economic leaders, and with our manufacturing engine driving the process, we built a solid, high-achieving middle class. Now, thanks to policies that are either indifferent - or downright hostile - to manufacturing, we're at the brink of losing it all. If you think this won't affect you, guess again. Author Andrew N. Liveris presents a powerful case for the critical importance of domestic manufacturing.

With the decline of traditional journalism, there are precious few inquiring eyes watching government and the public service. How can any of us know how our tax dollars are being spent? But there is good news. For at least the past decade, governments at all levels have been busy publishing truckloads of data representing official policies and their outcomes. For the most part, that data is available in the public domain and just sits there, waiting for us to come and get it. This book was written with the hope and expectation that sophisticated data analytics tools can tame those ...

Economist Richard Holden examines the virtues and risks of low interest rates, mobile money, and cryptocurrencies and explains how these three elemental forces will continue to play out—in our wallets, on the blockchain, and throughout major economies—in the decades to come. Holden weaves in the stories of three people who have exerted massive influence over the future of modern money: US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin, and Raghuram Rajan, chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

In this sometimes shocking and always riveting book, Robert G. Kaiser who has covered Congress, the White House and national politics for The Washington Post since 1963, explains how and why over the last four decades, Washington became a dysfunctional capital.

Rejecting the old Left/Right ideologies, Rand develops a more pragmatic view capable of delivering practical solutions to this critical problem. A renewed capitalism harnessed to the task is the only way we might replace fossil fuels fast enough to mitigate severe climate risk. If we leave our dogma at the door, Rand argues, we might just build an economy that survives the century.

For speakers who want to make their presentations more impressive than the tens of thousands of speeches delivered (and immediately forgotten) every day, The How of WOW offers a refreshing antidote to the usual formulas. The How of WOW offers hundreds of practical tips, techniques, and illuminating examples to help speakers at every stage of the speech process, from considering an invitation to speak to making sure that the message is remembered even after the speech is over.

America’s economic future is uncertain. Mired in a long crippling economic slump and hamstrung by bitter partisan debate over the growing debt and the role of government, the nation faces substantial challenges, exacerbated by a dearth of vision and common sense among its leaders. Prominent Stanford economist John B. Taylor brings his steady voice of reason to the discussion with a natural solution: start with the country’s founding principles of economic and political freedom and reconstruct its economic foundation from these proven principles.

In order to illuminate the fallacies of economism, James Kwak first offers a primer on supply and demand, market equilibrium, and social welfare: the underpinnings of most popular economic arguments. Then he provides a historical account of how economism became a prevalent mode of thought in the United States - focusing on the people who packaged Econ 101 into sound bites that were then repeated until they took on the aura of truth.