Book Description
America's leaders say the economy is strong and getting stronger. But ordinary Americans aren't buying it. They see what the rosy statistics hide: We are all struggling under the weight of terrifying economic instability. No matter how well educated and hard working we are, we know that the bottom can fall out at any moment. Meanwhile, the safety net that once protected us is fast unraveling. With retirement plans in growing jeopardy while health coverage erodes, more and more economic risk is shifting from government and business onto the fragile shoulders of the American family. In The Great Risk Shift, Jacob S. Hacker lays bare this unsettling new economic climate, showing how it has come about, what it is doing to our families, and how we can fight back. Behind this shift, he contends, is the Personal Responsibility Crusade, eagerly embraced by corporate leaders and Republican politicians who speak of a nirvana of economic empowerment, an "ownership society" in which Americans are free to choose. But as Hacker reveals, the result has been quite different: a harsh new world of economic insecurity, in which far too many Americans are free to lose. The book documents how two great pillars of economic security--the family and the workplace--guarantee far less financial stability than they once did. The final leg of economic support--the public and private benefits that workers and families get when economic disaster strikes--has dangerously eroded as political leaders and corporations increasingly cut back protections of our health care, our income security, and our retirement pensions. Hacker concludes by advocating an "insurance and opportunity society" that would safeguard economic security and expand economic opportunity, ensuring that all Americans have the basic financial security they need to reach for and achieve the American Dream. Jacob Hacker brings into focus as never before the pressures that the Great Risk Shift exerts on our pocketbooks and on our lives. Blending powerful human stories, big-picture analysis, and compelling ideas for reform, this remarkable volume will hit a nerve, serving as a rallying point in the vital struggle for economic security in an increasingly uncertain world.
Customer Reviews:
A book to avoid out of respect to fellow taxpayers.......2007-07-30
My book came, and I flipped through it to the last chapter--the REAL reason why I got this book.
While I knew this was a whiny tome about how people are being expected to shoulder more and more of their own social burdens, the title did contain a "how you can fight back" clause.
Well, the so-called "fighting back" involves exchanging one set of social programs for another, for example:
Medicare--of course, this would become Universal Health Care.
Retirement--instead of the accounts we have now, there'd be a Universal Savings account invented to take it's place. This account would cover any kind of savings you can imagine--retirement, college, etc., and would take the place of the ailing Social Security program.
Welfare--another magical account would be created to cover "insecurity": periods of unemployment, downshifting or pay cuts, high inflation, death of a working spouse, etc. to take the place of the existing food stamp, AFDC, unemployment, and/or disability. This would become Universal Insurance.
In short, the author proposes turning America into a highly-taxed, highly-coddled state like Denmark, where all is provided at taxpayer expense (up to 80% of people's pay), and only enough is left for housing, food, gas, and fun (like there'd be any fun on THAT plan!). Where would low-income earners come up with the money for THIS plan?
A quick calculation reveals that we couldn't even afford to pay rent on the 20% of our remaining income, let alone eat and commute, on our middle-class income with this plan.
Taxpayers would contribute to the new accounts, and the government would administer them just like it does now, except that your dollars would have your name on them. Personally, my dollars have my name on them now with my own private accounts, and I'm not paying for something I don't want or need.
There are solutions to these problems in existence now, but few are able to (or choose to) take advantage of them. This plan would take the choice out of the equation, and as far as I can see, doesn't account for the entrepreneurial spirit or self-employment.
If you prefer being self-sufficient, self-reliant, personally responsible, and to live below your means, then stay away from this book. There's nothing here for you except anger. This plan is clearly geared for the mindless sheep out there who want something for nothing, only this plan shows how dear the cost of that something would be--we're already paying up to 40% of our incomes in various taxes just to support people and government now!
What got us into trouble as a country is the fact that government borrows against assets--what's to say the government won't borrow against THESE assets as well? I don't want my accounts to be used as collateral by Uncle Sam.
Where oh where is the INCENTIVE to improve one's self, dear author? This is what got the "have-nots" into the position they're in now!! We've been leading horses to water for so long, they now expect us to bring it to them--and we STILL can't make them drink.
Rising Inequality and Anxiety in America.......2007-05-11
This past fall I heard Jacob Hacker speak about his work in The Great Risk Shift, and I just finally got around to reading the book. What I like about Hacker is that he not only critically examines complex political and societal issues, but he beautifully transforms his conceptions into practical solutions. He doesn't just ask, "What can we do?" He shows us how it can be done.
There are points I agree with in his book and other points I still have some reservations about, but his explanations and reasoning is thoroughly engaging nonetheless. For instance, he proposes a health coverage plan that reemphasizes national concerns about health care security. His proposal places more obligations on employers, which in my opinion, is a plausible expectation if the United States is not willing to adopt a universal health coverage plan. Hacker points out that a large contributor to the rise in bankruptcies is a result of healthcare costs. It's clear that health care insecurity poses great risks to countless Americans from all different placements of the socioeconomic spectrum.
I did face some apprehension and concern regarding his "universal insurance" proposal. This insurance would be designed to protect families in the event of a threatening change in finances and security - for instance a drastic pay decrease. Although I can agree that current job market conditions are very unstable (I myself have faced a drastic pay decrease formerly working in the business sector), I also feel as though we generally have a highly exaggerated sense of materialism and pretentious consumption patterns in America. How will these factors be accounted for when claiming instability and who is entitled to what? Is this where federal money should go when much larger issues regarding our nation's schools, health and extreme poverty are being neglected?
In the Great Risk Shift, Hacker identifies significant points of concern for Americans and the anxieties and rising inequality pressing citizens. With higher and higher concerns, these are questions we will be continually readdressing for years to come. This book proves Hacker always has amazing ideas and great things to say. We can contiunally look forward to his new approaches at examining significant social and political issues.
An attempt to ameliorate economic volatility.......2006-12-16
Although Jacob Hacker exaggerates the level of risk shift in the "Great Risk Shift", he makes some public policy proposals that deserve at least debate if not adoption.
Much of the book is a critique of what he calls "The Personal Responsibility Crusade", which he views as the vehicle for the shift. He tends to overreach at times. Much of the talk I have heard regarding "personal responsibility" was directed about teenage pregnancy or fathers who abandon those they impregnate and/or their children. He is right that "personal responsibility" is sometimes invoked as an argument against certain government social programs but those programs also have very real budgetary concerns that feed most of the efforts to constrain them.
Some of his arguments also seem peculiar. On page 66 Hacker quotes some corporate statements to outline what he calls the "new contract" for workers. "The only job security is a successful business" and "if loyalty means that this company will ignore poor performance, the loyalty is off the table". It is strange he would cite these as somehow new, when were they not true? Even under the "old contract", an unsuccessful business could not offer job security, nor was poor performance ignored.
Hacker makes a compelling case that there is more volatility in incomes (although incomes are generally higher) than in the past. His argument that this was essentially by design is a little less compelling. The three decades after World War II is his (and that of many others) reference point for security. That era can't be recreated. Fortunately, he doesn't resort to the easy (but unwise) option of endorsing trade protectionism, rather he recognizes the globalized economy is a fact of life and suggests a series of measures to mitigate the greater risk born by workers.
For health care coverage, he proposes something called "Medicare Plus", which is a variation on "pay or play" coverage proposals, which require employers to cover their employees or pay into the government plan that covered their employees and everyone outside of the employer market. It isn't really clear why this proposal is better than a universal government run system, other than Hacker seems to think the latter can't be enacted.
He also wants to enhance unemployment insurance and introduce "wage insurance" (for those who are displaced and take a new job that pays less than their previous job).
He also makes a proposal that appears to be novel, what he calls "universal insurance" that would cover families from an array of potential vicissitudes. Both this idea and wage insurance do not have a track record (at least not in the United States) and may not work as well in practice as they might in theory, but they at least deserve discussion.
Strong on describing the issue; Weak on solutions.......2006-11-20
"The Great Risk Shift" has much to recommend it. Hacker cogently explains the way risk has been transferred since the New Deal and Great Society eras (when health care, pensions and the like were seen as collective or corporate responsibility) to individuals. Hacker is at his best in describing the issue -- indemnity medical plans replaced with HMOs or medical savings accounts; defined benefit pension plans replaced with defined contribution plans or 401(k)s; secure, full-time jobs replaced with several part-time jobs cobbled together to make a less-than-full-time salary; broken families who cannot be relied upon for support.
Where the book falters, however, is in its view that every risk should be socialized, at least to some extent. When it comes to catastrophic health risks, many would agree that society should assist. I tend to agree with Hacker that one's medical insurance should not depend on one's employer: some businesses cannot afford adequate insurance for their employees. Likewise, adequate health insurance cannot always be purchased in the market: insurance companies "cherry pick" the healthiest candidates. Thus, Hacker has convinced me that we need some sort of baseline national health insurance, at least for significant or catastrophic illnesses (after all, we have something like it today, as those with health insurance subsidize the emergency room visits of those without it). However, we need to beware of a system with Canada-style rigidity or one which leaves no room for innovations.
Fewer would want to subsidize pensions, however, and Hacker fails to provide a real solution. The problem with defined contribution plans is not that they cannot work, but that they must be adequately funded. They can work if employers contribute enough to them so that employees can have a real pension when they retire. Likewise, individuals should be allowed to put greater amounts of pre-tax income into 401(k)s, and companies should be able to match a greater amount dollar-for-dollar. (This is the type of free-market solution that Hacker does not favor, as he believes individuals are not always able to manage their own 401(k) money.) In any event, Hacker provides no advice for those who find themselves in a defined contribution plan, under the present rules, other than "save more and stop spending on luxuries." As for broken families, that is a trend that predates "the risk shift" and will not be solved by the government. Although Hacker wants more risks to be socialized, it is important to ask what this will cost, and whether we will have a Eurpoean-style economy at the end of it.
Hacker has correctly identified the trend to shift risk from government and corporations to individuals. The question is whether the solutions he suggests will be appropriate and cost-effective. The jury is still out.
Unchallenged Assumptions.......2006-11-16
From his comfortable tenure at Yale, Jacob Hacker offers us an analysis of where things have gone wrong with the American economic system. He identifies three traditional pillars of economic security:
1. The family
2. The workplace
3. Public and private benefits
The first two are under siege. The third one is at risk. Hacker argues that the erosion of that third one - public and private benefits - is not inevitable.
Fair enough. But let's start with the family. The decrease in the stability of the family unit over the years didn't just happen. Victims of the Jerry Springerization of the family - as a mainstream example of how far things have gone askew - have no one to blame but themselves. The freedom to treat family relationships as a disposable commodity is bound to come with some trade-offs. Economic security is one of them. While the erosion of family bonds has been widespread, it is not inevitable either.
As for the other two pillars, they revolve around the ability of commerce to fund them. More corporate profits means more tax revenues - and at least the possibility of more jobs. Without corporate profits, we have no corporations to bash, no corporate profits to tax, and no jobs or benefits, public or private.
Yes, traditional jobs are under siege and traditional benefit programs are morphing. Hacker says we have choices. Yes, we do.
We could, as a society, opt to have more stable jobs, even in an era of increasingly worldwide competition. This is a valid choice. Many parts of Europe have opted for lower overall standards of living in exchange for greater job security and more leisure. Many EU citizens appear willing to tolerate double-digit long-term unemployment rates and higher tax rates in exchange for generous social safety nets.
Of course, we in America have always been looking for the free lunch. Look at U.S. savings rates, which are negative. A critical examination across all socioeconomic classes suggests that the personal saving deficit may have more to do with an insatiable appetite for big-screen televisions, $90 a month cable services, frequent restaurant dining, coiffed hair and acrylic nails, rather than for prudent expenditures on basics like food and shelter.
But by all means, we should welcome Mr. Hacker's debate. It will be useful to make explicit the trade-offs that come to light in the process.
Book Description
Moral Leadership brings together in one comprehensive volume essays from leading scholars in law, leadership, psychology, political science, and ethics to provide practical, theoretical policy guidance. The authors explore key questions about moral leadership such as:
- How do leaders form, sustain, and transmit moral commitments?
- Under what conditions are those processes most effective?
- What is the impact of ethics officers, codes, training programs, and similar initiatives?
- How do standards and practices vary across context and culture?
- What can we do at the individual, organizational, and societal level to foster moral leadership?
Throughout the book, the contributors identify what people know, and only think they know, about the role of ethics in key decision-making positions. The essays focus on issues such as the definition and importance of moral leadership and the factors that influence its exercise, along with practical strategies for promoting ethical behavior. Moral Leadership addresses the dynamics of moral leadership, with particular emphasis on major obstacles that stand in its way: impaired judgment, self-interest, and power. Finally, the book explores moral leadership in a variety of contextsbusiness and the professions, nonprofit organizations, and the international arena.
Book Description
How can property rights be protected and contracts be enforced in countries where the rule of law is ineffective or absent? How can firms from advanced market economies do business in such circumstances? In Lawlessness and Economics, Avinash Dixit examines the theory of private institutions that transcend or supplement weak economic governance from the state.
In much of the world and through much of history, private mechanisms--such as long-term relationships, arbitration, social networks to disseminate information and norms to impose sanctions, and for-profit enforcement services--have grown up in place of formal, state-governed institutions. Even in countries with strong legal systems, many of these mechanisms continue under the shadow of the law. Numerous case studies and empirical investigations have demonstrated the variety, importance, and merits, and drawbacks of such institutions.
This book builds on these studies and constructs a toolkit of theoretical models to analyze them. The models shed new conceptual light on the different modes of governance, and deepen our understanding of the interaction of the alternative institutions with each other and with the government's law. For example, one model explains the limit on the size of social networks and illuminates problems in the transition to more formal legal systems as economies grow beyond this limit. Other models explain why for-profit enforcement is inefficient. The models also help us understand why state law dovetails with some non-state institutions and collides with others. This can help less-developed countries and transition economies devise better processes for the introduction or reform of their formal legal systems.
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Creation and Transfer of Knowledge: Institutions and Incentives
Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 3540644261 |
Book Description
Is knowledge an economic good? Which are the characteristics of the institutions regulating the production and diffusion of knowledge? Cumulation of knowledge is a key determinant of economic growth, but only recently knowledge has moved to the core of economic analysis. Recent literature also gives profound insights into events like scientific progress, artistic and craft development which have been rarely addressed as socio-economic institutions, being the domain of sociologists and historians rather than economists. This volume adopts a multidisciplinary approach to bring knowledge in the focus of attention, as a key economic issue.
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Advances in Household Economics, Consumer Behaviour And Economic Policy
Manufacturer: Ashgate Publishing
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ASIN: 0754643999 |
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- British authors and research
- European psychologists examine money and the mind
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The Psychology of Money
Adrian Furnham
Manufacturer: Routledge
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Money, Money, Money: The Search for Wealth and the Pursuit of Happiness
ASIN: 0415146062 |
Book Description
Why do some people become misers and others gamblers, spendthrifts and tycoons, and why do some people gain more pleasure from giving away money than from retaining it?
Comprehensive and cross-cultural, The Psychology of Money integrates fascinating and scattered literature from many disciplines to investigate the influence of money on our behavior and psyches. Including the most recent material to date, the authors draw from sources as diverse as anthropology, history and psychology. The reader will come away not only with a better understanding of how and why people think about, feel toward, accumulate and spend money, but why its discussion has so often been considered "taboo."
Customer Reviews:
British authors and research.......2007-01-09
The topic of this book is of interest to me but the vast majority of the material has quite a British slant to it. The author makes some very good points..one being that we have developed many intuitive programs to help children learn money responsibilities but unlike other areas of development have done no research to see which kinds of parent teaching methods are most effective. The writing is broad in spectrum but I must admit I found my interest waning with the studies of pocket money in British children. Also I felt some of the material was a bit dated but I must give them credit for producing a well researched book on the topic. Now if only some US psychologists would write a comprehensive review of the topic. Dr. Mary Gresham Atlanta Ga
European psychologists examine money and the mind.......1998-07-10
As a researcher in the field of economic psychology, I am impressed by Furnham and Argyle's depth of knowledge in this area. Most of the research reported in this book is European in perspective, but the European's have always outpaced American economists and psychologists in this field. I am especially pleased to report that the authors have become aware that we poor American scholoars do exist and personally, I am estatic that they cite several of the research articles that I have written in the last five years. Those interested in the cross cultural study of money in this age of a global economy should read this book very closely to discover the differences and similarities in the human mind when it comes to thoughts about money. It is my hope that this book has many readers and that it creates more practical and academic perspsectives on the study of the mind and money around the world.
Book Description
What has brought about the widespread public provision of welfare and income security within free-market liberalism? Some social scientists have regarded welfare as a preindustrial atavism; others, as a functional requirement of industrial society. Most recently, scholars have stressed the reformist actions of center-left parties during the decades following World War II, the workings of "new" post-industrial politics lately, and a multifaceted role of politics and state institutions overall. Alexander Hicks thoroughly revises these views, stressing the enduring significance of class organizations, however politically embedded, from the era of Bismark until the present.
Social Democracy and Welfare Capitalism describes and explains income security programs in affluent and democratic capitalist nations, from the proto-democratic innovators of the 1880s to the globally buffeted democracies of the 1990s. Hicks's account stresses the reformist role of employee political and economic organization and derivative institutions, in particular, social democratic parties, labor unions, and neo-corporatist arrangements. These forces, arrayed as the elements of a transnational and century-long social democratic movement, give direction and continuity to the emergence, development, and contestation of income security policies.
Customer Reviews:
Building Welfare States.......2002-09-17
Building welfare states to secure citizens against the income losses associated with unemployment, sickness and old age has been one of the major projects of government in all rich capitalist democracies in the 20th century. But why have some countries done more than others and done it in such different ways? Alex Hicks' Social Democracy and Welfare Capitalism rivals all of its predecessors in making these large questions both theoretically and empirically tractable. In six core analytical chapters covering six historical periods, Hicks takes us on an intellectual journey that begins with Bismarck (the emergence of welfare states) and ends with the younger Bush (the "crisis" of welfare states).
What is decidedly novel here is the fact that for each period Hicks brings to bear new and original evidence (not just the usual review of secondary sources) that he uses to test well identified research hypotheses that are theoretically based and historically contextualized. For comparative-historical analysis of this sort one needs to know lots of history and the history of lots of countries - a lifetime's work.
The story begins with the social movements and political actors, especially labor unions and reformist political parties, that created the foundations of modern social policy in the first half of the century and is carried forward to the present by the political institutions that were their progeny. It concludes with a careful analysis of the impact of globalization and demographic change on late 20th century welfare state "retrenchment" and suggests that there may be less here than meets the eye.
Social Democracy and Welfare Capitalism is social science in its best sense. It is not bedtime reading but the reward is large: over a century of welfare state history, carefully analysed, in 250 tightly argued pages.
Explaining a Century of Social Policy.......2002-09-16
In his prodigious Social Democracy and Welfare Capitalism, Alexander Hicks appraises the social democratic thesis through several phases of welfare state development. The result often goes against the conventional wisdom and in compelling ways.
Hicks's goals are nothing if not ambitious. He sets out to explain "the variable course of income security programs and benefits in relatively affluent, democratic capitalist nations" from the 1880s until the present. And he argues "for the
promise of class mobilization as a core element in the explanation of income security policy's differential development..."
He sees social democracy as a transnational social movement whose different manifestations-including its earliest mobilization, its governance modes, and its neo-corporatist forms-have driven social policy. That said, he supplements his argumentation by analyzing the mediating role of state structures on these processes.
What is remarkable is that Hicks speaks forcefully to so many
different debates about social policy-with an innovative argument about the evolving impact of social democracy over the last century, formal techniques, and historical sophistication. Social Democracy and Welfare Capitalism is required reading for both historical and quantitative scholars of social policy and others hoping to understand the transformation of states into welfare states over the last century.
Edwin Amenta, New York University
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Rhetoric, Innovation, Technology: Case Studies of Technical Communication in Technology Transfer
Stephen Doheny-Farina
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0262041294 |
Book Description
Improving the way that technology is transferred from laboratory to marketplace is central to improving American productivity and competitiveness in a global economy. In this provocative analysis, Stephen Doheny-Farina shows that the technical and commercial processes of turning technologies into products are, in significant ways, communication processes. He explores the key role that technical communicators must play in the movement of technology from expert designers and developers to users. Several lengthy case studies illustrate the rhetorical issues involved in technology transfers as well as the rhetorical barriers to their success.
Doheny-Farina argues that processes typically called information transfer and technology transfer are not transfers at all but instead are series of personal constructions and reconstructions of knowledge, expertise, and technologies by the participants attempting to adapt technological innovations for social uses.
Underscoring the rhetorical nature of any technology transfer, the case studies describe the powerful effect that a startup company's business plan can have on its future (including the many factors that surround the writing of a business plan), the rhetorical barriers to the transfer of an experimental artificial heart from a university research hospital to a biomedical products manufacturer, and two compelling situations that call for the inclusion of technical writers in new product development from its inception.
A final chapter focuses on the important elements in the education of technical communicators and an appendix discusses classroom applications and includes a fictional case incorporating issues of intraorganizational barriers to collaboration in the new product development process.
Stephen Doheny-Farina is Assistant Professor in the Technical Communications Department at Clarkson University. His previous book, Effective Documentation received the 1989 Award for the Best Collection of Essays, the National Council of Teachers of English Awards for Scientific and Technical Communication.
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Building the Cold War Consensus: The Political Economy of U.S. National Security Policy, 1949-51
Benjamin Fordham
Manufacturer: University of Michigan Press
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ASIN: 0472108875 |
Book Description
In 1950, the U.S. military budget more than tripled while plans for a national health care system and other new social welfare programs disappeared from the agenda. At the same time, the official campaign against the influence of radicals in American life reached new heights. Benjamin Fordham suggests that these domestic and foreign policy outcomes are closely related. The Truman administration's efforts to fund its ambitious and expensive foreign policy required it to sacrifice much of its domestic agenda and acquiesce to conservative demands for a campaign against radicals in the labor movement and elsewhere.
Using a statistical analysis of the economic sources of support and opposition to the Truman Administration's foreign policy, and a historical account of the crucial period between the summer of 1949 and the winter of 1951, Fordham integrates the political struggle over NSC 68, the decision to intervene in the Korean War, and congressional debates over the Fair Deal, McCarthyism and military spending. The Truman Administration's policy was politically successful not only because it appealed to internationally oriented sectors of the U.S. economy, but also because it was linked to domestic policies favored by domestically oriented, labor-sensitive sectors that would otherwise have opposed it.
This interpretation of Cold War foreign policy will interest political scientists and historians concerned with the origins of the Cold War, American social welfare policy, McCarthyism, and the Korean War, and the theoretical argument it advances will be of interest broadly to scholars of U.S. foreign policy, American politics, and international relations theory.
Benjamin O. Fordham is Assistant Professor of Political Science, State University of New York at Albany.
Book Description
When economists wrestle with issues such as unemployment, inflation, or budget deficits, they do so by incorporating an impersonal, detached mode of reasoning. But economists also analyze issues that, to others, do not typically fall within the realm of economic reasoning, such as organ transplants, cigarette addiction, smoking in public, and product safety. Trade-Offs is an introduction to the economic approach to analyzing these controversial public policy issues.
Harold Winter provides readers with the analytical tools needed to identify and understand the trade-offs associated with these topics. By considering both the costs and benefits of potential policy solutions, Winter stresses that real-world policy decision making is best served by an explicit recognition of as many trade-offs as possible.
Intellectually stimulating yet accessible and entertaining, Trade-Offs will be appreciated by students of economics, public policy, health administration, political science, and law, as well as by anyone who follows current social policy debates.
Customer Reviews:
Short and sweet........2007-06-23
This no non-sense, straight to the point book demonstrates clearly that no solutions exist to any social situation. There are only trade-offs. I especially liked his argument that there may be too little smoking in the world.
Winter clearly understands that pleasure, life, and many other things do indeed have a dollar value associated with them. Ignoring this exposes you to a variety of logical flaws, leading to false or misleading solutions.
Excellent........2006-07-27
Excellent, EXCELLENT book.
Though, I beg to ask, why is it so short?
I started recommending this to students. And then told them not to waste their time with "Freakonomics".
Great text.......2006-05-23
For the past 6 months or so, I have been frantically searching for a text I can use for a second year policy econ course for non-majors. I'd found nothing that covered the range of topics I wanted or at the appropriate level. This text is perfect; I wish I'd found it before the uni bookstore's cut off date! Each chapter would have to be supplemented with additional readings to provide the appropriate depth, but the coverage is almost perfect for the kind of course I'm teaching. Strongly recommended.
Good stuff - and a good read.......2006-02-23
I like it! Economics made easy and fun, a la "Freakonomics."
The economics of policy.......2006-02-09
'Trade-offs' is a good introduction to the economic analysis of policy, with a message clearly conveyed by its title: There are trade-offs for every (public) policy. Excellent for explaining economic analysis to people with little background in economics.
Disagree with the previous reviewer's comparison with Freakonomics: Though both are good, Freakonomics describes things that are at the frontier of current economic research (in an amazingly clear way). So, Freakonomics offers both clarity and novelty, while (at least for most people educated in economics), Trade-Offs mostly offers the former.
I would have given Trade-Offs a four star, but I think it is a bit too short for the money.
Books:
- The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community (BK Currents)
- The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
- The Magic of Believing
- The Principles of Sustainability
- The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Dover Value Editions)
- The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life
- The Science of Getting Rich
- The Unconscious Civilization
- The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
- The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Penny from Heaven
- Devil's Due
- Protein Analysis and Purification: Benchtop Techniques
- Student Study Guide to accompany Anatomy and Physiology: The Unity of Form and Function
- Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
- Developing Talents: Careers for Individuals with Asperger Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism
- A Murder is Announced
- Redeveloping Brownfields: Landscape Architects, Site Planners, Developers
- The Penguin Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture: Fifth Edition
- Useful herbaceous plants
The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences
Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy; With a new Afterword
The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States
All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair Economy (BK Currents)
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back
