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Author: Dean Baker
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262291533
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 50
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Book Description
A leading economist's exploration of what our economic arrangements might look like if we applied basic principles without ideological blinders. There is nothing wrong with economics, Dean Baker contends, but economists routinely ignore their own principles when it comes to economic policy. What would policy look like if we took basic principles of mainstream economics seriously and applied them consistently? In the debate over regulation, for example, Baker—one of the few economists who predicted the meltdown of fall 2008—points out that ideological blinders have obscured the fact there is no “free market” to protect. Modern markets are highly regulated, although intrusive regulations such as copyright and patents are rarely viewed as regulatory devices. If we admit the extent to which the economy is and will be regulated, we have many more options in designing policy and deciding who benefits from it. On health care reform, Baker complains that economists ignore another basic idea: marginal cost pricing. Unlike all other industries, medical services are priced extraordinarily high, far above the cost of production, yet that discrepancy is rarely addressed in the debate about health care reform. What if we applied marginal cost pricing—making doctors' wages competitive and charging less for prescription drugs and tests such as MRIs? Taking Economics Seriously offers an alternative Econ 101. It introduces economic principles and thinks through what we might gain if we free ourselves from ideological blinders and get back to basics in the most troubled parts of our economy.
Author: Dean Baker
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262291533
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 50
Get Book Here
Book Description
A leading economist's exploration of what our economic arrangements might look like if we applied basic principles without ideological blinders. There is nothing wrong with economics, Dean Baker contends, but economists routinely ignore their own principles when it comes to economic policy. What would policy look like if we took basic principles of mainstream economics seriously and applied them consistently? In the debate over regulation, for example, Baker—one of the few economists who predicted the meltdown of fall 2008—points out that ideological blinders have obscured the fact there is no “free market” to protect. Modern markets are highly regulated, although intrusive regulations such as copyright and patents are rarely viewed as regulatory devices. If we admit the extent to which the economy is and will be regulated, we have many more options in designing policy and deciding who benefits from it. On health care reform, Baker complains that economists ignore another basic idea: marginal cost pricing. Unlike all other industries, medical services are priced extraordinarily high, far above the cost of production, yet that discrepancy is rarely addressed in the debate about health care reform. What if we applied marginal cost pricing—making doctors' wages competitive and charging less for prescription drugs and tests such as MRIs? Taking Economics Seriously offers an alternative Econ 101. It introduces economic principles and thinks through what we might gain if we free ourselves from ideological blinders and get back to basics in the most troubled parts of our economy.
Author: Anna Moschovakis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 124
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Book Description
"A trailblazing work."--Lewis Warsh "An auspicious debut. . . . Stripped of artifice and the mere effects of formal pyrotechnics, these poems move by ear and intellect, pushing and pulling at the real with precision and mystery."--Ammiel Alcalay "Poetry reinvents itself in Plato's cave, where nothing can be seen but the mind's agile resources climbing the walls of our present, real world. Perplexed at the moment of certainty, estranged at the moment of intimacy, these poems illuminate, amuse, and provoke. Plato would have loved them."--Ann Lauterbach
Author: Mark Peterson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691209170
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 764
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Book Description
A groundbreaking history of early America that shows how Boston built and sustained an independent city-state in New England before being folded into the United States In the vaunted annals of America’s founding, Boston has long been held up as an exemplary “city upon a hill” and the “cradle of liberty” for an independent United States. Wresting this revered metropolis from these misleading, tired clichés, The City-State of Boston highlights Boston’s overlooked past as an autonomous city-state, and in doing so, offers a pathbreaking and brilliant new history of early America. Following Boston’s development over three centuries, Mark Peterson discusses how this self-governing Atlantic trading center began as a refuge from Britain’s Stuart monarchs and how—through its bargain with the slave trade and ratification of the Constitution—it would tragically lose integrity and autonomy as it became incorporated into the greater United States. The City-State of Boston peels away layers of myth to offer a startlingly fresh understanding of this iconic urban center.
Author: Eliot Spitzer
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262295113
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 96
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Book Description
In his first book, the former New York governor and current CNN cohost offers a manifesto on the economy and the public interest. As New York State Attorney General from 1998 to 2006, Eliot Spitzer successfully pursued corporate crime, including stock price inflation, securities fraud, and predatory lending practices. Drawing on those experiences, in this book Spitzer considers when and how the government should intervene in the workings of the market. The 2009 American bank bailout, he argues, was the wrong way: it understandably turned government intervention into a flashpoint for public disgust because it socialized risk, privatized benefit, and left standing institutions too big to fail, incompetent regulators, and deficient corporate governance. That's unfortunate, because good regulatory policy, he claims, can make markets and firms work efficiently, equitably, and in service of fundamental public values. Spitzer lays out the right reasons for government intervention in the market: to guarantee transparency, to overcome market failures, and to guard our core values against the market's unfair biases such as racism. With specific proposals to serve those ends—from improving corporate governance to making firms responsible for their own risky behavior—he offers a much-needed blueprint for the proper role of government in the market. Finally, taking account of regulatory changes since the crash of 2008, he suggests how to rebuild public trust in government so real change is possible. Responses to Spitzer by Sarah Binder, Andrew Gelman, and John Sides, Dean Baker, and Robert Johnson, raise issues of politics, ideology, and policy.
Author: David Grusky
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262305151
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
How the Occupy movement has challenged the gap between American principles and American practice—and how we can realize our most cherished ideals. The Occupy Wall Street movement has ignited new questions about the relationship between democracy and equality in the United States. Are we also entering a moment in history in which the disjuncture between our principles and our institutions is cast into especially sharp relief? Do new developments—most notably the rise of extreme inequality—offer new threats to the realization of our most cherished principles? Can we build an open, democratic, and successful movement to realize our ideals? Occupy the Future offers informed and opinionated essays that address these questions. The writers—including Nobel Laureate in Economics Kenneth Arrow and bestselling authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich—lay out what our country's principles are, whether we're living up to them, and what can be done to bring our institutions into better alignment with them. Contributers: David Grusky, Doug McAdam, Rob Reich, Erin Cumberworth, Debra Satz, Kenneth J. Arrow, Kim A. Weeden, Sean F. Reardon, Prudence L. Carter, Shelley J. Correll, Gary Segura, David D. Laitin, Cristobal Young, Charles Varner, Doug McAdam, Paul R. Ehrlich, Anne H. Ehrlich, Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, Donald A. Barr, Michele Elam, Jennifer DeVere Brody, H. Samy Alim and David Palumbo-Liu.
Author: Anita Diamant
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 143919937X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
New York Times bestseller! An unforgettable novel about a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century, told “with humor and optimism…through the eyes of an irresistible heroine” (People)—from the acclaimed author of The Red Tent. Anita Diamant’s “vivid, affectionate portrait of American womanhood” (Los Angeles Times), follows the life of one woman, Addie Baum, through a period of dramatic change. Addie is The Boston Girl, the spirited daughter of an immigrant Jewish family, born in 1900 to parents who were unprepared for America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End of Boston, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie’s intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can’t imagine—a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture, and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, to finding the love of her life, eighty-five-year-old Addie recounts her adventures with humor and compassion for the naïve girl she once was. Written with the same attention to historical detail and emotional resonance that made Diamant’s previous novels bestsellers, The Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one woman’s complicated life in twentieth century America, and a fascinating look at a generation of women finding their places in a changing world. “Diamant brings to life a piece of feminism’s forgotten history” (Good Housekeeping) in this “inspirational…page-turning portrait of immigrant life in the early twentieth century” (Booklist).
Author: Robert Pollin
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262017571
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
Economist Robert Pollin argues that the United States needs to try to implement full employment and how it can help the economy.
Author: Elaine Scarry
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026226577X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
A passionate call for citizen action to uphold the rule of law when government does not. This book is a passionate call for citizen action to uphold the rule of law when government does not. Arguing that post-9/11 legislation and foreign policy severed the executive branch from the will of the people, Elaine Scarry in Rule of Law, Misrule of Men offers a fierce defense of the people's role as guarantor of our democracy. She begins with the groundswell of local resistance to the 2001 Patriot Act, when hundreds of towns, cities, and counties passed resolutions refusing compliance with the information-gathering the act demanded, showing that citizens can take action against laws that undermine the rights of citizens and noncitizens alike. Scarry, once described in the New York Times Sunday Magazine as “known for her unflinching investigations of war, torture, and pain,” then turns to the conduct of the Iraqi occupation, arguing that the Bush administration led the country onto treacherous moral terrain, violating the Geneva Conventions and the armed forces' own most fundamental standards. She warns of the damage done to democracy when military personnel must choose between their own codes of warfare and the illegal orders of their civilian superiors. If our military leaders uphold the rule of law when civilian leaders do not, might we come to prefer them? Finally, reviewing what we know now about the Bush administration's crimes, Scarry insists that prosecution—whether local, national, or international—is essential to restoring the rule of law, and she shows how a brave town in Vermont has taken up the challenge. Throughout the book, Scarry finds hope in moments where citizens withheld their consent to grievous crimes, finding creative ways to stand by their patriotism.
Author: Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262260395
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 74
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Book Description
An encouraging account of the potential of foreign aid to reduce poverty and a challenge to all aid organizations to think harder about how they spend their money. With more than a billion people now living on less than a dollar a day, and with eight million dying each year because they are simply too poor to live, most would agree that the problem of global poverty is our greatest moral challenge. The large and pressing practical question is how best to address that challenge. Although millions of dollars flow to poor countries, the results are often disappointing. In Making Aid Work, Abhijit Banerjee—an "aid optimist"—argues that aid has much to contribute, but the lack of analysis about which programs really work causes considerable waste and inefficiency, which in turn fuels unwarranted pessimism about the role of aid in fostering economic development. Banerjee challenges aid donors to do better. Building on the model used to evaluate new drugs before they come on the market, he argues that donors should assess programs with field experiments using randomized trials. In fact, he writes, given the number of such experiments already undertaken, current levels of development assistance could focus entirely on programs with proven records of success in experimental conditions. Responding to his challenge, leaders in the field—including Nicholas Stern, Raymond Offenheiser, Alice Amsden, Ruth Levine, Angus Deaton, and others—question whether randomized trials are the most appropriate way to evaluate success for all programs. They raise broader questions as well, about the importance of aid for economic development and about the kinds of interventions (micro or macro, political or economic) that will lead to real improvements in the lives of poor people around the world. With one in every six people now living in extreme poverty, getting it right is crucial.
Author: Michael Tomasello
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262258498
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 229
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Book Description
Through experiments with kids and chimpanzees, this cutting-edge theory in developmental psychology reveals how cooperation is a distinctly human combination of innate and learned behavior. “[A] fascinating approach to the question of what makes us human.” —Publishers Weekly Drop something in front of a 2-year-old, and she’s likely to pick it up for you. This is not a learned behavior, psychologist Michael Tomasello argues. Through observations of young children in experiments he designed, Tomasello shows that children are naturally—and uniquely—cooperative. For example, apes put through similar experiments demonstrate the ability to work together and share, but choose not to. As children grow, their almost reflexive desire to help—without expectation of reward—becomes shaped by culture. They become more aware of being a member of a group. Groups convey mutual expectations, and thus may either encourage or discourage altruism and collaboration. Either way, cooperation emerges as a distinctly human combination of innate and learned behavior. In Why We Cooperate, Tomasello’s studies of young children and great apes help identify the underlying psychological processes that very likely supported humans’ earliest forms of complex collaboration and, ultimately, our unique forms of cultural organization, from the evolution of tolerance and trust to the creation of such group-level structures as cultural norms and institutions. Scholars Carol Dweck, Joan Silk, Brian Skyrms, and Elizabeth Spelke respond to Tomasello’s findings and explore the implications.
