Wealth, Poverty and Politics

Wealth, Poverty and Politics PDF Author: Thomas Sowell
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465096778
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
In Wealth, Poverty, and Politics, Thomas Sowell, one of the foremost conservative public intellectuals in this country, argues that political and ideological struggles have led to dangerous confusion about income inequality in America. Pundits and politically motivated economists trumpet ambiguous statistics and sensational theories while ignoring the true determinant of income inequality: the production of wealth. We cannot properly understand inequality if we focus exclusively on the distribution of wealth and ignore wealth production factors such as geography, demography, and culture. Sowell contends that liberals have a particular interest in misreading the data and chastises them for using income inequality as an argument for the welfare state. Refuting Thomas Piketty, Paul Krugman, and others on the left, Sowell draws on accurate empirical data to show that the inequality is not nearly as extreme or sensational as we have been led to believe. Transcending partisanship through a careful examination of data, Wealth, Poverty, and Politics reveals the truth about the most explosive political issue of our time.

Wealth, Poverty and Politics

Wealth, Poverty and Politics PDF Author: Thomas Sowell
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465096778
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Wealth, Poverty, and Politics, Thomas Sowell, one of the foremost conservative public intellectuals in this country, argues that political and ideological struggles have led to dangerous confusion about income inequality in America. Pundits and politically motivated economists trumpet ambiguous statistics and sensational theories while ignoring the true determinant of income inequality: the production of wealth. We cannot properly understand inequality if we focus exclusively on the distribution of wealth and ignore wealth production factors such as geography, demography, and culture. Sowell contends that liberals have a particular interest in misreading the data and chastises them for using income inequality as an argument for the welfare state. Refuting Thomas Piketty, Paul Krugman, and others on the left, Sowell draws on accurate empirical data to show that the inequality is not nearly as extreme or sensational as we have been led to believe. Transcending partisanship through a careful examination of data, Wealth, Poverty, and Politics reveals the truth about the most explosive political issue of our time.

Wealth, Poverty and Politics

Wealth, Poverty and Politics PDF Author: Thomas Sowell
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0465096778
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
In Wealth, Poverty, and Politics, Thomas Sowell, one of the foremost conservative public intellectuals in this country, argues that political and ideological struggles have led to dangerous confusion about income inequality in America. Pundits and politically motivated economists trumpet ambiguous statistics and sensational theories while ignoring the true determinant of income inequality: the production of wealth. We cannot properly understand inequality if we focus exclusively on the distribution of wealth and ignore wealth production factors such as geography, demography, and culture. Sowell contends that liberals have a particular interest in misreading the data and chastises them for using income inequality as an argument for the welfare state. Refuting Thomas Piketty, Paul Krugman, and others on the left, Sowell draws on accurate empirical data to show that the inequality is not nearly as extreme or sensational as we have been led to believe. Transcending partisanship through a careful examination of data, Wealth, Poverty, and Politics reveals the truth about the most explosive political issue of our time.

Wealth, Poverty and Politics

Wealth, Poverty and Politics PDF Author: Thomas Sowell
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 9780465096763
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A revised and enlarged edition of Thomas Sowell's essential examination of differences of wealth and income between nations and within nations Wealth, Poverty and Politics challenges the assumptions, the definitions, the evidence and the reasoning of most of what is said about differences of income and wealth by people in the media, in academia and in politics. After an extensive examination of factors behind the economic differences between nations and within nations -- including geographic, demographic, cultural and political factors -- the last section of the book is a searching critique of leading income redistributionists, from John Rawls to Thomas Piketty and Nobel laureates in economics Paul Krugman, Angus Deaton and Joseph Stiglitz. Among the more heartening findings from history are the individuals, groups and nations that have risen from poverty and backwardness to prosperity and achievements on the frontiers of human progress. Among the more painful findings are counterproductive creeds and policies that have needlessly prolonged poverty and dependency among lagging groups in countries around the world, and whipped up resentments -- and sometimes violence -- against more productive and successful minorities in many places and times. Although Wealth, Poverty and Politics offers many new analyses and insights, it is essentially a fact-based study which subjects many beliefs, from various parts of the ideological spectrum, to the ultimate test of empirical evidence. These challenged beliefs about the causes of economic differences range from genetic determinism to exploitation and discrimination. In each case, the analysis follows where the facts lead, whether that is verification, refutation or some combination of the two. Its guiding principle is expressed in a quotation from the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan that opens the final section of the book: "You're entitled to your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts."

Behind the Development Banks

Behind the Development Banks PDF Author: Sarah Babb
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226033678
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
The World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) carry out their mission to alleviate poverty and promote economic growth based on the advice of professional economists. But as Sarah Babb argues in Behind the Development Banks, these organizations have also been indelibly shaped by Washington politics—particularly by the legislative branch and its power of the purse. Tracing American influence on MDBs over three decades, this volume assesses increased congressional activism and the perpetual “selling” of banks to Congress by the executive branch. Babb contends that congressional reluctance to fund the MDBs has enhanced the influence of the United States on them by making credible America’s threat to abandon the banks if its policy preferences are not followed. At a time when the United States’ role in world affairs is being closely scrutinized, Behind the Development Banks will be necessary reading for anyone interested in how American politics helps determine the fate of developing countries.

Why Americans Hate Welfare

Why Americans Hate Welfare PDF Author: Martin Gilens
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226293661
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Tackling one of the most volatile issues in contemporary politics, Martin Gilens's work punctures myths and misconceptions about welfare policy, public opinion, and the role of the media in both. Why Americans Hate Welfare shows that the public's views on welfare are a complex mixture of cynicism and compassion; misinformed and racially charged, they nevertheless reflect both a distrust of welfare recipients and a desire to do more to help the "deserving" poor. "With one out of five children currently living in poverty and more than 100,000 families with children now homeless, Gilens's book is must reading if you want to understand how the mainstream media have helped justify, and even produce, this state of affairs." —Susan Douglas, The Progressive "Gilens's well-written and logically developed argument deserves to be taken seriously." —Choice "A provocative analysis of American attitudes towards 'welfare.'. . . [Gilens] shows how racial stereotypes, not white self-interest or anti-statism, lie at the root of opposition to welfare programs." -Library Journal

Wealth, Poverty, and Human Destiny

Wealth, Poverty, and Human Destiny PDF Author: Doug Bandow
Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
The rapid spread of the liberal market economy throughout the world poses a host of new and complex questions. In Wealth, Poverty, and Human Destiny, editors Doug Bandow and David L. Schindler bring together some of today's leading economists, theologians, and social critics-including Wendell Berry, Michael Novak, Richard John Neuhaus, and Max Stackhouse-to consider whether the triumph of capitalism is a cause for celebration or concern.

Why Nations Fail

Why Nations Fail PDF Author: Daron Acemoglu
Publisher: Crown Currency
ISBN: 0307719227
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • From two winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, “who have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity” “A wildly ambitious work that hopscotches through history and around the world to answer the very big question of why some countries get rich and others don’t.”—The New York Times FINALIST: Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Economist, BusinessWeek, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, The Plain Dealer Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, or geography that determines prosperity or poverty? As Why Nations Fail shows, none of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Drawing on fifteen years of original research, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is our man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it). Korea, to take just one example, is a remarkably homogenous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created those two different institutional trajectories. Acemoglu and Robinson marshal extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, among them: • Will China’s economy continue to grow at such a high speed and ultimately overwhelm the West? • Are America’s best days behind it? Are we creating a vicious cycle that enriches and empowers a small minority? “This book will change the way people think about the wealth and poverty of nations . . . as ambitious as Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel.”—BusinessWeek

Savage Economics

Savage Economics PDF Author: David L. Blaney
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135265038
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
This innovative book challenges the most powerful and pervasive ideas concerning political economy, international relations, and ethics in the modern world. Rereading classical authors including Adam Smith, James Steuart, Adam Ferguson, Hegel, and Marx, it provides a systematic and fundamental cultural critique of political economy and critically describes the nature of the mainstream understanding of economics. Blaney and Inayatullah construct a powerful argument about how political economy and the capitalist market economy should be understood, demonstrating that poverty is a product of capitalism itself. They address the questions: Is wealth for some bought at the cost of impoverishing, colonizing, or eradicating others? What benefits of wealth might justify these human costs? What do we gain and lose by endorsing a system of wealth creation? Do even "savage cultures" contain values, critiques, and ways of life that the West still needs? Opening the way for radically different policies addressing poverty and demanding a rethink of the connections between political economy and international relations, this thought-provoking book is vital reading for students and scholars of politics, economics, IPE and international relations.

Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China

Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China PDF Author: Deborah Davis
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804759316
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Presents an up-to-date look at the social processes and consequences of China's rapid economic growth.

Applied Economics

Applied Economics PDF Author: Thomas Sowell
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN: 9780465081431
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
A companion volume to Basic Economics discusses the application of economics to such world problems as medical care, discrimination, and the development of nations, examining economic policies in terms of their immediate and longer-term repercussions.