Hypocrisy Trap

Hypocrisy Trap PDF Author: Catherine Weaver
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691138192
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This text explores how the characteristics of change in a complex organization make hypocrisy difficult to resolve, especially after its exposure becomes a critical threat to the organization's legitimacy and survival.

Hypocrisy Trap

Hypocrisy Trap PDF Author: Catherine Weaver
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691138192
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This text explores how the characteristics of change in a complex organization make hypocrisy difficult to resolve, especially after its exposure becomes a critical threat to the organization's legitimacy and survival.

The Meritocracy Trap

The Meritocracy Trap PDF Author: Daniel Markovits
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735222010
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
A revolutionary new argument from eminent Yale Law professor Daniel Markovits attacking the false promise of meritocracy It is an axiom of American life that advantage should be earned through ability and effort. Even as the country divides itself at every turn, the meritocratic ideal – that social and economic rewards should follow achievement rather than breeding – reigns supreme. Both Democrats and Republicans insistently repeat meritocratic notions. Meritocracy cuts to the heart of who we are. It sustains the American dream. But what if, both up and down the social ladder, meritocracy is a sham? Today, meritocracy has become exactly what it was conceived to resist: a mechanism for the concentration and dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations. Upward mobility has become a fantasy, and the embattled middle classes are now more likely to sink into the working poor than to rise into the professional elite. At the same time, meritocracy now ensnares even those who manage to claw their way to the top, requiring rich adults to work with crushing intensity, exploiting their expensive educations in order to extract a return. All this is not the result of deviations or retreats from meritocracy but rather stems directly from meritocracy’s successes. This is the radical argument that Daniel Markovits prosecutes with rare force. Markovits is well placed to expose the sham of meritocracy. Having spent his life at elite universities, he knows from the inside the corrosive system we are trapped within. Markovits also knows that, if we understand that meritocratic inequality produces near-universal harm, we can cure it. When The Meritocracy Trap reveals the inner workings of the meritocratic machine, it also illuminates the first steps outward, towards a new world that might once again afford dignity and prosperity to the American people.

The Confidence Trap

The Confidence Trap PDF Author: David Runciman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691178135
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Why democracies believe they can survive any crisis—and why that belief is so dangerous Why do democracies keep lurching from success to failure? The current financial crisis is just the latest example of how things continue to go wrong, just when it looked like they were going right. In this wide-ranging, original, and compelling book, David Runciman tells the story of modern democracy through the history of moments of crisis, from the First World War to the economic crash of 2008. A global history with a special focus on the United States, The Confidence Trap examines how democracy survived threats ranging from the Great Depression to the Cuban missile crisis, and from Watergate to the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It also looks at the confusion and uncertainty created by unexpected victories, from the defeat of German autocracy in 1918 to the defeat of communism in 1989. Throughout, the book pays close attention to the politicians and thinkers who grappled with these crises: from Woodrow Wilson, Nehru, and Adenauer to Fukuyama and Obama. In The Confidence Trap, David Runciman shows that democracies are good at recovering from emergencies but bad at avoiding them. The lesson democracies tend to learn from their mistakes is that they can survive them—and that no crisis is as bad as it seems. Breeding complacency rather than wisdom, crises lead to the dangerous belief that democracies can muddle through anything—a confidence trap that may lead to a crisis that is just too big to escape, if it hasn't already. The most serious challenges confronting democracy today are debt, the war on terror, the rise of China, and climate change. If democracy is to survive them, it must figure out a way to break the confidence trap.

Japan's Policy Trap

Japan's Policy Trap PDF Author: Akio Mikuni
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0815798768
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Until quite recently, the Japanese inspired a kind of puzzled awe. They had pulled themselves together from the ruin of war, built at breakneck speed a formidable array of export champions, and emerged as the world's number-two economy and largest net creditor nation. And they did it by flouting every rule of economic orthodoxy. But today only the puzzlement remains—at Japan's inability to arrest its economic decline, at its festering banking crisis, and at the dithering of its policymakers. Why can't the Japanese government find the political will to fix the country's problems? Japan's Policy Trap offers a provocative new analysis of the country's protracted economic stagnation. Japanese insider Akio Mikuni and long-term Japan resident R. Taggart Murphy contend that the country has landed in a policy trap that defies easy solution. The authors, who have together spent decades at the heart of Japanese finance, expose the deep-rooted political arrangements that have distorted Japan's monetary policy in a deflationary direction. They link Japan's economic difficulties to the Achilles' heel of the U.S. economy: the U.S. trade and current accounts deficits. For the last twenty years, Japan's dollar-denominated trade surplus has outstripped official reserves and currency in circulation. These huge accumulated surpluses have long exercised a growing and perverse influence on monetary policy, forcing Japan's authorities to support a build-up of deflationary dollars. Mikuni and Murphy trace the origins of Japan's policy trap far back into history, in the measures taken by Japan's officials to preserve their economic independence in what they saw as a hostile world. Mobilizing every resource to accumulate precious dollars, the authorities eventually found themselves coping with a hoard they could neither use nor exchange. To counteract the deflationary impact, Japanese authorities resorted to the creation of yen liabilities unrelated to production via the large

Encounters with God

Encounters with God PDF Author: Kelly Carr
Publisher: Standard Publishing
ISBN: 9780784717677
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
This compilation of relevant, issue-oriented stories, poems, and devotions from teens and Christian music artists will meet teens' needs at various places in their spiritual journey.

Political Hypocrisy

Political Hypocrisy PDF Author: David Runciman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400889669
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
What kind of hypocrite should voters choose as their next leader? The question seems utterly cynical. But, as David Runciman suggests, it is actually much more cynical to pretend that politics can ever be completely sincere. Political Hypocrisy is a timely, and timeless, book on the problems of sincerity and truth in politics, and how we can deal with them without slipping into hypocrisy ourselves. Runciman draws on the work of some of the great truth-tellers in modern political thought--Hobbes, Mandeville, Jefferson, Bentham, Sidgwick, and Orwell--and applies his ideas to different kinds of hypocritical politicians from Oliver Cromwell to Hillary Clinton. He argues that we should accept hypocrisy as a fact of politics--the most dangerous form of political hypocrisy is to claim to have a politics without hypocrisy. Featuring a new foreword that takes the story up to Donald Trump, this book examines why, instead of vainly searching for authentic politicians, we should try to distinguish between harmless and harmful hypocrisies and worry only about the most damaging varieties.

Political Hypocrisy

Political Hypocrisy PDF Author: David Runciman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691148155
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
A critical assessement of the problems of sincerity and truth in politics argues that we should accept hypocrisy as a fact of politics without resigning ourselves to it or embracing it, drawing on the lessons of such thinkers as Hobbes, Mandeville, Jefferson, Bentham, Sigwick, and Orwell.

The Dollar Trap

The Dollar Trap PDF Author: Eswar S. Prasad
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691168520
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
Why the dollar is—and will remain—the dominant global currency The U.S. dollar's dominance seems under threat. The near collapse of the U.S. financial system in 2008–2009, political paralysis that has blocked effective policymaking, and emerging competitors such as the Chinese renminbi have heightened speculation about the dollar’s looming displacement as the main reserve currency. Yet, as The Dollar Trap powerfully argues, the financial crisis, a dysfunctional international monetary system, and U.S. policies have paradoxically strengthened the dollar’s importance. Eswar Prasad examines how the dollar came to have a central role in the world economy and demonstrates that it will remain the cornerstone of global finance for the foreseeable future. Marshaling a range of arguments and data, and drawing on the latest research, Prasad shows why it will be difficult to dislodge the dollar-centric system. With vast amounts of foreign financial capital locked up in dollar assets, including U.S. government securities, other countries now have a strong incentive to prevent a dollar crash. Prasad takes the reader through key contemporary issues in international finance—including the growing economic influence of emerging markets, the currency wars, the complexities of the China-U.S. relationship, and the role of institutions like the International Monetary Fund—and offers new ideas for fixing the flawed monetary system. Readers are also given a rare look into some of the intrigue and backdoor scheming in the corridors of international finance. The Dollar Trap offers a panoramic analysis of the fragile state of global finance and makes a compelling case that, despite all its flaws, the dollar will remain the ultimate safe-haven currency.

International Relations Theory and the Consequences of Unipolarity

International Relations Theory and the Consequences of Unipolarity PDF Author: G. John Ikenberry
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113950164X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
The end of the Cold War and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union resulted in a new unipolar international system that presented fresh challenges to international relations theory. Since the Enlightenment, scholars have speculated that patterns of cooperation and conflict might be systematically related to the manner in which power is distributed among states. Most of what we know about this relationship, however, is based on European experiences between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, when five or more powerful states dominated international relations, and the latter twentieth century, when two superpowers did so. Building on a highly successful special issue of the leading journal World Politics, this book seeks to determine whether what we think we know about power and patterns of state behaviour applies to the current 'unipolar' setting and, if not, how core theoretical propositions about interstate interactions need to be revised.

The Inequality Trap

The Inequality Trap PDF Author: William Watson
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442624957
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
US President Barack Obama has called economic inequality the “defining issue of our time.” It has inspired the “Occupy” movements, made a French economist into a global celebrity, and given us a new expression – the “one percent.” But is our preoccupation with inequality really justified? Or wise? In his new book, William Watson argues that focusing on inequality is both an error and a trap. It is an error because much inequality is “good,” the reward for thrift, industry, and invention. It is a trap because it leads us to fixate on the top end of the income distribution, rather than on those at the bottom who need help most. In fact, if we respond to growing inequality by fighting capitalism rather than poverty, we may end up both poorer and less equal. Explaining the complexities of modern economics in a clear, accessible style, The Inequality Trap is the must-read rejoinder to the idea that fighting inequality should be our top policy priority.