The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West

The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West PDF Author: Paul Craig Roberts
Publisher: Atwell Publishing
ISBN: 0988406519
Category : Capitalism
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
This very readable book by a distinguished economist, Wall Street Journal editor, and Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury is a major challenge both to economic theory and to media explanations of the ongoing 21st century economic crisis. The one percent have pulled off an economic and political revolution. By offshoring manufacturing and professional service jobs, US corporations destroyed the growth of consumer income, the basis of the US economy, leaving the bulk of the population mired in debt. Deregulation was used to concentrate income and wealth in fewer hands and financial firms in corporations “too big to fail,” removing financial corporations from market discipline and forcing taxpayers in the US and Europe to cover bankster losses. Environmental destruction has accelerated as economists refuse to count the exhaustion of nature’s resources as a cost and as corporations impose the cost of their activities on the environment and on third parties who do not share in the profits. This is the book to read for those who want to understand the mistakes that are bringing the West to its knees.

The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West

The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West PDF Author: Paul Craig Roberts
Publisher: Atwell Publishing
ISBN: 0988406519
Category : Capitalism
Languages : en
Pages : 134

Get Book

Book Description
This very readable book by a distinguished economist, Wall Street Journal editor, and Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury is a major challenge both to economic theory and to media explanations of the ongoing 21st century economic crisis. The one percent have pulled off an economic and political revolution. By offshoring manufacturing and professional service jobs, US corporations destroyed the growth of consumer income, the basis of the US economy, leaving the bulk of the population mired in debt. Deregulation was used to concentrate income and wealth in fewer hands and financial firms in corporations “too big to fail,” removing financial corporations from market discipline and forcing taxpayers in the US and Europe to cover bankster losses. Environmental destruction has accelerated as economists refuse to count the exhaustion of nature’s resources as a cost and as corporations impose the cost of their activities on the environment and on third parties who do not share in the profits. This is the book to read for those who want to understand the mistakes that are bringing the West to its knees.

Wealth, Power, and the Crisis of Laissez Faire Capitalism

Wealth, Power, and the Crisis of Laissez Faire Capitalism PDF Author: D. Gibson
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9781349296149
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This forcefully argued book offers a provocative picture of the political, intellectual, and economic forces that have shaped the history of the United States, offering an extensive and in-depth critique of laissez-faire doctrine and a novel reformulation of the work of American System writers, Gibson traces America's rise to global supremacy.

Capitalism on Edge

Capitalism on Edge PDF Author: Albena Azmanova
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231530609
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
The wake of the financial crisis has inspired hopes for dramatic change and stirred visions of capitalism’s terminal collapse. Yet capitalism is not on its deathbed, utopia is not in our future, and revolution is not in the cards. In Capitalism on Edge, Albena Azmanova demonstrates that radical progressive change is still attainable, but it must come from an unexpected direction. Azmanova’s new critique of capitalism focuses on the competitive pursuit of profit rather than on forms of ownership and patterns of wealth distribution. She contends that neoliberal capitalism has mutated into a new form—precarity capitalism—marked by the emergence of a precarious multitude. Widespread economic insecurity ails the 99 percent across differences in income, education, and professional occupation; it is the underlying cause of such diverse hardships as work-related stress and chronic unemployment. In response, Azmanova calls for forging a broad alliance of strange bedfellows whose discontent would challenge not only capitalism’s unfair outcomes but also the drive for profit at its core. To achieve this synthesis, progressive forces need to go beyond the old ideological certitudes of, on the left, fighting inequality and, on the right, increasing competition. Azmanova details reforms that would enable a dramatic transformation of the current system without a revolutionary break. An iconoclastic critique of left orthodoxy, Capitalism on Edge confronts the intellectual and political impasses of our time to discern a new path of emancipation.

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order PDF Author: Gary Gerstle
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197519660
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
The most sweeping account of how neoliberalism came to dominate American politics for nearly a half century before crashing against the forces of Trumpism on the right and a new progressivism on the left. The epochal shift toward neoliberalism--a web of related policies that, broadly speaking, reduced the footprint of government in society and reassigned economic power to private market forces--that began in the United States and Great Britain in the late 1970s fundamentally changed the world. Today, the word "neoliberal" is often used to condemn a broad swath of policies, from prizing free market principles over people to advancing privatization programs in developing nations around the world. To be sure, neoliberalism has contributed to a number of alarming trends, not least of which has been a massive growth in income inequality. Yet as the eminent historian Gary Gerstle argues in The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, these indictments fail to reckon with the full contours of what neoliberalism was and why its worldview had such persuasive hold on both the right and the left for three decades. As he shows, the neoliberal order that emerged in America in the 1970s fused ideas of deregulation with personal freedoms, open borders with cosmopolitanism, and globalization with the promise of increased prosperity for all. Along with tracing how this worldview emerged in America and grew to dominate the world, Gerstle explores the previously unrecognized extent to which its triumph was facilitated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its communist allies. He is also the first to chart the story of the neoliberal order's fall, originating in the failed reconstruction of Iraq and Great Recession of the Bush years and culminating in the rise of Trump and a reinvigorated Bernie Sanders-led American left in the 2010s. An indispensable and sweeping re-interpretation of the last fifty years, this book illuminates how the ideology of neoliberalism became so infused in the daily life of an era, while probing what remains of that ideology and its political programs as America enters an uncertain future.

Capitalism and Desire

Capitalism and Desire PDF Author: Todd McGowan
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231542216
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Despite creating vast inequalities and propping up reactionary world regimes, capitalism has many passionate defenders—but not because of what it withholds from some and gives to others. Capitalism dominates, Todd McGowan argues, because it mimics the structure of our desire while hiding the trauma that the system inflicts upon it. People from all backgrounds enjoy what capitalism provides, but at the same time are told more and better is yet to come. Capitalism traps us through an incomplete satisfaction that compels us after the new, the better, and the more. Capitalism's parasitic relationship to our desires gives it the illusion of corresponding to our natural impulses, which is how capitalism's defenders characterize it. By understanding this psychic strategy, McGowan hopes to divest us of our addiction to capitalist enrichment and help us rediscover enjoyment as we actually experienced it. By locating it in the present, McGowan frees us from our attachment to a better future and the belief that capitalism is an essential outgrowth of human nature. From this perspective, our economic, social, and political worlds open up to real political change. Eloquent and enlivened by examples from film, television, consumer culture, and everyday life, Capitalism and Desire brings a new, psychoanalytically grounded approach to political and social theory.

A Political Economy of Lebanon, 1948-2002

A Political Economy of Lebanon, 1948-2002 PDF Author: Toufic Gaspard
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 904740257X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
This book is about the laissez-faire strategy for economic development, a strategy inspired by neoclassical/mainstream economics, advocated by the “Washington Consensus”, and implemented by the Bretton Woods institutions. Mainstream economics has taken legitimacy from the historical failure of command economies. But this view has not been balanced by an examination of the performance of laissez-faire economies, the closest to the pure market model. Lebanon provides a unique test case in this regard. The book assesses Lebanon’s development during 1948-2002, including its industrial and financial performance. The dynamics of the laissez-faire system is separately studied from a Post-Keynesian perspective, highlighting institutional behavior. It is found that laissez-faire is not a sufficient condition for economic development, and can even be counterproductive.

Grand Pursuit

Grand Pursuit PDF Author: Sylvia Nasar
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684872994
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 555

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Book Description
An instant "New York Times" bestseller, from the author of "A Beautiful Mind": a sweeping history of the invention of modern economics that takes readers from Dickens' London to modern Calcutta.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace

The Economic Consequences of the Peace PDF Author: John Maynard Keynes
Publisher: Simon Publications
ISBN: 9781931541138
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
A sever economic critique of the 1920 Treaty of Versailles written by the famous economist, who was a member of the British peace delegation until he quit with disgust.

Global Fracture

Global Fracture PDF Author: Michael Hudson
Publisher: Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745323947
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Hudson is one of the tiny handful of economic thinkers in today's world who are forcing us to look at old questions in startling new ways. Alvin Toffler, best-selling author of Future Shock and The Third WaveThis new and updated edition of Michael Hudson's classic political economy text explores how and why the US came to achieve world economic hegemony.Originally published as the sequel to Hudson's bestselling Super Imperialism, Global Fracture explores American economic strategy during a key period in world history. In 1973, many of the world's most indebted countries sought to free themselves of trade dependency and the debt trap by creating a New International Economic Order (NIEO). This aimed to improve the terms of trade for raw materials and build up agicultural and industrial self-sufficiency. Global Fracture shows how the US undermined this progressive initiative and instead pushed for financial dominance over the rest of the world. Today, the NIEO is a forgotten interlude, its optimism replaced by the financial austerity imposed by the IMF and the World Bank.Exploring how America achieved its economic aims, and tracing the implications this has had through subsequent decades, Michael Hudson covers various topics including trade embargoes, changing US attitudes to foreign aid, the rise of protectionism, government regulation of international investments, the impact on specific industries including the oil industry, the implications of the new economic order and the future of war.

Between State Capitalism and Globalisation

Between State Capitalism and Globalisation PDF Author: Gareth Dale
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783039101818
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
This book is an exploration of the economic history of the German Democratic Republic, with an emphasis upon its confrontation by and contribution towards economic and military competition on the world stage. Beginning with an analysis of the Soviet bloc as a state-capitalist formation, the GDR's economic history is charted, with detailed examinations of the challenges to Soviet-style autarky that were posed by the globalising world market, as well as of GDR policymakers' attempts to use Western imports and credits as a 'whip' to spur growth. The book's central section consists of an exploration of the ambivalent attitudes of East German policymakers and industrialists towards their West German counterparts in the 1980s, as the whip was transformed into an ever-tightening noose of debt. Here, a prodigious range of secondary sources as well as hitherto unpublished documents from the archives of the old regime are drawn upon to document the means by which relative economic decline and dependency upon Western institutions came to constrain the options available to the East German nomenklatura. Finally, this study analyses the political economy of the 1989 revolution and unification and of post-unification Eastern Germany.