The Myth of the Welfare State

The Myth of the Welfare State

Author: Jack D. Douglas

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-29

Total Pages: 516

ISBN-13: 1351479059

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Myth of the Welfare Stale is a basic and sweeping explanation of the rise and fall of great powers, and of the profound impacts of these megastates on ordinary lives. Its central theme is the rise of bureaucratic collectivization in American society. It is Douglas's conviction, which he supports with a wealth of detail, that statist bureaucracies produce siagnation, often exacerbated by inflation, which in turn produces the waning of state power.Douglas has his own set of ""isms"" that require concerted attention: mass mediated rationalism, scientism, technologism, credentialism, and expertism. People who make policies have little, if any, awareness of the actual way social processes evolve: agricultural policy is set by people who know little of farming, arid manufacturing policy is set by people who have never set foot on a factory floor. In light of this ""soaring average ignorance,"" it is little wonder that policy-making has Alice-in-Wonderland characteristics and effects.Douglas sees the notion of a welfare state as a contradiction in terms; its widespread insinuation into the culture is made possible by its weak mythological form and benign-sounding characteristics. In fact, welfare states in whatever form they appear have failed in their purpose: to redistribute income or increase real wealth. The megastates are the source of social instability and economic downturn. They grow like a tidal drift. They start out to correct the historical grievances of the laissez-faire states, only to increase the problems they seek to correct. In this, the welfare state is a weakened form of the totalitarian state, producing similarly unhappy results.Professor Douglas has produced a work of ""anti-policy"" - arguing that freedom leavened by an ordinary sense of self-interest and social concern can overcome the shortfalls of the megastates and their myth-making, self-serving, propensities.


The Modern World-System II

The Modern World-System II

Author: Immanuel Wallerstein

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2011-05-11

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 0520267583

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"The Modern World System", Immanuel Wallerstein's influential multivolume reinterpretation of global history, traces the emergence and development of the modern world from the sixteenth century to the twentieth. -- From publisher's description.


Planning for Freedom

Planning for Freedom

Author: Ludwig von Mises

Publisher:

Published: 2013-10

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 9781494038304

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is a new release of the original 1962 edition.


The Neomercantilists

The Neomercantilists

Author: Eric Helleiner

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-11-15

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 1501760149

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

At a time when critiques of free trade policies are gaining currency, The Neomercantilists helps make sense of the protectionist turn, providing the first intellectual history of the genealogy of neomercantilism. Eric Helleiner identifies many pioneers of this ideology between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries who backed strategic protectionism and other forms of government economic activism to promote state wealth and power. They included not just the famous Friedrich List, but also numerous lesser-known thinkers, many of whom came from outside of the West. Helleiner's novel emphasis on neomercantilism's diverse origins challenges traditional Western-centric understandings of its history. It illuminates neglected local intellectual traditions and international flows of ideas that gave rise to distinctive varieties of the ideology around the globe, including in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. This rich history left enduring intellectual legacies, including in the two dominant powers of the contemporary world economy: China and the United States. The result is an exceptional study of a set of profoundly influential economic ideas. While rooted in the past, it sheds light on the present moment. The Neomercantilists shows how we might construct more global approaches to the study of international political economy and intellectual history, devoting attention to thinkers from across the world, and to the cross-border circulation of thought.


Total Freedom

Total Freedom

Author: Chris Matthew Sciabarra

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 486

ISBN-13: 9780271020495

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Building upon his previous books about Marx, Hayek, and Rand, Total Freedom completes what Lingua Franca has called Sciabarra&’s &"epic scholarly quest&" to reclaim dialectics, usually associated with the Marxian left, as a methodology that can revivify libertarian thought. Part One surveys the history of dialectics from the ancient Greeks through the Austrian school of economics. Part Two investigates in detail the work of Murray Rothbard as a leading modern libertarian, in whose thought Sciabarra finds both dialectical and nondialectical elements. Ultimately, Sciabarra aims for a dialectical-libertarian synthesis, highlighting the need (not sufficiently recognized in liberalism) to think of the &"totality&" of interconnections in a dynamic system as the way to ensure human freedom while avoiding &"totalitarianism&" (such as resulted from Marxism).


Integrated Productivity in Urban Africa

Integrated Productivity in Urban Africa

Author: Donald Okeke

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-08-12

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 3319418300

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book introduces readers to neo-mercantile planning theory in the context of spatial regional integration in Africa. It proposes a new approach that rethinks neo-liberalism as the meta-theory of planning in Africa, and pioneers an original school of thought that presents a general theory of planning for Africa in the twenty-first century. Research to substantiate the new theory was conducted over the period November 2010 to May 2015 and is presented here in four sections with more than 500 references. The book offers comprehensive coverage, from the theoretical foundations and framework, through application and empirical research, to analysis, conclusions and recommendations.


The Institutes of Biblical Law Vol. 1

The Institutes of Biblical Law Vol. 1

Author: R. J. Rushdoony

Publisher: Chalcedon Foundation

Published: 2009-11-16

Total Pages: 779

ISBN-13: 0875524109

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

To attempt to study Scripture without studying its law is to deny it. To attempt to understand Western civilization apart from the impact of Biblical law within it and upon it is to seek a fictitious history and to reject twenty centuries and their progress. The Institutes of Biblical Law has as its purpose a reversal of the present trend. it is called "Institutes" in the older meaning of the that word, i.e., fundamental principles, here of law, because it is intended as a beginning, as an instituting consideration of that law which must govern society, and which shall govern society under God. To understand Biblical law, it is necessary to understand also certain basic characteristics of that law. In it, certain broad premises or principles are declared. These are declarations of basic law. The Ten Commandments give us such declarations. A second characteristics of Biblical law, is that the major portion of the law is case law, i.e., the illustration of the basic principle in terms of specific cases. These specific cases are often illustrations of the extent of the application of the law; that is, by citing a minimal type of case, the necessary jurisdictions of the law are revealed. The law, then, asserts principles and cites cases to develop the implications of those principles, with is purpose and direction the restitution of God's order.


The Great Deformation

The Great Deformation

Author: David Stockman

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2013-04-02

Total Pages: 768

ISBN-13: 1586489135

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A New York Times bestseller The Great Deformation is a searing look at Washington's craven response to the recent myriad of financial crises and fiscal cliffs. It counters conventional wisdom with an eighty-year revisionist history of how the American state -- especially the Federal Reserve -- has fallen prey to the politics of crony capitalism and the ideologies of fiscal stimulus, monetary central planning, and financial bailouts. These forces have left the public sector teetering on the edge of political dysfunction and fiscal collapse and have caused America's private enterprise foundation to morph into a speculative casino that swindles the masses and enriches the few. Defying right- and left-wing boxes, David Stockman provides a catalogue of corrupters and defenders of sound money, fiscal rectitude, and free markets. The former includes Franklin Roosevelt, who fathered crony capitalism; Richard Nixon, who destroyed national financial discipline and the Bretton Woods gold-backed dollar; Fed chairmen Greenspan and Bernanke, who fostered our present scourge of bubble finance and addiction to debt and speculation; George W. Bush, who repudiated fiscal rectitude and ballooned the warfare state via senseless wars; and Barack Obama, who revived failed Keynesian "borrow and spend" policies that have driven the national debt to perilous heights. By contrast, the book also traces a parade of statesmen who championed balanced budgets and financial market discipline including Carter Glass, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Bill Simon, Paul Volcker, Bill Clinton, and Sheila Bair. Stockman's analysis skewers Keynesian spenders and GOP tax-cutters alike, showing how they converged to bloat the welfare state, perpetuate the military-industrial complex, and deplete the revenue base -- even as the Fed's massive money printing allowed politicians to enjoy "deficits without tears." But these policies have also fueled new financial bubbles and favored Wall Street with cheap money and rigged stock and bond markets, while crushing Main Street savers and punishing family budgets with soaring food and energy costs. The Great Deformation explains how we got here and why these warped, crony capitalist policies are an epochal threat to free market prosperity and American political democracy.