Inequality, Boom, and Bust
Inequality, Boom, and Bust

Author: Howard J. Sherman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-02-19

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 1351210882

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There is enormous inequality between the income and wealth of the richest 1 percent and all other Americans. While the top 1 percent own 42 percent of all wealth in America, the lower half on the income ladder has only 2 percent of all of the wealth. This book develops a viewpoint contrary to the prevailing conservative paradigm, setting out both reasons for this inequality and the impact of this. To explain inequality, conservative economists focus on individual characteristics such as intelligence and hard work. This book puts forward new evidence to show that changes in economic inequality are primarily due to characteristics inherent in the standard operation of capitalist institutions. Furthermore, the authors seek to explain the cycle of boom and bust by considering political and social factors often overlooked by conservative economists. This book also explores how wealth influences political policies in a way that increases economic inequality even more than its present level. Through analysis of American political and economic institutions, Inequality, Boom, and Bust presents concrete steps for an activist, progressive policy to greatly reduce inequality through free healthcare, free higher education, and reduced unemployment.

Bubbles, Booms, and Busts
Bubbles, Booms, and Busts

Author: Donald Rapp

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-11-14

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 1493910922

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This book deals at some length with the question: Since there are many more poor than rich, why don’t the poor just tax the rich heavily and reduce the inequality? In the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, the topic of inequality was discussed widely. Ending or reducing inequality was a prime motivating factor in the emergence of communism and socialism. The book discusses why later in the 20th century, inequality has faded out as an issue. Extensive tables and graphs of data are presented showing the extent of inequality in America, as well as globally. It is shown that a combination of low taxes on capital gains contributed to a series of real estate and stock bubbles that provided great wealth to the top tiers, while real income for average workers stagnated. Improved commercial efficiency due to computers, electronics, the Internet and fast transport allowed production and distribution with fewer workers, just as the advent of electrification, mechanization, production lines, vehicles and trains in the 1920s and 1930s produced the same stagnating effect.

Inequality And Global Supra-surplus Capitalism
Inequality And Global Supra-surplus Capitalism

Author: E Ray Canterbery

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2018-01-18

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 9813200847

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This book is written as a sequel to John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society, and provides a theoretical framework, for the first time, for surpra-surplus capitalism.Conventional economics has the income and wealth distributions as 'givens'. This assumption immediately excludes such distributions from economic and social concern. Occasionally, economists such as Kenneth Boulding and even earlier, Michal Kalecki, have attempted to develop alternative perspectives in which such distributions are integral to the story and therefore have implications for public policy. At the same time, conventional microeconomics is a theory of price only in which economic efficiency (in an engineering sense) is the only value to be optimized. The income or wealth distributions are given as constraints. Mathematically, the constraints thereafter become invisible; they have no further role to play. The choices that are presumed to be made are neither inhibited nor facilitated by a household's position in the income or wealth distributions.This volume will explore problems with conventional theory and policy, but its main thrust comprises a theory of supra-surplus capitalism, applicable to both developed and developing countries, and its relation to inequalities worldwide.

Brazil
Brazil

Author: Mr.Antonio Spilimbergo

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2019-03-14

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 1484339746

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Brazil is at crossroads, emerging slowly from a historic recession that was preceded by a huge economic boom. Reasons for the historic bust following a boom are manifold. Policy mistakes were an important contributory factor, and included the pursuit of countercyclical policies, introduced to deal with the effects of the global financial crisis, beyond the point where they were helpful. More fundamentally, it reflects longstanding structural weaknesses plaguing the economy, that also help explain Brazil’s uninspiring growth performance over the past four decades.

Boom and Bust
Boom and Bust

Author: Alex J. Pollock

Publisher: Government Institutes

Published: 2010-11-16

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13: 0844743844

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While the recent economic crisis was a painful period for many Americans, the panic surrounding the downturn was fueled by an incomplete understanding of economic history. Economic hysteria made for riveting journalism and effective political theater, but the politicians and members of the media who declared that America was in the midst of the greatest financial calamity since the Great Depression were as wrong and misguided as the expansionists of the Roosevelt era. In reality the cyclical nature of market economies is as old as the markets themselves. In a free market system, financial downturns inevitably accompany economic prosperity-but the overall trend is upward progress in living standards and national wealth. While it is helpful to understand what caused the recent crisis, the more important questions to consider are 'What makes the 'boom and bust' cycle so predictable?' and 'What are the ethical responsibilities of the citizens of a free market economy?' In Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity, Alex J. Pollock argues that while economic downturns can be frightening and difficult, people living in free market economies enjoy greater health, better access to basic necessities, better education, work less arduous jobs, and have more choices and wider horizons than people at any other point in history. This wonderful reality would not exist in the absence of financial cycles. This book explains why.

Boom and Bust
Boom and Bust

Author: William Quinn

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-08-06

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1108369359

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Why do stock and housing markets sometimes experience amazing booms followed by massive busts and why is this happening more and more frequently? In order to answer these questions, William Quinn and John D. Turner take us on a riveting ride through the history of financial bubbles, visiting, among other places, Paris and London in 1720, Latin America in the 1820s, Melbourne in the 1880s, New York in the 1920s, Tokyo in the 1980s, Silicon Valley in the 1990s and Shanghai in the 2000s. As they do so, they help us understand why bubbles happen, and why some have catastrophic economic, social and political consequences whilst others have actually benefited society. They reveal that bubbles start when investors and speculators react to new technology or political initiatives, showing that our ability to predict future bubbles will ultimately come down to being able to predict these sparks.

Capitalism and Inequality
Capitalism and Inequality

Author: G.P. Manish

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-12-30

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1000283925

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Capitalism and Inequality rejects the popular view that attributes the recent surge in inequality to a failure of market institutions. Bringing together new and original research from established scholars, it analyzes the inequality inherent in a free market from an economic and historical perspective. In the process, the question of whether the recent increase in inequality is the result of crony capitalism and government intervention is explored in depth. The book features sections on theoretical perspectives on inequality, the political economy of inequality, and the measurement of inequality. Chapters explore several key questions such as the difference between the effects of market-driven inequality and the inequality caused by government intervention; how the inequality created by regulation affects those who are less well-off; and whether the economic growth that accompanies market-driven inequality always benefits an elite minority while leaving the vast majority behind. The main policy conclusions that emerge from this analysis depart from those that are currently popular. The authors in this book argue that increasing the role of markets and reducing the extent of regulation is the best way to lower inequality while ensuring greater material well-being for all sections of society. This key text makes an invaluable contribution to the literature on inequality and markets and is essential reading for students, scholars, and policymakers.

The Housing Boom and Bust
The Housing Boom and Bust

Author: Thomas Sowell

Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)

Published: 2009-05-12

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 0465018807

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Explains how we got into the current economic disaster that developed out of the economics and politics of the housing boom and bust. The "creative" financing of home mortgages and "creative" marketing of financial securities based on these mortgages to countries around the world, are part of the story of how a financial house of cards was built up--and then collapsed.