Values At The Core: How Human Values Contribute To The Rise Of Nations
Values At The Core: How Human Values Contribute To The Rise Of Nations

Author: Chin Hwee Tan

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2020-12-03

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 981122854X

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'A thought-provoking book, bringing readers outside their comfort zones. It challenges us to think beyond the typical macro and microeconomic …' [Read Full Review]A TanFT readers' best 2021 summer booksThroughout the history of mankind, the rise of societies, whether civilizations, nations, or communities, has been a story of human achievement. From the rise of the Akkadian empire in ancient Mesopotamia to the re-emergence of modern China, people constitute the basic denominator upon which societies build their success. The way people around the world think and behave is guided by a complex system of values. These values constitute key factors in the way economies are structured and their potential for further growth. To a large extent, they explain why Japan has gone through multiple lost decades; why Nordic countries accept the highest tax rates in the world, making their societies much more equal; why China has such a large trade surplus with the United States; or why some nations become stuck in a middle-income trap. It is these values, coupled with the right policies, that ultimately determine the destiny of nations.In this book, we explore how the combination of human values and policies affects national economic outcomes. We focus on certain key values conducive to growth: are people of a given nation, on average, hardworking, thrifty? Do they trust each other? Are they risk-takers? The harder people work, the higher the growth potential. Different savings patterns determine, to a large extent, whether a country will grow through investments and exports or consumption, and have generated large global imbalances over time. Trust goes a long way in explaining wealth and income inequalities and the role that governments can play in minimizing those inequalities. Economies with highly risk-averse citizens will stall. We also identify policies which have the greatest impact on economies. Political stability, much more so than any form of governance, is a precondition for growth. Free markets imply a process of creative destruction, free and fair competition, and a level playing field among companies. An educated workforce is a vital enabler of higher productivity and innovation. Corruption can seriously derail growth once it becomes endemic. Sound fiscal and monetary policies stabilize an economy as it goes through cycles and can greatly contribute to a more equal society and a more robust financial sector.

Economic Success: Fate Or Destiny?: Values And Policies Across 12 Countries To Better Understand The World We Live In
Economic Success: Fate Or Destiny?: Values And Policies Across 12 Countries To Better Understand The World We Live In

Author: Thomas Grandjean

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2024-05-28

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 9811294968

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The traditional rules-based system of the West, which has yielded peace dividends for many decades, now faces challenges from an emerging new world order. Building upon the themes introduced in Grandjean and Tan's Financial Times Readers' Best 2021 Summer Books, Values at the Core: How Human Values Contribute to the Rise of Nations, this book adopts a fresh perspective, examining historical precedents while charting a course for the future. Through accessible economic and social analyses of 12 nations, it offers insights into potential pathways forward.

A Valuable World
A Valuable World

Author: Thomas Grandjean

Publisher:

Published: 2019-12-14

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 9781675375167

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People around the world grow up with different sets of values guiding their vision and their behavior. Too often neglected by economists, those values constitute key factors in the way economies are structured and their potential for further growth. To a large extent, they explain why Japan has gone through multiple lost decades, why Nordic countries accept the highest tax rates in the world, making their societies much more equal, why China has such a large trade surplus with the US or why some nations become stuck in a middle-income trap. It is those values, coupled with the right policies, that ultimately determine the economic destiny of nations.In this book we explore how the combination of human values and policies affects national economic outcomes. We focus on key values conducive to growth: are people of a given nation, on average, hard-working, thrifty, do they trust each other, what is their attitude towards risk? The harder people work, the higher the growth potential. The willingness and ability to save determines to a large extent whether a country will grow through investments and exports vs consumption. Trust goes a long way to explaining wealth and income inequalities and the role that governments can play in minimizing those inequalities. Economies with highly risk-averse citizens will stall.We also identify policies which in our view have the greatest impact on economies. Market forces are essential for further growth. Political stability, in particular the absence of armed conflicts, is more conducive to growth than any specific form of government. An educated workforce breeds innovation and productivity. Corruption can seriously derail an economy. Sound fiscal and monetary policies are vital for an economy to go through its cycles and prevent crises.This book bridges the gap between those two sets of factors, recognizing that it is only by taking into consideration values and policies that we can truly understand how economies work.

Waking the Buddha
Waking the Buddha

Author: Clark Strand

Publisher: Middleway Press

Published: 2014-05-01

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1938252527

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Is there more to Buddhism than sitting in silent meditation? Is modern Buddhism relevant to the problems of daily life? Does it empower individuals to transform their lives? Or has Buddhism become too detached, so still and quiet that the Buddha has fallen asleep? Waking the Buddha tells the story of the Soka Gakkai International, the largest, most dynamic Buddhist movement in the world today—and one that is waking up and shaking up Buddhism so it can truly work in ordinary people’s lives. Drawing on his long personal experience as a Buddhist teacher, journalist, and editor, Clark Strand offers broad insight into how and why the Soka Gakkai, with its commitment to social justice and its egalitarian approach, has become a role model, not only for other schools of Buddhism, but for other religions as well. Readers will be inspired by the struggles and triumphs of the Soka Gakkai’s three founding presidents—individuals who staked their lives on the teachings of the Lotus Sutra and the extraordinary power of those teachings to help people become happy.

Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels
Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels

Author: Ian Morris

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2017-05-30

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 0691175896

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The best-selling author of Why the West Rules—for Now examines the evolution and future of human values Most people in the world today think democracy and gender equality are good, and that violence and wealth inequality are bad. But most people who lived during the 10,000 years before the nineteenth century thought just the opposite. Drawing on archaeology, anthropology, biology, and history, Ian Morris explains why. Fundamental long-term changes in values, Morris argues, are driven by the most basic force of all: energy. Humans have found three main ways to get the energy they need—from foraging, farming, and fossil fuels. Each energy source sets strict limits on what kinds of societies can succeed, and each kind of society rewards specific values. But if our fossil-fuel world favors democratic, open societies, the ongoing revolution in energy capture means that our most cherished values are very likely to turn out not to be useful any more. Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels offers a compelling new argument about the evolution of human values, one that has far-reaching implications for how we understand the past—and for what might happen next. Originating as the Tanner Lectures delivered at Princeton University, the book includes challenging responses by classicist Richard Seaford, historian of China Jonathan Spence, philosopher Christine Korsgaard, and novelist Margaret Atwood.

The Poverty of Nations
The Poverty of Nations

Author: Barry Asmus

Publisher: Crossway

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 143353911X

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We can win the fight against global poverty. Combining penetrating economic analysis with insightful theological reflection, this book sketches a comprehensive plan for increasing wealth and protecting stability at a national level.

Our Endangered Values
Our Endangered Values

Author: Jimmy Carter

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0743284577

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Jimmy Carter has written importantly about his spiritual life and faith. Now he describes quite personally his own involvement and reactions to disturbing societal trends involving both the religious and political worlds as they become intertwined.

The Last Utopia
The Last Utopia

Author: Samuel Moyn

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2012-03-05

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 0674256522

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Human rights offer a vision of international justice that today’s idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. In this pioneering book, Samuel Moyn elevates that extraordinary transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal’s troubled present and uncertain future. For some, human rights stretch back to the dawn of Western civilization, the age of the American and French Revolutions, or the post–World War II moment when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was framed. Revisiting these episodes in a dramatic tour of humanity’s moral history, The Last Utopia shows that it was in the decade after 1968 that human rights began to make sense to broad communities of people as the proper cause of justice. Across eastern and western Europe, as well as throughout the United States and Latin America, human rights crystallized in a few short years as social activism and political rhetoric moved it from the hallways of the United Nations to the global forefront. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

Author: Samuel P. Huntington

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2007-05-31

Total Pages: 553

ISBN-13: 1416561242

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The classic study of post-Cold War international relations, more relevant than ever in the post-9/11 world, with a new foreword by Zbigniew Brzezinski. Since its initial publication, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order has become a classic work of international relations and one of the most influential books ever written about foreign affairs. An insightful and powerful analysis of the forces driving global politics, it is as indispensable to our understanding of American foreign policy today as the day it was published. As former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski says in his new foreword to the book, it “has earned a place on the shelf of only about a dozen or so truly enduring works that provide the quintessential insights necessary for a broad understanding of world affairs in our time.” Samuel Huntington explains how clashes between civilizations are the greatest threat to world peace but also how an international order based on civilizations is the best safeguard against war. Events since the publication of the book have proved the wisdom of that analysis. The 9/11 attacks and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated the threat of civilizations but have also shown how vital international cross-civilization cooperation is to restoring peace. As ideological distinctions among nations have been replaced by cultural differences, world politics has been reconfigured. Across the globe, new conflicts—and new cooperation—have replaced the old order of the Cold War era. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order explains how the population explosion in Muslim countries and the economic rise of East Asia are changing global politics. These developments challenge Western dominance, promote opposition to supposedly “universal” Western ideals, and intensify intercivilization conflict over such issues as nuclear proliferation, immigration, human rights, and democracy. The Muslim population surge has led to many small wars throughout Eurasia, and the rise of China could lead to a global war of civilizations. Huntington offers a strategy for the West to preserve its unique culture and emphasizes the need for people everywhere to learn to coexist in a complex, multipolar, muliticivilizational world.