The best
Economic History books:
Reddit reviews
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
The best of Economic History books by number of unique Reddit comments:
Top Reddit reviews mentioning Economic History books:
I recently read Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty - In the book Piketty suggests that the return on capital is now so much higher than the return on labor that traditional income taxes would not be very effective for increasing the tax contributions of the extremely wealthy. Let me know if I'm off-base here, but wouldn't a 90% top income tax bracket just hit a small number of very high earning professionals like doctors, lawyers, etc.?
Correct. Read Piketty's book Capital in the 21st century.
The market if left to its own devices, will over time, bring us all back to feudalism. As ever larger shares of wealth travel in ever fewer amount of hands. Someone eventually wins the Monopoly game.
Your brother is likely a Timmy.
He believes in the Warren Buffet BS of "it is important to save money and invest in good companies"; "the path to riches is compound interest over your investment"; etc.
It's not that Buffet is wrong. Saving is important and is one of the most important paths to wealth. Receiving compound interest also is an important path to wealth. The thing you've got to keep in mind is that this Warren fundamentalist B&H BS has become a full blown mania/bubble. Fundamentalist analysis / valuation work as it is proven by Benjamin Graham and his followers (Buffet among them). The problem is that this mania shifted from research good companies and worry with capital preservation to buy index funds and never sell. People are buying stock index funds because they tend to represent the overall performance of the economy or of a sector and they just mindlessly put their money in there believing the price will only go up and, if it ever crashes, it doesn't matter because it will recover. People are buying bonds with ridiculously low interest rates that are far from being safe.
Anyway, I think that you should read the book, but be careful with the B&H myth surrounding Warren Buffer. I also suggest you read This time is different: eight centuries of financial folly and then take a look at the US debt. Look into the NIRP in Europe and the QE 1, 2 and 3 in the US. Etc.
Good luck.
Buy land, because god won't make more.
I don't disagree that Piketey has probably got it right, that if we don't make it our business as regular people to transition into interest bearing stuff, by way of the market, we have trouble.
The real concern is that Boomers, most definitely did "break" America by way of acceding to the notion that they could have "everything" without having to work for it, the notion of "pay it later" or "leave it for the kids" is EXACTLY what became respectable during the 1980's.
It turned the United States from an aspirant republic capable or generating wealth by way of fostering upward mobility, and through decades of disinvestment in schools, healthcare and infrastructure, to say nothing of militarizing the civic services, we ended up in short order, in an Ayn Rand inspired dystopia, where the engineers and "smart people" all were told to work 80 hours a week and do well, the "moochers" did FAR worse, and at the end of the day the "best and brightest" got the shaft, at some raw outsourcing deal.
So while there are winners in our society, the Mark Z's, and Eric Princes of our society, they were going to do just fine whether fortune smiled heavily or lightly upon them, that they just make it clear, that in fact we've become a casino / winner take all type economy.
It's a massive regression, so instead of public services and intentionally socializing major industrial/economic benefit projects, we wait on the hopeful benevolent patronage of some hyperwealthy person who can personally fund moon-launches, mars colonies. One wonders if they don't name the first colony Galt's Gulch.
What's screwed up is to see the boomers vigorously fuck over their own children and grandchildren so they don't have to think too much about any sort of responsibility or cost to themselves.
The 'me' generation all the way.
I think the term is Imperialistic Warmongering.
Source: Shock Doctrine
Scratch a liberal, a fascist bleeds. Neoliberal foreign policy is one of torture, of both the people and the economy. Would you like to know more?
If you're interested, here's a great book: "This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly." It's about exactly this phenomenon. The people who are getting rich always think that their success is because they are smarter than other people and they've figured out what went wrong last time. It's part of an essential fallacy wherein people attribute their successes to their own efforts/genius and externalize their failures.
Read Naomi Kleins book on the subject. It is a serious eye opener.
https://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999
Short version here
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/06/naomi-klein-how-power-profits-from-disaster
yeah wages of destruction by adam tooze really spells out in detail how wrong this is. highly recommend
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
pdf, epub, and mobi files are on libgen and also i have them, if anyone's really interested they can pm me
edit: also the last chapter in margaraet macmillan's paris 1919, which tells the story of the creation of the treaty of versailles, basically makes the case that it didn't really start wwii and the germans could easily have paid of reparations because their payments were literally scaled to their gdp or whatever. like they couldn't rearm and pay, but they could pay.
> debt to the government is absolutely fucking irrelevant
Oh god this is so misguided it's terrifying.
Go read This Time Is Different
Or ask yourself why Zimbabwe couldn't currency-control itself out of financial collapse. Yes, government debt is more complex than consumer debt, and controlling the monetary supply is a powerful tool. But it's not a license to do whatever the fuck you want. Countries can and do misuse this power all the time to their own peril. The US is no different. We must manage this stuff, and right now we're not. We're doing the opposite of what we should be doing.
Fuck off. Its a prosperous government for corporate interests and the wealthy, not the people. Which is exactly how neoliberal economies are designed to function (thanks Milton Friedman). Don't even talk about "converting through violence" after what Pinochet (with American help I might add) did to socialists and any nominally leftist people; thousands tortured and disappeared after a coup against a DEMOCRATICALLY elected socialist government under Salvadore Allende. You do some fucking research you lying ghoul.
Ideally we would have stayed Neutral during ww1 and mirrored our military like the Swiss's militia system. Iran is a problem because the CIA & British fooled around with Iran which blew up in their faces. We still feel the repercussions of their mess up yet the organizations who caused the mess in the first place say that things will be different this time.
I think you will be surprised to learn that what you have come to understand about neoliberalism and the positions supported by this sub are not always in alignment.
Make sure to read <em>Why Nations Fail</em>. Your first book report is due in two weeks.
That was the first serious history book I loved. The rise in particular is amazing as a primary source, as Shirer was a journalist in Austria before and after the Anschluss. Just don’t put too much stock in what he has to say about teutons.
Also, my French exchange student just about had a conniption when he saw the swastika on the spine on my bookshelf.
Edit: while I’m here I’m going to recommend my current favorite history of WWII, The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze. I’ve never found economics so fascinating, or been more thoroughly convinced that Speer should’ve hanged.
> The crisis in VZ is a product of lack of diversification and an over reliance on the oil economy to fund social programs.
This is simply nonsense. The crisis in VZ is a product of:
- Price and currency controls
- Corruption and mismanagement in nationalized industries
> how does participation [this] make VZ an example of socialism?
It makes it a perfect example of everything Hayek predicted would result from central/collectivist economies. That the whole thing devolves into starvation and oppression is no head-scratcher. It's right on script.
Probably a good time to read The Road to Serfdom, or at least to flick through the brief illustrated version.
I'd actually disagree with you when you say "PURE pragmatism", they might have been PURE pragmatism to get power (hence their policies being a grab bag of things that should in theory appeal equally to left and right wing people) but once they were in power...
Their economy was a disaster waiting to happen
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
Their hatred of Jews lead to Albert Einstein fleeing to the USA... because when your policies cause one of your countries most prominent scientist to join a country your about to make war on is that outcome is... sub-optimal.
Hell the only thing that matches the moral monstrosity of the Holocaust is what a stupid idea it was....
German General: We've only got so many trains and so much fuel, and we don't have enough winter gear at the front, do you think maybe we could put the winter gear in these trains and ship them to our soldiers at the front?
Hitler: NEVER! We need to use these trains to ship people someplace we can kill them!
(Meanwhile at the Front)
German Soldier: (Freezing to death)
The Nazis were in many ways almost Saturday cartoon villain like in how bad they were at making pragmatic choices....
And what about people who dislike her for the lies and economic ignorance she spreads? It never ceases to amaze me that people actually believe that her ideas are feasible. I can just say that X should be free too; that doesn’t magically render X immune to scarcity. Do yourself a favor: read this fantastic book on economics and start being part of the solution instead of the lunacy.
"Corporatism was created as a critique of socialism as its creators were ex socialists. It was first implemented in Italy under mussolini, but never saw full implementation because of the war. A modified version was used in germany under [removed] and was referred to as "national socialism""
Oh this system.
Have you ever read "Wages of Destruction"?
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
Is there a version of this economy that doesn't need to sustain itself by making war on its neighbors and stealing property from political dissidents after arresting them?
There’s been some fascinating research about how most “popular” revolutions are attempts by the indebted to tear down the system and reset their finances. This book has some great stories.
There was also a big article in the Washington Post about how many of the insurrectionists had tax problems and bad debts. Babbitt was just one of many, but since she’s the one who took a bullet to the neck her family is going to use that to try to make some coin.
You only need the part after "dp". Check this out:
Will take you to the same page as:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307719227/
Good URL hygiene is important!
I don't get your fixation on the raw number of shares someone holds it should be on the amount of money the have in it. If you have 100k worth of a company A with 10 shares and 100k worth of company B with 5 shares and they both pay a dividend of 10% you'll still get paid 10k from both companies regardless of the amount of shares you have.
I will agree though as I have numerous times throughout this thread that wealth inequality is a problem and I would 100% not want money being concentrated in the higher parts of society.
Yes I agree 10000% that the fed's lowered interest rates which have allowed for the growth of capital/assets to be higher than the growth in the economy leads to worsening wealth inequality, which Thomas Piketty extremely thoroughly discusses in his book Capital.
What I've been trying to get at (although badly, sorry slow day) is that given the circumstances that we've been dealt, and with the knowledge that the Fed's actions do help the economy recover and lessen the effects from a recession, and "as long as we don’t see inflation on the consumer side" during the Fed's efforts I dont see a problem with the lowered rates.
The main problem is how long it took the economy to recover and the length at which the fed kept it's policies in place, which I why I stated that I hope we start to see a continuation of the precovid labor market as well as large gains with wages so that the Fed can start to ease off its easy credit policies fast and asset prices can drop/stabilize.
If you want the state to create or enforce a monopoly, you aren't a Capitalist. Simply repeating "they are Capitalists!" does not make it true. These are the people who funded the Bolsheviks, does that make them Communists? They are 100% STATISTS.
https://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-Bolshevik-Revolution-Capitalists/dp/190557035X
They just used government to shutdown private business for a whole year while thier corporations consolidated customers. Many of those businesses will never come back. This is not Capitalism and Corporate Personhood does not exist without the State to grant special privileges while avoiding legal liability. Corporate status itself is a fiction created by the State.
I recommend <em>Capital in the 21st Century</em>. It's an extensive study of income, economy growth, capital, and how it all relates to the rising rates of inequality in the world. It finishes with tentative policy recommendations for governments to look into to counteract the inevitable market trends.
It's written by an economist, so it is kind of number heavy, but I think it's worth getting through.
I seem to remember a good bit of info about it in this book... https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
There is a reason the classic book on bubbles and panics is titled <em>This Time Is Different</em>. To paraphrase JK Galbraith, for every bubble there must be an essential element of newness -- not to convince people, but to allow those who wish to believe to do so. That this time the rules have changed and it won't end the way it literally always has.
The SoV argument is a weird one, because "store of value" is not really a financial concept anyone used before Bitcoin. (It's taken from the standard list of things needed to be a currency.) The closest thing is "inflation hedge", something you expect to retain its value in the event of inflation in fiat, like gold. But you generally don't expect the real value of an inflation hedge to go up -- its nominal value may rise as the dollar (or whatever) falls, but the whole point is that it retains value rather than increasing.
Basically, there are a lot of reasons to think that Bitcoin is in a pretty classic speculative bubble like all those that have come before, so the burden of proof would seem to fall on its defenders. "Number go up" is not a defense, since that's exactly what you'd expect in a bubble.
I think the difference with Bitcoin is that the protocol itself both diffuses the responsibility for the scam and makes it easy to bring back. In a typical Ponzi, the collapse exposes the perpetrator and destroys the instrument of the scheme. The fund goes bust, the company collapses, and so on. In a speculative bubble (which is a sort of "natural" Ponzi scheme) the bubbling asset is widely discredited and people wonder how it could ever have been so trusted.
With Bitcoin, though, even in the event of a collapse, as long as there are enough true believers who keep mining, the thing keeps existing and can draw in a fresh round of suckers once people forget. There's no fund or company or product to shut down, ultimately. And its easy for people to rationalize the failures by blaming everything but the protocol itself.
It also helps that Bitcoin is unlike most things that have come before (n.b. this doesn't make it good). There's a reason that the rallying cry of speculative bubbles is "this time is different", and with Bitcoin it's easy to convince yourself that it's different, especially if your ideology already leans toward libertarian.
Not to make this political. But everyone should care. Global inequality is at all time highs.
We can feed and clothe the poor many times over and we choose not to. We destroy the environment and pollute our bodies in the name of economic growth. It ultimately leads to civil unrest, which we are experiencing now, because people can’t get by working full time jobs. They can’t afford health care. They can’t provide for their families. The middle class is disappearing and being replaced by what amounts to modern day slaves.
Capital in the Twenty First Century is on my reading list and covers some of these topics.
Acabas de recitar como perico los tipicos cliches del caracter del Mexicano, que no explican la situacion socioeconomica del pais. El Libro Bad Samaritans rescata testimonios historicos de un comerciante australiano recitando las mismas quejas y topicos de algunas sociedades atrasadas... Japon y Alemania hace 100 años.
Por cierto, se te cae un poquito la ideologia. Digo, tus ejemplos resultan un poco parciales. Pero bueno, solo por dar una explicacion alterna a tu otro comentario: La queda de "los ricos deben pagar impuestos" mas que realcionarse con la "envidia", es una observacion mas relacionada a la realidad de que la productividad de las empresas y las ganancias siguen subiendo (con el famosisimo PIB), sin embargo los salarios medios en Mexico estan estancados y la recaudacion que sostiene los servicios sociales no crece al mismo ritmo gracias a los agujeros fiscales que se aprovechan algunas empresas e individuos, es decir un llamado a mantener la proporcionalidad de los impuestos (un mandato que incluso recoje la constitucion).