Author: Nicholas Eberstadt
Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press
ISBN: 9781599474700
Release Date: 2016-09-12
Genre: Political Science
By one reading, things look pretty good for Americans today: the country is richer than ever before and the unemployment rate is down by half since the Great Recession—lower today, in fact, than for most of the postwar era. But a closer look shows that something is going seriously wrong. This is the collapse of work—most especially among America’s men. Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist who holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, shows that while “unemployment” has gone down, America’s work rate is also lower today than a generation ago—and that the work rate for US men has been spiraling downward for half a century. Astonishingly, the work rate for American males aged twenty-five to fifty-four—or “men of prime working age”—was actually slightly lower in 2015 than it had been in 1940: before the War, and at the tail end of the Great Depression. Today, nearly one in six prime working age men has no paid work at all—and nearly one in eight is out of the labor force entirely, neither working nor even looking for work. This new normal of “men without work,” argues Eberstadt, is “America’s invisible crisis.” So who are these men? How did they get there? What are they doing with their time? And what are the implications of this exit from work for American society? Nicholas Eberstadt lays out the issue and Jared Bernstein from the left and Henry Olsen from the right offer their responses to this national crisis. For more information, please visit http://menwithoutwork.com.
Author: Nicholas Eberstadt
Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press
ISBN: 9781599474366
Release Date: 2012-10-10
Genre: Political Science
In A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic, one of our country’s foremost demographers, Nicholas Eberstadt, details the exponential growth in entitlement spending over the past fifty years. As he notes, in 1960, entitlement payments accounted for well under a third of the federal government’s total outlays. Today, entitlement spending accounts for a full two-thirds of the federal budget. Drawing on an impressive array of data and employing a range of easy- to- read, four color charts, Eberstadt shows the unchecked spiral of spending on a range of entitlements, everything from medicare to disability payments. But Eberstadt does not just chart the astonishing growth of entitlement spending, he also details the enormous economic and cultural costs of this epidemic. He powerfully argues that while this spending certainly drains our federal coffers, it also has a very real,long-lasting, negative impact on the character of our citizens. Also included in the book is a response from one of our leading political theorists, William Galston. In his incisive response, he questions Eberstadt’s conclusions about the corrosive effect of entitlements on character and offers his own analysis of the impact of American entitlement growth.
Author: Edward Conard
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781101602584
Release Date: 2012-05-07
Genre: Political Science
In the aftermath of the Financial Crisis, many commonly held beliefs have emerged to explain its cause. Conventional wisdom blames Wall Street and the mortgage industry for using low down payments, teaser rates, and other predatory tactics to seduce unsuspecting home owners into assuming mortgages they couldn't afford. It blames average Americans for borrowing recklessly and spending too much. And it blames the tax policies and deregulatory environment of the Reagan and Bush administrations for encouraging reckless risk taking by wealthy individuals and financial institutions. But according to Unintended Consequences, the conventional wisdom masks the real causes of our economic disruption and puts us at risk of facing a slew of unintended-and potentially dangerous-consequences.
Author: Jeffrey Friedman
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 081220493X
Release Date: 2011-06-06
Genre: Business & Economics
The deflation of the subprime mortgage bubble in 2006-7 is widely agreed to have been the immediate cause of the collapse of the financial sector in 2008. Consequently, one might think that uncovering the origins of subprime lending would make the root causes of the crisis obvious. That is essentially where public debate about the causes of the crisis began—and ended—in the month following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the 502-point fall in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in mid-September 2008. However, the subprime housing bubble is just one piece of the puzzle. Asset bubbles inflate and burst frequently, but severe worldwide recessions are rare. What was different this time? In What Caused the Financial Crisis leading economists and scholars delve into the major causes of the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression and, together, present a comprehensive picture of the factors that led to it. One essay examines the role of government regulation in expanding home ownership through mortgage subsidies for impoverished borrowers, encouraging the subprime housing bubble. Another explores how banks were able to securitize mortgages by manipulating criteria used for bond ratings. How this led to inaccurate risk assessments that could not be covered by sufficient capital reserves mandated under the Basel accords is made clear in a third essay. Other essays identify monetary policy in the United States and Europe, corporate pay structures, credit-default swaps, banks' leverage, and financial deregulation as possible causes of the crisis. With contributions from Richard A. Posner, Vernon L. Smith, Joseph E. Stiglitz, and John B. Taylor, among others, What Caused the Financial Crisis provides a cogent, comprehensive, and credible explanation of why the crisis happened. It will be an essential resource for scholars and students of finance, economics, history, law, political science, and sociology, as well as others interested in the financial crisis and the nature of modern capitalism and regulation.
Author: Edward Conard
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780698409910
Release Date: 2016-09-13
Genre: Business & Economics
The scourge of America’s economy isn't the success of the 1 percent—quite the opposite. The real problem is the government’s well-meaning but misguided attempt to reduce the payoffs for success. Four years ago, Edward Conard wrote a controversial bestseller, Unintended Consequences, which set the record straight on the financial crisis of 2008 and explained why U.S. growth was accelerating relative to other high-wage economies. He warned that loose monetary policy would produce neither growth nor inflation, that expansionary fiscal policy would have no lasting benefit on growth in the aftermath of the crisis, and that ill-advised attempts to rein in banking based on misplaced blame would slow an already weak recovery. Unfortunately, he was right. Now he’s back with another provocative argument: that our current obsession with income inequality is misguided and will only slow growth further. Using fact-based logic, Conard tracks the implications of an economy now constrained by both its capacity for risk-taking and by a shortage of properly trained talent—rather than by labor or capital, as was the case historically. He uses this fresh perspective to challenge the conclusions of liberal economists like Larry Summers and Joseph Stiglitz and the myths of “crony capitalism” more broadly. Instead, he argues that the growing wealth of most successful Americans is not to blame for the stagnating incomes of the middle and working classes. If anything, the success of the 1 percent has put upward pressure on employment and wages. Conard argues that high payoffs for success motivate talent to get the training and take the risks that gradually loosen the constraints to growth. Well-meaning attempts to decrease inequality through redistribution dull these incentives, gradually hurting not just the 1 percent but everyone else as well. Conard outlines a plan for growing middle- and working-class wages in an economy with a near infinite supply of labor that is shifting from capital-intensive manufacturing to knowledge-intensive, innovation-driven fields. He urges us to stop blaming the success of the 1 percent for slow wage growth and embrace the upside of inequality: faster growth and greater prosperity for everyone. From the Hardcover edition.
Author: Arnold Kling
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 9781944424169
Release Date: 2016-06-14
Genre: Business & Economics
Since the end of the second World War, economics professors and classroom textbooks have been telling us that the economy is one big machine that can be effectively regulated by economic experts and tuned by government agencies like the Federal Reserve Board. It turns out they were wrong. Their equations do not hold up. Their policies have not produced the promised results. Their interpretations of economic events -- as reported by the media -- are often of-the-mark, and unconvincing. A key alternative to the one big machine mindset is to recognize how the economy is instead an evolutionary system, with constantly-changing patterns of specialization and trade. This book introduces you to this powerful approach for understanding economic performance. By putting specialization at the center of economic analysis, Arnold Kling provides you with new ways to think about issues like sustainability, financial instability, job creation, and inflation. In short, he removes stiff, narrow perspectives and instead provides a full, multi-dimensional perspective on a continually evolving system.
Author: Ben J. Wattenberg
Publisher: Ivan R Dee
ISBN: STANFORD:36105114241909
Release Date: 2004-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
"What Mr. Wattenberg has to say about the impact of declining world population will underline its profound impact on the lives of people everywhere - from the dominance of the elderly and their demands on the resources of their governments, to the enormous potential of China and India, to the relatively privileged position of the United States vis-a-vis the major world powers. In an age already beset by a transformation in world politics, Fewer will help explain current trends as well as sketch the shape of our future."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Nicholas Eberstadt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781351476676
Release Date: 2017-09-29
Genre: Political Science
One third of the world's population today lives under governments that consider themselves to be Marxist-Leninist. In many of these places, severe poverty was endemic in the years before Communist authorities came to power. Communist governments claim to have a special understanding into and effectiveness in dealing with problems of poverty. Marxist-Leninist rulers have been in power for nearly thirty years in Cuba, nearly forty years in China, and over sixty-five years in the Soviet Union. How do the poor fare in such places today?Western intellectuals often assume there is an inevitable tradeoff between bread and freedom under communism. What populations lose in the way of civil and political rights, they gain in social guarantees that protect them against material hardship. In The Poverty of Communism, Nick Eberstadt challenges this assumption and shatters it. He shows that Communist governments in a wide variety of settings have been no more successful in attending to the material needs of the most vulnerable segments of the populations they govern than non-Communist governments against which they might most readily be compared. Indeed, measured by the health, literacy, and nutrition of their people, Communist governments may today be less effective in dealing with poverty than are non-Communist governments.The Poverty of Communism is a pathbreaking investigation. In a series of separate studies, Eberstadt analyzes the performance of Communist governments in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, and Cuba. This is the first scholarly effort to assess the record of Communist governments with respect to poverty in a detailed and comprehensive fashion. Well written, carefully argued, and reflecting a sweeping range of knowledge, The Poverty of Communism will be of interest to specialists in the countries investigated as well as those concerned with comparative economic and political development. Above all, it gives test
Author: James Bartholomew
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 9781939709929
Release Date: 2016-11-15
Genre: Political Science
What damage is being done by failing welfare states? What lessons can be learned from the best welfare states? And—is it too late to stop welfare states from permanently diminishing the lives and liberties of people around the world? Traveling around the globe, James Bartholomew examines welfare models, searching for the best education, health care, and support services in 11 vastly different countries; illuminating the advantages and disadvantages of other nations' welfare states; and delving into crucial issues such as literacy, poverty, and inequality. This is a hard-hitting and provocative contribution to understanding how welfare states, as the defining form of government today, are changing the very nature of modern civilization.
Author: Jim Clifton
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9781595620606
Release Date: 2013-09-16
Genre: Business & Economics
Definitive leadership strategy for fixing the American economy, drawn from Gallup’s unmatched global polling and written by the company’s chairman. What everyone in the world wants is a good job. “This is one of the most important discoveries Gallup has ever made,” says the company’s Chairman, Jim Clifton. In The Coming Jobs War, Clifton makes the bold assertion that job creation and successful entrepreneurship are the world’s most pressing issues right now, outpacing runaway government spending, environmental degradation and even the threat of global terrorism. The book is grounded in findings from Gallup’s World Poll, which reveals the implications of the jobs war on everything from economics to foreign policy to nothing less than America’s moral authority in the world. And it offers a prescription for attacking the jobs issue head-on. Clifton argues that the solution to creating good jobs must be found in cities, not in the federal government. Promoting entrepreneurship and job creation must be the sole mission and purpose of cities’ business leaders, government officials and philanthropists. Clifton says that the next big breakthrough will come from the combination of the forces within big cities, great universities and powerful local leaders. Their combined effect is the most reliable, controllable and predictable solution to America’s biggest problem. Strong leadership teams and a natural order are already in place within cities — in governments and local business and philanthropic entities, with caring leaders working on initiatives to fuel local economic growth and to create good jobs. The feat these leaders have to pull off is doubling their entrepreneurial energy by aligning their local forces: local tribal leaders, super mentors and universities. Winning the jobs war will require all hands on deck, and failure is not an option, especially for the United States, which has been the global leader in promoting freedom and entrepreneurship. America’s place in the world is at stake, and there are other countries poised to surpass a sputtering U.S. economy that is currently growing at only 2% annually. The biggest threat? China, with a GDP that is increasing at nearly 10% annually — a pace that will make it the world’s leading and most influential economy within the next 30 years. While the statistics are dire, Clifton remains optimistic about America’s ability to win the jobs war because America has been here before. “The Greatest Generation saved America by beating the Japanese and Germans at [World War II]. The Baby Boomers saved America a second time by beating the same foes, Japan and Germany, in an economic war that determined the leadership of the free world, again,” he says. The Coming Jobs War offers a clear, brutally honest look at America’s biggest problem and a cogent prescription for solving it.
Author: David Stockman
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 9781610392785
Release Date: 2013-03-26
Genre: History
As Director of the Office of Management and Budget in the early 1980s, David Stockman was a chief architect of the Reagan Revolution—a bold plan to cut taxes and reduce the scope and cost of government. The Triumph of Politics was Stockman’s frontline report of the miscalculations, manipulations, and political intrigues that led to its failure. A major publishing event and New York Times bestseller in its day, The Triumph of Politics is still startling relevant to the conduct of Washington politics today.
Author: John DiIulio
Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press
ISBN: 9781599474687
Release Date: 2014-09-02
Genre: Political Science
In Bring Back the Bureaucrats, John J. DiIulio Jr., one of America’s most respected political scientists and an adviser to presidents in both parties, summons the facts and statistics to show us how America’s big government actually works and why reforms that include adding a million more people to the federal workforce by 2035 might actually help to slow government’s growth while improving its performance. Starting from the underreported reality that the size of the federal workforce hasn’t increased since the early 1960s even though the federal budget has skyrocketed and the number of federal programs has ballooned, Bring Back the Bureaucrats tells us what our elected leaders won’t: there simply are not enough federal workers to do work that’s critical to our democracy. Government in America, DiIulio reveals, is Leviathan by Proxy, a grotesque form of debt-financed big government that guarantees bad government: • Washington relies on state and local governments, for-profit firms, and nonprofit organizations to implement federal policies and programs. Big-city mayors, defense industry contractors, nonprofit executives and other federal proxies lobby incessantly for more federal spending. • The proxy system chokes on chores as distinct as cleaning up toxic waste sites, caring for hospitalized veterans, collecting taxes, handling plutonium, and policing more than $100 billion a year in “improper payments.” • The lack of enough competent, well-trained federal civil servants figured in the failed federal response to Hurricane Katrina and in the troubled launch of Obamacare “health exchanges,” Bring Back the Bureaucrats is further distinguished by the presence of E. J. Dionne Jr. and Charles Murray, two of the most astute voices from the political left and right, respectively, who offer their candid responses to DiIulio at the end of the book.
Author: Hanna Rosin
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781101596920
Release Date: 2012-09-11
Genre: Social Science
“You have to…play by the rules so you can get to the top and change things.” -- Sheryl Sandberg A landmark portrait of women, men, and power in a transformed world Men have been the dominant sex since, well, the dawn of mankind. But Hanna Rosin was the first to notice that this long-held truth is, astonishingly, no longer true. At this unprecedented moment, by almost every measure, women are no longer gaining on men: They have pulled decisively ahead. And “the end of men”—the title of Rosin’s Atlantic cover story on the subject—has entered the lexicon as dramatically as Betty Friedan’s “feminine mystique,” Simone de Beauvoir’s “second sex,” Susan Faludi’s “backlash,” and Naomi Wolf’s “beauty myth” once did. In this landmark book, Rosin reveals how this new state of affairs is radically shifting the power dynamics between men and women at every level of society, with profound implications for marriage, sex, children, work, and more. With wide-ranging curiosity and insight unhampered by assumptions or ideology, Rosin shows how the radically different ways men and women today earn, learn, spend, couple up—even kill—has turned the big picture upside down. And in The End of Men she helps us see how, regardless of gender, we can adapt to the new reality and channel it for a better future.
Author: Andrew F. Krepinevich
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 9780465080717
Release Date: 2015-01-06
Genre: History
Andrew Marshall is a Pentagon legend. For more than four decades he has served as Director of the Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon's internal think tank, under twelve defense secretaries and eight administrations. Yet Marshall has been on the cutting edge of strategic thinking even longer than that. At the RAND Corporation during its golden age in the 1950s and early 1960s, Marshall helped formulate bedrock concepts of US nuclear strategy that endure to this day; later, at the Pentagon, he pioneered the development of “net assessment”—a new analytic framework for understanding the long-term military competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Following the Cold War, Marshall successfully used net assessment to anticipate emerging disruptive shifts in military affairs, including the revolution in precision warfare and the rise of China as a major strategic rival of the United States. In The Last Warrior, Andrew Krepinevich and Barry Watts—both former members of Marshall's staff—trace Marshall's intellectual development from his upbringing in Detroit during the Great Depression to his decades in Washington as an influential behind-the-scenes advisor on American defense strategy. The result is a unique insider's perspective on the changes in US strategy from the dawn of the Cold War to the present day. Covering some of the most pivotal episodes of the last half-century and peopled with some of the era's most influential figures, The Last Warrior tells Marshall's story for the first time, in the process providing an unparalleled history of the evolution of the American defense establishment.
