House Economics

In the first half of the twentieth century the Keynesian brand of economics, which saw government spending as a necessary spur to economic growth, prevailed. Then in the 1970s, conservatives fought back. Once they got people to believe a few simple ideas instead—that only the free market could produce growth, that taxes and regulation stifle growth—the battle was won.

Over the last two decades, America has been falling deeper and deeper into a statistical mystery: Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles. Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail. In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends—growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration—come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty.

In Life Inc., award-winning writer, documentary filmmaker, and scholar Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from being convenient legal fictions to being the dominant fact of contemporary life. Indeed, as Rushkoff shows, most Americans have so willingly adopted the values of corporations that they’re no longer even aware of it.

The marble halls of the Federal Reserve have always held secrets; for decades the Fed did the utmost to preserve its room to maneuver, operating behind the scenes as much as possible. Yet over the past two decades, this elite world of bankers and economists has been forced to change its ways. Amid rising inequality, weakening global economic prospects, and a pandemic, the central bank has entered into a new era of transparency and activism. Limitless tells the inside story of this deeply impactful transformation, and what it means for ordinary Americans.

¿Alguna vez te has preguntado por qué el café de Starbucks es el triple de caro que el de cualquier otra cafetería? Tim Harford responde en este libro a esta y otras cuestiones, y nos enseña a ver el mundo con la mirada de un economista....

The Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank, was built for a monetary system composed primarily of investor-owned, government-chartered banks. But over the years, the erosion of banking law and the rise of alternative forms of money created outside of the banking system have pushed the Fed to take on more and more responsibilities to keep the economy out of recession, as it did during the 2008 crisis, and again during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when it created $3 trillion to stop another financial panic.

When you live in Northern California with the housing market rising, cost of living excelling, and trying to make it work on one small income...creativity and surrender comes into play. This housewife has learned, from years of making ends meet on a small budget and making money mistakes, just how to create a lovely shabby chic home, feed her family nutritious and healthy foods, and make a fun life for all of them on little funds or for free. She has also realized what can be sacrificed to afford what really matters. There is homesteading in town, canning, even if you have to buy your ...

In 2015, Inc. magazine recognized Noonday Collection as one of the fastest-growing companies in America. Years earlier, as Jessica Honegger stood at a pawn-shop counter in Austin, Texas, and handed over her grandmother's gold jewelry, her goal was personal: to fund the adoption of her Rwandan son by selling artisan-made jewelry. This first step launched an unexpected side-hustle that would grow into Noonday Collection. She teamed up with her first artisan partner, Jalia, a Ugandan jewelry maker and saw the meaningful impact Noonday brought to Jalia's community.

Can you picture a societal collapse so bad that the land becomes uninhabitable? What happens when it's up to one small group of people to reverse the societal collapse?After the collapse of society, Jason now lives in a house on a small island in the middle of the sea. Over the years, he had heard tales about what life was like on the land, but he had never experienced it for himself. He eventually discovers that the land was taken over by pirates many years ago. The societal collapse caused by the pirates was so severe that it drove many people to the sea. The people who remained on the ...

We live in an age of extreme corporate concentration, in which global industries are controlled by just a few giant firms - big banks, big pharma, and big tech, just to name a few. But concern over what Louis Brandeis called the "curse of bigness" can no longer remain the province of specialist lawyers and economists, for it has spilled over into policy and politics, even threatening democracy itself.

Mark Wolfe, a brilliant if self-thwarting technical writer, lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Sushila, and their toddler daughter. His half-brother Geoff, born and raised in the United Kingdom, is a desperate young soccer agent. He pulls Mark across the ocean into a scheme to track down an elusive prospect known only as “Godwin”—an African teenager Geoff believes could be the next Lionel Messi.

Este increíble y fascinante relato real es un viaje al imperio empresarial y delictivo de la Camorra, que comienza y termina bajo el signo de las mercancías. Las mercancías «frescas», bajo las formas más variadas (videojuegos, relojes, ropa de marca) llegan al puerto de Nápoles, y para ser almacenadas y escondidas se sacan de los gigantescos contenedores e invaden antiguos palacetes, previamente vaciados por completo.

Much ink has been spilled in recent years talking about political divides and inequality in the United States. But these discussions too often miss one of the most important factors in the divisions among Americans: the fundamentally unequal nature of the nation's housing systems. Increasingly, important life outcomes—performance in school, employment, even life expectancy—are determined by where people live and the quality of homes they live in. Fixer-Upper is the first book assessing how local, state, and national housing policies affect people and communities.

Naming names, along with grades and test scores, Golden lays bare a corrupt system in which middle-class and working-class whites and Asian Ameri­cans are routinely passed over in favor of wealthy white students with lesser credentials - children of alumni, big donors, and celebrities. The Price of Admission is a must-listen - for parents and students with a personal stake in college admissions but also for those disturbed by the growing divide between ordinary and privileged Americans.

Food snobbery is killing entrepreneurship and innovation, says economist, preeminent social commentator, and maverick dining guide blogger Tyler Cowen. Americans are becoming angry that our agricultural practices have led to global warming-but while food snobs are right that local food tastes better, they're wrong that it is better for the environment, and they are wrong that cheap food is bad food. The food world needs to know that you don't have to spend more to eat healthy, green, exciting meals. At last, some good news from an economist!

Jeffrey Sachs - celebrated economist, special advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, and author of the influential best seller The End of Poverty - disagrees. In his view, poverty is a problem that can be solved. With single-minded determination he has attempted to put into practice his theories about ending extreme poverty, to prove that the world's most destitute people can be lifted onto "the ladder of development."

The Unusual Billionaires tells the story of eight, truly outstanding companies which delivered 10 percent revenue growth over the last 10 years and 15 percent return on capital employed. In simple words, these companies defeated 5000 other public listed companies to deliver high growth while maintaining profitability year-on-year for the last decade. How did these companies do it? Why couldn’t this be reciprocated by other companies? What are they doing differently?

Professor Chandra is an internationally renowned economist, divorced father of three (quite frankly baffling) children, recent victim of a bicycle hit-and-run - but so much more than the sum of his parts. In the moments after the accident, Professor Chandra doesn’t see his life flash before his eyes but his life’s work. He’s just narrowly missed the Nobel Prize (again), and even though he knows he should get straight back to his pie charts, his doctor has other ideas. All this work. All this success. All this stress. It’s killing him.

El libro es una burla y una serie de sarcasmos bien documentados, pero también es una reflexión profunda del México violento, trágico y delirante donde reina la impunidad, la trampa, el desfalco, a pesar de tener seres humanos grandiosos en las ciencias y en las artes.

From Wall Street to the West Coast, from blue-collar billionaires to blue-blood fortunes, from the Google guys to hedge fund honchos, All the Money in the World gives us the lowdown on, among other things: the all-time richest Americans, who made and lost the most money in the past 25 years, the fields and industries that have produced the greatest wealth, the biggest risk takers, the most competitive players, the most wasteful family feuds, the trophy wives.