F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed, “there are no second acts in American lives.” But I am on my third. I started out in the theatre, then became a lawyer, and then a political philosopher. What drove each move is that I was always outraged by injustice and wanted to find a better way to fight against it. For me, reading, writing, and teaching political philosophy turned out to be that way. The books on this list provide important lessons on how certain economic policies can cause injustice while others can cure it. Each has been around for a long time, but they are as relevant today as when they were first written.
I wrote...
On Unemployment: A Micro-Theory of Economic Justice: Volume 1
By
Mark R. Reiff,
What is my book about?
Despite the obvious problems caused by unemployment, political philosophers have long tended to ignore it as a source of injustice. Most view unemployment as a technical matter, with solutions dependent on the kind of empirical determinations that are best left to economists. But I think this is a mistake. Work is a major part of our social life, as well as something that provides many people with their sense of identity and self-respect. The unemployed are accordingly missing out on a great deal of what makes for a meaningful life, and not just on economic benefits. Unemployment therefore is a form of injustice, and society has a moral obligation to take action. The nature and extent of this moral obligation is what On Unemployment is dedicated to exploring.
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I would have recommended John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, which is one of the great masterworks of the twentieth century, but reading Keynes himself can be difficult.
Hansen’s book is the best summary available despite being more than 70 years old. And understanding Keynes is essential if you want to understand how certain economic policies continue to lead us astray.
A series of essays by one of the most respected Canadian political philosophers of the twentieth century.
I have recommended this book for the title essay, which provides a particularly insightful account of how people have thought about economic justice (or haven’t) over time.
In his final book, one of the giants of twentieth-century political philosophy returns to his key themes of state, class, and property as well as such contemporary questions as economic justice, human rights, and the nature of industrial democracy. Macpherson not only re-examines historical issues dealt with in his earlier works, such as the impact of Hobbes's economic assumptions on his political theories, but assesses the problematic future of democracy in a market society. This new edition includes an introduction by Frank Cunningham that places the book in the broader context of Macpherson's work.
How can a society as rich as ours leave so many people behind?
Published in 1958, this book opened my eyes to the importance of economic justice—I first read it in the late 1970s when I was nineteen.
But it is still mind-blowing today, for neither the wrongheadedness of prevailing economic policy nor the solutions that are available for us to do better have changed.
John Kenneth Galbraith's international bestseller The Affluent Society is a witty, graceful and devastating attack on some of our most cherished economic myths.
As relevant today as when it was first published over forty years ago, this newly updated edition of Galbraith's classic text on the 'economics of abundance', lays bare the hazards of individual and social complacency about economic inequality.
Why worship work and productivity if many of the goods we produce are superfluous - artificial 'needs' created by high-pressure advertising? Why begrudge expenditure on vital public works while ignoring waste and extravagance in the private sector of the…
A renowned economist and Harvard professor with a bit of a cult following, Schumpeter provides a realistic evaluation of what capitalism is and whether it can survive if it does not do more to help a wider range of people.
First published in 1942, Schumpeter’s fear was the rise of socialism, but what he had to say about the failings of capitalism back then applies with equal force today.
Schumpeter was the originator of the term “creative destruction” to describe how capitalism works, and Part II of the book was the inspiration for my paper, “Can Liberal Capitalism Survive?”
“Joseph Schumpeter’s classic Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy explains the process of capitalism’s 'creative destruction' — a key principle in understanding the logic of globalization." — Thomas L. Friedman, Foreign Policy
In this definitive third and final edition (1950) of his prophetic masterwork, Joseph A. Schumpeter introduced the world to the concept of “creative destruction,” which forever altered how global economics is approached and perceived. Now featuring a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning Schumpeter biographer Thomas K. McCraw, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand where the world economy is headed.
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1977, Meade was on the moderate left.
He wanted a more just economy but did not advocate jettisoning capitalism. Here he gives his analysis of various economic problems, what causes economic injustice, and how to make this right.
The book can get technical at times, but his analyses and proposed solutions are as relevant today as they were when they were first presented.
Meade’s work was one of the inspirations for John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, the most important work of liberal political philosophy of the twentieth century.
First published in 1979, this fourth part of Principles of Political Economy applies the tools of economic analysis to the distribution of income and property. Professor Meade considers the problems of making interpersonal comparisons of welfare and of distinguishing between the efficiency and distributional aspects of changes in social welfare. He analyses the possible criteria for redistribution as between rich and poor members of the same generation, as between present and future generations, and - in the context of demographic policies - as between the born and the unborn. Special attention is given to the social factors (such as assortative…
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Since completing my PhD in political economy (dissertation: ‘International Integration and Foreign Policy Decision-making’) I have gone deeper into economic origins of change (eg. Modern Inflation, coauthored with well-known economist Wilhelm Hankel in Bologna, Italy at Johns Hopkins SAIS) and find the interactions between economic, politics, and psychology fascinating—presenting an infinite number of ‘Sherlock Holmes-like puzzles’. We are all now confronted with political, economic, and psychological uncertainties, put on high speed due to the war in Ukraine and great power tensions. So it is time to learn about the origins of our problems and their trends in order to better cope and find a basis for individual, if not collective, peace.
Discover why each book is one of Robert's
favorite books.
Why did Robert love this book?
Shiller predicted both the dot-com crisis (2001) and the financial crisis stemming from real estate (2008) in advance in two editions of this book.
Since receiving the Nobel prize in economics he published his book Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral which together with the book recommended will help the reader predict the timing of coming economic trends.
In this revised, updated, and expanded edition of his New York Times bestseller, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller, who warned of both the tech and housing bubbles, cautions that signs of irrational exuberance among investors have only increased since the 2008-9 financial crisis. With high stock and bond prices and the rising cost of housing, the post-subprime boom may well turn out to be another illustration of Shiller's influential argument that psychologically driven volatility is an inherent characteristic of all asset markets. In other words, Irrational Exuberance is as relevant as ever. Previous editions covered the stock and housing markets--and…
I’ve worked with business leaders on pay projects all over the world, at companies like Nike and Starbucks, in places like Brazil, Mexico, Vietnam, Singapore, the UAE, and all over Europe. While many business books are written from a theoretical or academic perspective, I bring an operator’s perspective. I get to work out the ideas in my book, Fair Pay, on a daily basis, and so I wrote the book to be a realistic and practical guide for understanding the perspectives of business leaders, human resources, and the typical employee.
Discover why each book is one of David's
favorite books.
Why did David love this book?
Changing careers from publishing to tech is a path not often traveled. Wiener made this jump from a world legendary for its light pay compensated by romanticism, to an industry best known for generous “perks that landed somewhere between the collegiate and the feudal.” Wiener’s experience makes for one of the most entertaining books I’ve read in years—she is a gifted writer and unafraid to call out the over-seriousness of the tech bro mentality as an ultimately “dreary” worldview.
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2020.
Named one of the Best Books of 2020 by The Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, ELLE, Esquire, Parade, Teen Vogue, The Boston Globe, Forbes, The Times (UK), Fortune, Chicago Tribune, Glamour, The A.V. Club, Vox, Jezebel, Town & Country, OneZero, Apartment Therapy, Good Housekeeping, PopMatters, Electric Literature, Self, The Week (UK) and BookPage.A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a January 2020 IndieNext Pick.
"A definitive document of a world in transition: I won't be alone in returning…
I’ve worked with business leaders on pay projects all over the world, at companies like Nike and Starbucks, in places like Brazil, Mexico, Vietnam, Singapore, the UAE, and all over Europe. While many business books are written from a theoretical or academic perspective, I bring an operator’s perspective. I get to work out the ideas in my book, Fair Pay, on a daily basis, and so I wrote the book to be a realistic and practical guide for understanding the perspectives of business leaders, human resources, and the typical employee.
Discover why each book is one of David's
favorite books.
Why did David love this book?
Greenhouse’s accounting of union history shares endlessly fascinating stories that could inspire 1,000 Netflix series, but most of us (myself included) know nothing of them. This book is not a pro-union polemic and even for those with a strong skepticism or distaste for unions, we should all understand the history of labor rights and appreciate how many of the things we take for granted now, like overtime pay and weekends, came at very real sacrifice and loss of life rather than through corporate benevolence.
“A page-turning book that spans a century of worker strikes.... Engrossing, character-driven, panoramic.” —The New York Times Book Review
We live in an era of soaring corporate profits and anemic wage gains, one in which low-paid jobs and blighted blue-collar communities have become a common feature of our nation’s landscape. Behind these trends lies a little-discussed problem: the decades-long decline in worker power.
Award-winning journalist and author Steven Greenhouse guides us through the key episodes and trends in history that are essential to understanding some of our nation’s most pressing problems, including increased income inequality, declining social mobility, and the…
