James K. Galbraith

Analyzes disparate approaches to the economic crisis while challenging opinions that periods of economic growth in the 20th century represented normal performance, identifying four leading sources that the author believes are preventing recovery. 40,000 first printing.

The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth

The End of Normal

The cult of the free market has dominated economic policy-talk since the Reagan revolution of nearly thirty years ago. Tax cuts and small government, monetarism, balanced budgets, deregulation, and free trade are the core elements of this dogma, a dogma so successful that even many liberals accept it. But a funny thing happened on the bridge to the twenty-first century. While liberals continue to bow before the free-market altar, conservatives in the style of George W. Bush have abandoned it altogether. That is why principled conservatives -- the Reagan true believers -- long ago abandoned Bush. Enter James K. Galbraith, the iconoclastic economist. In this riveting book, Galbraith first dissects the stale remains of Reaganism and shows how Bush and company had no choice except to dump them into the trash. He then explores the true nature of the Bush regime: a "corporate republic," bringing the methods and mentality of big business to public life; a coalition of lobbies, doing the bidding of clients in the oil, mining, military, pharmaceutical, agribusiness, insurance, and media industries; and a predator state, intent not on reducing government but rather on diverting public cash into private hands. In plain English, the Republican Party has been hijacked by political leaders who long since stopped caring if reality conformed to their message. Galbraith follows with an impertinent question: if conservatives no longer take free markets seriously, why should liberals? Why keep liberal thought in the straitjacket of pay-as-you-go, of assigning inflation control to the Federal Reserve, of attempting to "make markets work"? Why not build a new economic policy based on what is really happening in this country? The real economy is not a free-market economy. It is a complex combination of private and public institutions, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, higher education, the housing finance system, and a vast federal research establishment. The real problems and challenges -- inequality, climate change, the infrastructure deficit, the subprime crisis, and the future of the dollar -- are problems that cannot be solved by incantations about the market. They will be solved only with planning, with standards and other policies that transcend and even transform markets. A timely, provocative work whose message will endure beyond this election season, The Predator State will appeal to the broad audience of thoughtful Americans who wish to understand the forces at work in our economy and culture and who seek to live in a nation that is both prosperous and progressive.

How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too

The Predator State

A world-renowned economist offers cogent and powerful reflections on one of the great avoidable economic catastrophes of the modern era The economic crisis in Greece is a potential international disaster and one of the most extraordinary monetary and political dramas of our time. The financial woes of this relatively small European nation threaten the long-term viability of the Euro while exposing the flaws in the ideal of continental unity. "Solutions" proposed by Europe's combined leadership have sparked a war of prideful words and stubborn one-upmanship, and they are certain to fail, according to renowned economist James K. Galbraith, because they are designed for failure. It is this hypocrisy that prompted former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, when Galbraith arrived in Athens as an adviser, to greet him with the words "Welcome to the poisoned chalice." In this fascinating, insightful, and thought-provoking collection of essays--which includes letters and private memos to both American and Greek officials, as well as other previously unpublished material--Galbraith examines the crisis, its causes, its course, and its meaning, as well as the viability of the austerity program imposed on the Greek citizenry. It is a trenchant, deeply felt commentary on what the author calls "economic policy as moral abomination," and an eye-opening analysis of a contemporary Greek tragedy much greater than the tiny economy of the nation itself.

The Destruction of Greece and the Future of Europe

Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice

As Wall Street rose to dominate the U.S. economy, income and pay inequalities in America came to dance to the tune of the credit cycle. As the reach of financial markets extended across the globe, interest rates, debt, and debt crises became the dominant forces driving the rise of economic inequality almost everywhere. Thus the "super-bubble" that investor George Soros identified in rich countries for the two decades after 1980 was a super-crisis for the 99 percent-not just in the U.S. but the entire world. Inequality and Instability demonstrates that finance is the driveshaft that links inequality to economic instability. The book challenges those, mainly on the right, who see mysterious forces of technology behind rising inequality. And it also challenges those, mainly on the left, who have placed the blame narrowly on trade and outsourcing. Inequality and Instability presents straightforward evidence that the rise of inequality mirrors the stock market in the U.S. and the rise of finance and of free-market policies elsewhere. Starting from the premise that fresh argument requires fresh evidence, James K. Galbraith brings new data to bear as never before, presenting information built up over fifteen years in easily understood charts and tables. By measuring inequality at the right geographic scale, Galbraith shows that more equal societies systematically enjoy lower unemployment. He shows how this plays out inside Europe, between Europe and the United States, and in modern China. He explains that the dramatic rise of inequality in the U.S. in the 1990s reflected a finance-driven technology boom that concentrated incomes in just five counties, very remote from the experience of most Americans-which helps explain why the political reaction was so slow to come. That the reaction is occurring now, however, is beyond doubt. In the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, inequality has become, in America and the world over, the central issue. A landmark work of research and original insight, Inequality and Instability will change forever the way we understand this pivotal topic.

A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis

Inequality and Instability

Robert L. Heilbroner

Thomas M. Beveridge

The Economic Problem

Over the past thirty years, the issue of economic inequality has emerged from the backwaters of economics to claim center stage in the political discourse of America and beyond---a change prompted by a troubling fact: numerous measures of income inequality, especially in the United States in the last quarter of the twentieth century, have risen sharply in recent years. Even so, many people remain confused about what, exactly, politicians and media persons mean when they discuss inequality. What does "economic inequality" mean? How is it measured? Why should we care? Why did inequality rise in the United States? Is rising inequality an inevitable feature of capitalism? What should we do about it? Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know takes up these questions and more in plain and clear language, bringing to life one of the great economic and political debates of our age. Inequality expert James K. Galbraith has compiled the latest economic research on inequality and explains his findings in a way that everyone can understand. He offers a comprehensive introduction to the study of economic inequality, including its philosophical and theoretical origins, the variety of concepts in wide use, empirical measures and their advantages and disadvantages, competing modern theories of the causes and effects of rising inequality in the United States and worldwide, and a range of policy measures. The topic of economic inequality is going to become only more important as we approach the 2016 presidential elections. This latest addition to the popular What Everyone Needs to Know series from Oxford University Press will tell you everything you need to know to make informed opinions on this significant issue.

What Everyone Needs to Know®

Inequality

This paper summarizes a comprehensive revision and update of UTIP's work on the inequality of pay and incomes around the world, covering the years 1963 to 2008. The new UTIP-UNIDO data set of industrial pay inequality has 4054 country-year observations over for 167 countries, while the updated and revised EHII data set of estimated gross household income inequality has 3871 observations over 149 countries. The paper also provides comparisons of the EHII data set with a wide range of measures and estimates drawn from other work. They show in general that EHII is a reliable reflection of trends, and a reasonable, though not perfect, estimator of the levels of inequality found in surveys. These updates, revisions and quality checks were supported by a grant from the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Updates, Revisions and Quality Checks

UTIP Global Inequality Data Sets 1963-2008

Demonstrates how governmental policies have financially polarized the American workforce and rewarded or punished specific industries, and offers suggestions on how to close the wage gap that undermines the U.S. economy. 25,000 first printing. Tour.

The Crisis in American Pay

Created Unequal

In the press, at the Capitol, on Wall Street and around the world, people are waking up to the dangers of inequality as never before. Mainstream journalists now note that income inequality in America today is greater than at any time since 1929 - just before the Great Depression. Perhaps thisis not accidental. Where does inequality come from? And how does it lead to economic instability? In Inequality and Instability, leading economist James K. Galbraith demonstrates that finance is the driver converting inequality into instability. Those without money - made more numerous by inequality - find little recourse but to the ancient remedy of the loan. Their urges and needs, for bad andfor good, are abetted by the aggressive desire of those with money to lend. But if the balloon of debt explodes, as it did in 2008, it disrupts an entire economy built upon a financial house of cards. And not merely in the United States: debt crises and economic instability can be linked toinequality all around the world. To support this conclusion, Galbraith marshals the data as never before, examining it in light of geography, economic change, and politics. For example, the dramatic rise of inequality in the United States in the 1990s correlated with the information-technology boom, whose wealth was concentrated injust three counties of Northern California, the Seattle area, and Manhattan. As for what drives this inequality, he writes, we need look no further than the capital markets - since those at the top have benefited not simply from salaries and bonuses, but increasingly from stock options, assetvaluations, and capital gains. A landmark work of research and original insight, Inequality and Instability will change forever the way we understand this pivotal topic.

The economic crisis in Greece is a potential international disaster and one of the most extraordinary monetary and political dramas of our time. The financial woes of this relatively small European nation threaten the long-term viability of the Euro while exposing the flaws in the ideal of continental unity. "Solutions" proposed by Europe’s combined leadership have sparked a war of prideful words and stubborn one-upmanship, and they are certain to fail, according to renowned economist James K. Galbraith, because they are designed for failure. It is this hypocrisy that prompted former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, when Galbraith arrived in Athens as an adviser, to greet him with the words “Welcome to the poisoned chalice.” In this fascinating, insightful, and thought-provoking collection of essays—which includes letters and private memos to both American and Greek officials, as well as other previously unpublished material—Galbraith examines the crisis, its causes, its course, and its meaning, as well as the viability of the austerity program imposed on the Greek citizenry. It is a trenchant, deeply felt commentary on what the author calls “economic policy as moral abomination,” and an eye-opening analysis of a contemporary Greek tragedy much greater than the tiny economy of the nation itself.

Lloyd M Bentsen Jr Chair in Government/Business Relations James K Galbraith

What Everyone Needs to Know

In these essays James K. Galbraith wrote the history of Bush's presidency while it happened. This work contains Galbraith's most influential writings on current affairs along with new commentary, and explores the descent to disaster in Iraq and the ongoing transformation of the American economy under the steerage of Alan Greenspan. Important contributions examine the new U.S. strategic doctrine, the adverse economics of wars of occupation, the collapse of the technology bubble and its aftermath, the campaign against Social Security, the political economy of the 2004 election, the subversion of American voting as witnessed in Ohio, Hurricane Katrina and the fate of the dollar.

James K. Galbraith

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