5 comments about The FairTax Book.

1. It is sad to see all the negative reviews for this book. The history and explanation he goes into on taxes and how we are fooled as a country by our politicians is awesome. This book is full of good ideas, that if we all had the courage as a country to follow through on would make us a powerful country.
   
   I would strongly recommend this book to all those with open minds.



2. This is a must read for any one interested in the economy of the United States and the welfare of its citizens. A complete explanation of the Fairtax tax plan to revitalize the tax system of the United States.



3. Taxation is Theft whether it is the current system or through universal sales tax. It is taking money, taking the product and hours of your life, by force by the government to be used for whatever the government wishes. It is utterly and completely immoral and unconscionable. So I consider it no great improvement to more efficiently enslave all of us.



4. The Fair Tax is a profound concept to fully fund the federal government without confiscating personal and business property - taxing income. An embedded national sales tax replaces all federal taxes on income - even those income taxes by another name (payroll taxes, capital gains, etc.) Getting one's head around an income-tax-free United States isn't always easy. Fortunatley Boortz and company present the logic, the common sense, the incredible personal, social, national, and economic benefits of the Fair Tax in clear, concise, and fun reading. An IRS free U.S.? This is how.



5. This is the first time I've ever left a review. I've just got to offset some of those one star reviews since I'm sure that only 23 percent of the people who gave it one star actually read the book. By the way, I am talking about an inclusive 23 percent. I think this book should get at least 3 stars even from opponents of the fairtax. It's one of the easiest books to read. It's entertaining, funny, and just informative even to the person who hates good ideas.
   
   Get the book and call your congressman.
   
   Also, I have a recommendation for anyone who liked this book: Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. You can throw that in your cart too since, if you're anything like me, you're trying to get to $25 for free shipping.

2 comments about The West the Railroads Made.

1. More than any other single factor, railroads made the West the way it was and is in many respects today. The Federal government undeniably had a major role too. But the Louisiana Purchase, offers of free land, troops for security, and such, were government measures related mostly to setting the stage. It was the railroads which accounted for the details of Western development; details which caused settlers to lead their lives in certain ways and make decisions about which opportunities to pursue. Thus did the railroads play an incomparable role in how the West was developed. "The railroad was foreground, everything else was background," is the way the authors put it.
   
   The co-authors steeped in Western history with academic and professional backgrounds go into all aspects of the railroad's effects. Railroad lines not only determined the location of towns, but also the layout of them. In their earliest stages, roads in Western towns were oriented toward the railroad depot. Furthermore, the railroad depot was the first experience settlers and immigrants had of a town; and as a place for the receiving and shipping of goods, a town's economy and in some cases its existence depended on the depot.
   
   Railroads adapted as they changed the West by their presence. The original few early lines tied all parts of the West together internally and with the cities and states of the eastern parts. The value of land, the farms growing corn and wheat in such quantities that it affected the diet of all Americans, mountains of ore for Midwestern and Northern factories, and transport of large numbers of persons for rapid growth in many inviting areas were all major economic and sociological developments directly related to the railroads. As the West became more developed and their original roles faded, the railroads adapted by promoting tourism based on the natural wonders of the West and travel to major cities and other vacation areas.
   
   The work is based on innumerable facts colorfully related; which facts were taken from the authors' scholarly knowledge and interest in Western history. Another part of the book's popular style are the hundreds of illustrations enhancing the text. A map of one early Western town, for instance, demonstrates the town's streets leading in straight lines from the railroad depot so people and goods can move easily to and from this hub. Color travel posters complement text on the different railroad lines' playing up the West as a tourist destination. Railroad documents, prints, and photographs are other sorts of illustrated materials. The assorted visual matter is so bountiful it spills over into the back matter of notes, bibliography, and index.



2. The innovation of railroads in the early nineteenth century transformed America from a nation covering the eastern seaboard to the country it is today spanning from Maine to Southern California. "The West The Railroads Made" is an anthology of stories, illustrations, and photographs (some of which are color) to tell the tale of how the pioneers of this technology were essential in transforming America in the country it is today. "The West The Railroads Made" is highly recommended for locomotion enthusiasts everywhere, and for any community library collection for Railroads or American history.

5 comments about The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor.

1. Landes is the man, and this book pretty much sums it up. His primary thesis, that when humans are given the freedom to be innovative and pursue their own interest, is familiar from Adam Smith, but Landes does it better, it's a convincing argument. Culture is the determining factor in the success and failure of nations, not chance, not geography, not even resources, and Landes makes it obvious, it seems.



2. A good and informative read, more so, the second time around. Landes, raises many excellent points for debate between socio-economics and cultural influences of peoples and their leaders, more ofter imposed upon them, as opposed to chosen to lead.
   
   The book chosen for an economics class just finished at Lund University, Lunds, Sweden. As, a retired American ex-patriot with a background in international finance, still interested in learning, this book is highly recommended for anyone seeking to gain a better understanding on the question "how did we get to where we are?" And divides the world's peoples into three catagories: those that spend billions yearly on losing weight; those that eat to live; and, those who don't know where their next meal is coming from! That our wealth (the West) is dependent on others less fortunate. What they can't make, they will take! That wealth is, in and of itself, a magnet for exporting of commodities or products, but when all else fails or is denied -- people (migration) will be the end product that swamps the west.
   
   We'd better wake-up and understand our need to declare World War III, not nation on nation, region on region, or religion against another religion, but a unified "War on Poverty" led by the west.



3. Landes provides an interesting and credible explanation of the differences in income/capita (now about 400:1, about 5:1 250 years ago) between the richest and poorest nations. En route, Landes also provides a useful perspective on today's globalization debate.
   
   Most of the differential is attributable to cultural values. Some, however, is geographical. If one marks off a belt a couple thousand miles in width circling the earth at the equator, one finds within it no developed countries. Year-round heat encourages proliferation of disease and parasites. Poor soils and extreme dry areas are added problems, as well as the debilitating heat's effect on workers.
   
   From about 750-1100, Islamic science and technology far surpassed those in Europe - then something went wrong and science became denounced as heresy by religious zealots. Similarly, state control allowed Chinese innovations to fall into disuse. China's flotillas far surpassed Europe's. The biggest ships were about 400' long and 160' wide (Columbus' Santa Maria was about 85' long), and the fleet totaled 317 vessels and 28,000 men. Then new leadership brought an emphasis on agriculture and all ocean-going ships were destroyed in 1525.
   
   Europe enjoyed a monopoly on corrective lenses for 3-400 years, beginning in the 1300s, more than doubling the availability of skilled craftsmen and allowing the further development of microscopes and telescopes around 1600.
   
   Cotton from India proved capable of multiple washings (vs. wool), thereby transforming standards of cleanliness and health.
   
   "Easy money" (eg. gold from Spanish colonies, Holland's discovery of North Sea natural gas) makes for a lazy economy that fails to develop the talents of its people.
   
   The Protestant Reformation gave a big boost to literacy, and spawned dissents that are at the heart of scientific endeavor. Data show a much greater percentage of scientists from Protestant vs. Catholic backgrounds. Unfortunately, after Luther, cleanliness became a particular cause for suspicion of heresy, and smuggling non-approved books led to the death penalty. Thus, the fate of Catholic southern Europe was sealed for 300-some years. Sicily also suffered from intolerance and superstition of Jews, forced them out, and imposed a backwardness in trade on itself.
   
   Landes then goes on to ask "Why did the Industrial Revolution occur in England?" Protestants were persecuted and expelled from France. Weavers from the southern Netherlands sought refuge in England and brought trade secrets with them, while Jews from Spanish persecutions brought networks of trade connections. England also had a much better system of roads, along with an emphasis on transport speed and time in general. Meanwhile, France was undergoing the upheaval of the French Revolution, India's craftsmen avoided using iron and steel (had made no progress in scientific knowledge for centuries), while Russia was hobbled by serfdom's tying peasants to the land to do forced labor. China and Japan had walled themselves off from the rest of the world - in fact, China lost many of its early innovations through disuse.
   
   Another problem for Russia was that serfdom left so much wealth in the hands of the nobility that overall consumer demand was limited. Russia's poor industry was only able to produce inferior rifles, resulting in enormous losses in the Crimean War (1854-56), the war with Japan (1904-05), and WWI. Finally, the Baltic states remained poor because they were tangled in an endless struggle for freedom.
   
   Regardless, once started, the Industrial Revolution proved difficult to copy because division of labor complicated industrial espionage. Across the Atlantic, scarcity of labor in the early U.S. led to high wages and a push for innovation. Thus, European devices were copied and imported, and skilled European craftsmen encouraged to move to high American wages. (Side Note: By the time of the Civil War, firearms production in the North vs. Confederacy was 32:1 due to the South's emphasis on agriculture.)
   
   The Spanish in South America kept Protestants and Jews out; independence came not because of the settlers' strength, rather Spain's weakness. Spain also brought a macho society attitude that adulthood brought males complete independence and idleness; South American immigrants were also less educated than those in North America and the immense landownings lent themselves to simple ranching enterprises. (American immigrants created a squatters' rights culture, with small landownings and a high motivation for self-sufficiency.)
   
   China and Japan both resisted foreigners; the latter persecuted Christians and their converts after being told these groups were part of Spain's control mechanism. Following a period of anti-foreigners, Japan committed to learning from and copying the U.S. and Europe. (The Chinese did also, but much, much later.)
   
   Muslims (Ottoman Empire) cut themselves off from the mainstream of knowledge via banning the printing press - had a problem with a printed Koran. Another major limiter was their diminishment of women. (The Japanese did also, but to a much more limited extent - eg. girls were well educated, they worked until married, and continued to work afterwards if their income was needed.)
   
   The Japanese realized they lost WWII because of greater U.S. industrial output. Landed attributes this to their support for a large, exporting auto industry - American occupiers saw no need for such an industry (comparative disadvantage). Japan's auto producing disadvantages (small market, lag in technology) were turned into advantages through the Toyota Production System.
   
   Landes points out that today's comparative advantage rationality can easily become tomorrow's mistake. His example is Germany - the British economist John Bowring lamented that the foolish Germans wanted to make iron and steel instead of sticking to wheat and rye and buying their manufactures from Britain. Had they heeded him, they would have pleased the economists and ended up a lot poorer. Similarly, the Japanese.
   
   Bottom Line: The most successful cures for poverty come from within. Educated, eyes-open optimism pays; pessimism only offers the empty consolation of being right. Gains from trade are unequal. Some activities are more lucrative and productive than others.



4. The historian who hates facts
   
   David Landes' The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is at once an impressive display of scholarship and a mortally flawed analysis of, as the author put the question "why some nations are wealthy and others desperately poor." The reason why I say it is flawed is not because I disagree with the main thesis - that attitudes towards innovation and openness to new ideas determine wealth - but rather that the way this thesis is argued is completely a-scientific, if not anti-scientific. In particular, David Landes' contempt for quantifiable facts, banishes the book from the land of scientific inquiry to the land of pure ideology.
   
   Historians who despise facts are nothing new. Marxist historians insisted for half a century, even in the face of the highest economic growth rates seen in human history, that the internal contradictions of capitalism were dragging it to its grave. Professor Landes' contempt for numbers, though, is much more damning than that of the Marxist historians. While they based their analysis exclusively on Marxist theory, and thus had no problem trumpeting their contempt for "bourgeois statistics," he stakes his analysis on the same facts he disparages throughout the book. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is one long account of experiences of economic growth (or lack thereof) of various nations and thus one would expect it to be empirical.
   
   Professor Landes' disdain for numbers that do not agree with his theory is a recurrent theme throughout the book. It begins with an affirmation that Western Europe is the best place for agriculture because it receives more rainfall than any other area that flies in the face both of rainfall data and agricultural production data. Professor Landes seems especially disgusted by cliometrics. Now cliometrics is one of the most interesting developments in historical analysis. It is the application of the best and most sophisticated statistical methodologies to historical facts in order to shed new light upon historical process than is possible with the paltry pre-existing data. It is, of course, imperfect and cliometricians argue amongst themselves over many of their findings. However, cliometrics is one of the most interesting developments of historical inquiry, showing many pre-existing interpretations to be incoherent with the facts.
   
   When confronted with cliometrical evidence, instead of judging his thesis against this historical evidence, Professor Landes chooses instead to disqualify it, behaving exactly like the Marxist historians he (rightly) criticizes. One passage is particularly illustrating:
   
   "Some historians would argue that these strangers saw and understood less than they thought, or that they blackened the Indian picture by way of brightening the European. A few have even asserted - on the strength of estimates of food intake - that the Indian ryot lived better than the English farm laborer.
   
   Such calorimetric cliometrics seem to me implausible in the light of the gulf between European and Asian techniques. Nor am I persuaded by efforts to project twentieth-century comparative income estimates back to the eighteenth century. The opportunities to distort the result are endless, and the leverage of even a small mistake extended over two hundred years is enormous.
   
   In these speculative exercises, the numbers deserve credence only if they accord with the historical context. That context, for India, was one of limited property rights and technological backwardness. Western Europe, well on its way to the Industrial Revolution, was inventing and improving ingenious, labor-saving devices, in particular, both hand- and power-driven machines. It had long since passed Asia by. It's as simple as that: more productive techniques translate into higher incomes."
   (page 165 of the paperback edition)
   
   The numbers deserve credence only if they accord with the historical context. In other words: My analysis is, by hypothesis, correct. Therefore, any evidence to the contrary must be wrong. Dr. Goebbels could not have said it better. No matter that there is a reasonable literature stating that Europe did not have the most productive techniques nor the most complete property rights. (see China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience by R. Bin Wong and The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy by Kenneth Pomeranz). No matter that various stories can, and have been, told in which the economy with the higher wages is not necessarily the one that surges ahead. If it disagrees with me, it is wrong. It's as simple as that.
   
   Mr. Landes' lack of proficiency with numbers is evident even with regard to those that are not at odds with his thinking. For example, when analyzing the war between Paraguay and the Triple Alliance he states that 70% of Paraguay's male population died as a result of the brutality of allied occupation. While the brutality of the occupation is beyond dispute, the number is preposterous. The occupation of Poland for five years by Nazi Germany resulted in 20% reduction of the Polish population. The idea that the Brazilian and Argentinean occupation troops could be 3 ½ more efficient than the Nazi death machine with no concentration camps, machine guns, airplanes or even roads, trucks and railroads for that matter, really makes very little sense. These silly numbers have been re-estimated by more recent historians and cliometricians and have been shown to be much smaller.
   
   Ernest Rutherford is quoted as saying "All science is either empirical or stamp collecting." (actually, he used the word physics, but physics at the time meant empirical). Professor Landes' book is quite an impressive stamp collection, but fatally flawed empirical analysis.



5. We're reading this in my Business in World History class. The book makes me want to stab my eyes out and jump off of a sky scraper. Yay! :)

5 comments about Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

1. PRO: At the end of the book, he says you, the reader, are the reason the world is the way it is. After listening to his nonstop bashing of corporations and governments, I expected him to conclude with a final "coup de grace" on those two entities, but I was wrong! He puts the blame where it should be: all of us. We are those people in the corporations and the governments reflect what we want. If we want to blame someone, let's start with ourselves. I commend Perkins for saying that. "Any fool can criticise, and most fools do," said Andrew Carnegie. Those few paragraphs almost took the book to two stars. Unfortunately, the rest of it was terrible.
   
   CONS: Many other reviewers will point out the myriad of flaws and shortcomings of this book. I'll illustrate how Perkins would read all these one star reviews. He would say:
   
   - They're written by jackals, government officials, and corporate hitmen trying to discredit me.
   - They're people who are so naive that they don't understand how the real world works. They say this is a fantasy. It's no fantasy, baby, this was real life!
   
   PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF PERKINS: Perkins is a man filled with regret. He dreamed of living an exciting life, but ended up living just a mediocre one. For example:
   
   - He wanted to go to Ivy League Schools, but went to a ho-hum schools.
   
   - He wanted to be an executive, but he never got beyond middle management.
   
   - He wanted to be a spy for the NSA, but all he got was an interview.
   
   - He wanted to live a glamourous life, but he got all the pedestrian glamour of a typical international corporate job.
   
   - He wanted babes, but he just got a divorce and a few flings.
   
   In short, he feels like a failure. He's frustrated by that so he's decided to reinterpret his whole life, make it more exciting, boost his ego a bit by writing a book that makes his life seem more interesting than it was. He fills it with cloak and dagger intrigue, but there's really nothing there. It's obvious that it's all in his mind.
   
   He depicts himself as an "insider," but offers scant interesting insider stuff. Most of his theories are backed by his daily news source: the NY Times.
   
   His opinion that construction projects drive our economy and decisions is wrong. Foreign infrastructure projects make up less than 1% of the US government budget and not even 0.1% of our economy. Furthermore, he says that "very few" benefit from the new electricity plants we build in Ecuador or Indonesia. Really? So we build a multi-billion dollar plant to power three rich people's homes? Wrong. Thousands of poor people benefit from the roads and electricity plants. That's why they invite us there. Duh! Do we also benefit? Sure! We probably wouldn't do it otherwise! DUH!
   
   The other irritation about this book is that he thinks he's making novel arguments, when they're usually obvious to all. For example, corporatations are self-interested. Wow. I never would have guessed that. Let's add: humans are self-interested. What do you expect Exxon to do? Sell oil for less than it costs them to make it? Do you expect the salesman of a construction firm to not try to get the best deal he can get for his company? Doesn't he want to get a bonus and send his children to a good college?
   
   He whines about people working for a dollar a day in "sweatshops." Are we holding them at gunpoint? No. On the contrary, people in Asia work at Nike's factories to earn their $1 a day for two reasons:
   
   1. It's better than getting 50 cents a day, which is what the local companies pay. Working for a foreign company is PRESTIGIOUS and coveted.
   
   2. Their daily costs are 90 cents a day. Some love to focus on how little people in third world countries make, but they often forget how little it costs them to live. Imagine their conversations about us: "It costs $100/day to live in America. How do they do it? We're much better off here because it costs just 90 cents per day." There are two sides of the equation, Perkins.
   
   CONCLUSION: There were only two reasons I listened to this misleading and overrated book till the end. First, my friend recommended it. Second, I was curious to see what SOLUTION he proposed. It's easy to complain. But what do you think we should do instead?
   
   As I mentioned at the beginning, he places part of the blame on you and me. Great. Well said. Now what? He tells us to drive less. I bet he drives and flies much more than any of us because he's promoting his book. He tell us that we should have a more fair world. That we should have medical services available for all, information should be widespread, and that we should think of the consequences of our actions. Blah... blah.. blah... as you can see: no specifics. Why not? Because it's nobody would like to do what would need to be done. He's asking us to change human nature. Sorry, Perkins, it's ain't going to happen. And Perkins is proof that it won't happen because lives in a nice house, buys food from corporations, votes for the political establishment, doesn't send 50% of his income to third world countries, etc....
   
   Get this if you want to laugh.



2. I think this is a great book. I had to read different chapters for a class, but I liked it so much I decided to read the whole book. The writing is simple to read and understand, and the message and information within the chapters is powerful and very interesting. Not too many people know about the seedy underside of multinational corporations. This book brings that to light in a way that is interesting.



3. For the people who want to know what is hidden behind the fact that America has become so strong over the years, this is the book to read. No conspiracy theories, no spy games, just pure imperialism in the worst manner. I always thought that economic development the Western way was what everyone would want in the world, but I never thought that not everyone is like us, not everyone cares about our materialistic world. And as much as they don't care about us we should not care about them and let them develop the way they want to develop.WATCH ZEITGEIST AND JOIN THE ZEITGEIST MOVEMENT.



4. This is the most awe-inspiring, and provocative book that I've ever read. I've found myself between a couple pages thinking "how could they do that? Why?" This has further heightened my desire to research into the corporation, money, and the manipulation that our "system" relies on every day. Well worth the while. I've started reading his sequel, and it has exceeded my expectations with more info and more interviews and quotes from the hundreds of people that have come forth. Man, just buy it, borrow it, steal it... what ever you have to do to soak in the information that John has to offer. (Try not to steal it...)



5. Just finished the book and have to say the author's stories seemed very contrived. While many historical facts are presented like the Iraq War or the Control of Panama Canal, the author's stories of meeting "local people" seem made up and don't provide any useful evidence to the reader beyond attempting to help the author's own conspiracy agenda. I was hoping for a lot more from this book, but it fails in so many ways, and believe this guy is in the same category as James Frey.

1 comments about Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State.

1. Professor Huang has written a brilliant critique of China's economic development (and of necessity, debunks much of what others have written about China's economy). He shows that China's development started in the 1980's with government programs focused on the rural economy, with programs designed to encourage rural entrepreneurs. Unfortunately with the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the new government leaders (technocrats from Shanghai) focused on major programs for urban areas, including massive construction projects and encouragement of foreign investment. Rural enterprises (and their required informal and official funding networks) were shut down. Although there was a proliferation of highrise buildings and massive construction projects (Three Gorges Dam, Shanghai's maglev, the Olympics,...) the result was slower income growth (especially in the rural areas), increasing illiteracy (parents could not afford to pay rapidly increasing tuitions), declining health care (hospitals, like schools, also became profit centers for local bureaucrats), expropriation of farmers' land, and much much more corruption, all of which has led to increasing social disorder among peasants who are finding themselves worse off. Party cadres' pay has rapidly increased and there are now far more of them. And productivity growth has declined or has even straight-lined. A return to the policies of the 1980's is clearly in order, but the current leaders, while trying to fix things, are still relying on top down commands and controls, and they have a much larger bureaucracy to keep happy.
   Anyone trying to understand China's economic development over the last thirty years must read this. The causes of China's growth are badly misunderstand; too many economists and analysts have been overwhelmed by the vision of Shanghai's massive development without understanding the tremendous cost and waste involved, and the penalties paid by the common people (income for the poorest Shanghaiese has actually been going down).
   The book should also be a lesson for Western politicians who think that China's methods of centralized planning and control of industrial policy can be applied in the West. Or maybe our politicians also understand how government control can lead to huge payoffs for politicians (as with Countrywide Credit's payoffs of at least two senators and lots of others politically connected, not to mention the huge salaries paid to Democrat politicians 'working' at Fannie Mae).
   Read this book if you have any interest in China or economic development!

5 comments about The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (New Edition).

1. This book is wonderfully thought provoking and can be summed up with an exhortation that Caplan uses near the end: "Democracy is a commons, not a market."
   
   Under this thesis Caplan shows how economics would predict 'irrational' voter behavior even under the rational actor theory. Voters are no more irrational when voting for bad policies than are people who decry global warming while still driving to work.
   
   Caplan gets carried away with the rhetoric of his position occasionally, but his points have that delightful quality of seeming obvious once explained that economic writing aspires to. Well worth the read.



2. This is an interesting book.Caplan's argument is that the majority of voters are irrational, both individually and collectively, in the area of political and public goods decision making at all levels of government.Unfortunately ,the book is intellectually flawed for at least five reasons
   
   First,Caplan has absolutely no idea what Adam Smith is talking about.Consider the following claims made by Caplan on p.32 : " This is the central lesson of The Wealth of Nations(1776,WN) : the " invisible hand " quietly persuades selfish businessmen to serve the public good." Caplan has made a fundamental error in confusing enlightened self interest with selfishness,avarice,or greed.The partial,out of context quotations(p.14,424 of the Modern Library(Cannan)edition of the WN) he gives about our owing the products produced by the baker,brewer,and butcher to their own interest or self love and not their benevolence(charity)overlooks the fact that charity begins at home.The businessman MUST FIRST provide for his family and himself.This must be his primary goal.Such a goal in no manner or shape translates as selfish.The businessman realizes that he must first be SUCCESSFUL before he can aid others.On the same page he claims that understanding Smith's central lesson allows one to understand the fallacy of usury laws.Smith is,in fact a major supporter of an updated version of usury laws.The central lesson of the WN is that long run economic growth requires that the long run rate of interest must be fixed permanently by the central bank at a level a little bit above the prime rate of interest charged the most credit worthy of individuals.Smith fully realizes that this requires an explicit policy of credit restriction.NO loans are to be made to 3 categories of borrower-projectors,imprudent risk takers,and prodigals.These 3 categories are equivalent to J M Keynes's speculators and rentiers in the General Theory.Smith is very clear about what will happen to the savings of depositors if the private commercial banks make loans to these categories of borrower-the savings will be wasted and destroyed.It will be impossible for investment to equal savings intertemporally in such a case (See pp.260-340 in general and pp.339-340 specifically for Smith's conclusion).
   
   Second,Caplan is simply ignorant about Smith's views on trade and tariffs.Smith is a supporter of both revenue and retaliatory tariffs (see pp.434-439 of Smith).It
   is well known that ,as the head of Customs in Scotland in the early 1780's,he imposed the largest revenue tariff in history on imports into Scotland.His record was broken by
   Alexander Hamilton in 1794 in the USA.Hamilton made it clear that he was following Smith.It is bizarre to see Caplan present the claim that a 0 % tariff is a complete free trade position or goal(p.144) when Smith stated that such a belief is " Utopian " : " to expect,indeed,that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored... is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it.Not only the prejudices of the public,but what is much more unconquerable,the private interests of many individuals,irresistibly oppose it "(Smith,WN,pp.437-438).In this case the invisible hand does NOT lead to where Caplan thinks it does.
   
   The third problem is Caplan's unclear understanding of the risk versus uncertainty divide that impacts decision making in the political arena.The rational voter is faced with making a political decision in an atmosphere of great uncertainty ,due to incomplete and missing information ,as well as conflicting claims by experts presenting conflicting analysis leading to differing policy conclusions.The example of international trade and tariffs is an excellent example.Caplan's " free trade " position,representative of mainstream economics, is diametrically opposed by Adam Smith, in theory,practice,and policy.Caplan clearly accepts Smith as an expert.A careful reader of WN,intent on using the wisdom of Adam Smith to evaluate different politicians' views on trade before deciding to vote, is thus confronted with a conflicting set of recommendations-should he follow Caplan and other mainstream,Benthamite Utilitarian economists or Adam Smith,universally recognized by nearly all economists as the greatest of all economists ? Unfortunately, the average voter is not able to apply the rational actor model of SEU(Subjective Expected Utility )Theory in either its modern version or the older version put forth by Jeremy Bentham in 1787 as a critique of both Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments(1759;6th edition 1790)and WN.
   
   The fourth problem involves Caplan's reliance on the fuzzy and unclear work of the modern behaviorist school's reliance on the 1979 Prospect Theory(Cumulative Prospect Theory,1993) of Kahneman and Tversky.The fundamental results that K-T claimed for their theory was that decision makers had non linear probability preferences that resulted in the use of decsion weights,as opposed to probabilities, that were subproportional or superproportional.Keynes had already recognized this fact in his A Treatise on Probability(1921;TP) in chapter 26 in section 8.Keynes specified the subproportional weighting factor used by decision makers as being representable by p/(1+q),where p is the probability of success and q is the probability of failure.Keynes combines the decision weight p/(1+q) with the outcome A to arrive at a modified version of his conventional coefficient of risk and weight,maximize cA,which is to maximize cA= p/(1+q)A.It is obvious that the super proportionality result involves using p(1+q).p is the linear result.The various crossover results are easily obtained by considering various linear combinations of the 3 main coefficients listed above(i.e.,a[p/(1+q)]+(1-a)[p(1+q),where 0
   The final problem involves Caplan's resort to the use of the least squares based econometric techniques of multiple regression and correlation that require the assumption of normality.This means that the voter is assumed to know the propagation mechanism that is generating the time series data.This is not correct under conditions of uncertainty or ambiguity.No goodness of fit tests are provided by Caplan to justify the use of such techniques.Caplan's econometric results can not be used to support the claim of voter irrationality.Voters are rational.However,they are making decisions under conditions that involve a range of uncertainty /ambiguity,and not risk.The only natioal,American election in the 20th century that could be accurately forecasted using a multiple regression approach was an election that everyone already knew was going to be won by the Democrats without the use of such a technique.That election was the 1932 election.THe odds could be clearly calculated in that election only.
   
   Caplan's book needs to be revised in a latter edition.Despite all of the errors it would still be interesting to read due to the great amount of literature covered and discussed.I recommend that the book be obtained.



3. Caplan does not seem to appreciate the fact that this country was never supposed to be a democracy in the first place. The United States of America is a republic, not a democracy. In fact, until the early 1900s the word "democracy" was treated as a dirty word of sorts, and you never heard it in political speeches. Now politicians keen on vote buying stress the advantages (to their careers) of democracy.
   
   This book says that a democracy is not a market, but a commons. No, a true democracy is a lynch mob. It's mob rule. If 100 people form a democracy and you're one of them and 70 of those people want to kill you and take your land, guess what, they can! They're the majority. Majority rules! This country is a republic and our freedoms are protected by rule of law, period.
   
   The only political party that seems to appreciate this today is the Libertarian party. Democracy is not what it is important to preserve. Our liberty is. Our liberty is preserved by rule of law, a law that is above our elected officials, that they cannot change once "democratically" elected. Despotic tyrants are democratically elected all the time. Fascists are democratically elected. What is important are the restrictions on their power. Mencken said of democracy that "On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." (As it is right now. This is also however about to happen in a week or so, regardless of which of the two morons wins.)



4. This book will give you a great deal of insight on why America functions the way it does. It is not a pretty picture. Basically, people vote for politicians who tell them what they want to hear, regardless of any logical inconistencies, because they don't trouble themselves to understand the issues in a non-emotional way. Given what we have heard from our presidential candidates lately, this goes a long way towards explaining why we elect who we do.



5. I really appreciated this purchase. The book is a methodological novelty and I am sure that many authors will cite it.

5 comments about God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World (Vintage).

1. Before I read this book, I often wondered why Americans, regardless of the war, always see ourselves as the good guys. This book explains that and also why and how, first Great Britain, then the United States became the dominant global power that it is today in the modern world.
   I never realized how important capitalism was to the forming of not only the United States but also the modern world. This book also explains, in great detail, why are there has always been nations, i.e., the bad guys, that have opposed the spread of the ways of the West, like capitalism, liberal democracy, freedom of religion, and things like that.
   I would highly recommended this book to anyone who wants to understand not only the effect of capitalism in the world history but also why capitalism transformed the world into the one that it is today.



2. [Note; this Review appeared on the Claremont Institute website, on July 17, 2008]
   
   In his new book, God and Gold, foreign affairs expert Walter Russell Mead argues that modern world history can be understood as the global application of a system of economics, religion, and culture developed and directed by the English-speaking peoples. From the time of Oliver Cromwell to the present, the British and the Americans, either individually or together, have won every major war, and have established a commercial and military dominance that remains the foundation of the modern world. "It is perhaps bad manners to say so," Mead acknowledges, "but that does not make it less true."
   
   Mead addresses six questions which he believes can help us better understand and handle the problems and dangers that confront America today:
   
   (1) What exactly is the agenda of the Anglo-Americans?
   (2) Why have they been so consistently successful in their military and economic conflicts with other nations?
   (3) How did they manage to build a global order?
   (4) Why have they so frequently believed that their successes were about to give rise to a world of peace and prosperity?
   (5) Why have they been wrong every single time?
   (6) What is the meaning, significance, and future, of Anglo-American power?
   
   
   As Mead confronts these questions, we find that the strengths of his book include his authoritative mastery of historical, political, and economic facts, which he uses liberally to support his argument, and his ability to weave together cultural, religious, economic, and political strands of history into a fascinating, coherent synthesis. Its weaknesses include a sometimes overbearing repetitiveness of key points and a rather unsatisfying response to the major contemporary criticisms of Anglo-American culture in the end. Nonetheless, the book is a very worthwhile read, both for its historical sweep and--most importantly--for Mead's lucid and useful suggestions regarding the future of American foreign policy.
   
   * * *
   
   The agenda itself is straightforward. There has long been an unwritten Anglo-American strategy for economic and military dominance. The aim has been to create a world-wide system of trade, investment, and military might, based on sea power. This maritime order meets Anglo-American economic and security needs.
   
   But why has it been so successful? The British have typically had a smaller population and fewer resources than their continental enemies. Historically, however, they employed a unique approach to world politics that consistently led to greater success in world affairs than their rivals. Their basic formula combined an open society with world trade and world power.
   
   First of all, success required a new kind of society, a free and open society, where growth, change, and endless innovation would be encouraged--i.e., a capitalist society. Like Max Weber, Mead believes that the reasons behind the success of capitalism in England can be found in religion. Catholicism, which remained dominant in continental Europe, devalued worldly goods and worldly success. But Protestantism (particularly Calvinism) considered worldly success a sign of God's Grace. At the same time, Calvinism emphasized thrift and sobriety; as a result, successful Calvinist communities "began to develop pools of capital available for investment--and diligent, trustworthy young men ready to make profitable use of the savings of others." The grim doctrines of John Calvin would fall into disfavor, but the habits of Calvinism would persist (they could still be seen, for instance, in the proverbs of Benjamin Franklin), and this heritage would "continue to drive societies into capitalism and wealth even after the initial religious impulse had faded."
   
   But capitalism, Mead points out, is about more than just hard work and saving. "It is about risk taking, embracing change, tolerating setbacks, and accepting the sometimes amoral or even immoral consequences of the impact of markets on cherished social institutions and beliefs." Thus the ongoing success of capitalist values requires an open, dynamic culture that is ready to accept, and even willing to help advance, the waves of social change.
   
   The key to this openness, Mead says, can be found in the biblical "call of Abraham," a story of major import for Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. There, God tells Abraham to leave his country and his kindred, and move on to a new land. God then promises to bless him, to curse those who cursed him, and to multiply greatly the number of his descendants. Abraham has complete faith in God, he believes His promises, so he leaves his home and moves on. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, stresses Abraham's faithful response to God's call as the basis for salvation. In light of this, Abraham became the key figure in the Protestant arguments for justifying salvation by faith alone, and not through good works or by purchasing indulgences from Catholic priests. As a result, a new sense of faith as a journey away from the familiar and into the unknown became a central idea of Protestantism. Change was no longer evil; it was encouraged by God. It was this new religious system that made Protestant England, and later the United States,
   
   "a more and more suitable medium for capitalist development. To engage in the struggle for change and reform is not to oppose the religious instinct, but to give it its fullest expression. Whether they were struggling to build businesses, to change social institutions, or simply to accustom themselves to the accelerating juggernaut of change, millions of Anglo-Americans over the centuries...really did see something transcendent in their lives; they really did believe that they were struggling toward God."
   
   By the mid-1700s, British Prime Minister William Pitt "understood how an open society and unfettered capitalist enterprise enabled a country and its citizens to succeed in global competition. He saw how this economic power could translate into military and political power." During its seemingly endless wars against the English, France was never able to concentrate all its resources on its navy: it was always being forced to deal with land enemies to its rear. Britain quickly realized that the key to world power was not supremacy on the battlefields of Europe. The key was to maintain a balance of power among its rivals so that none of them would be free to focus all its power against the British Isles. The strategy required letting the continental powers fight among themselves, making temporary alliances as needed to prevent any one nation from dominating the others, and meanwhile building England's economy while using unencumbered sea power to create a global economic system under her control.
   
   Of course, through the centuries there have been various attempts to unify Europe, and the British, like the Americans, have seen their share of defeat. But time and again, they have been able to bankrupt their enemies by using their command of global commerce to deny resources and to create new coalitions. Napoleon conquered most of Europe, winning battle after battle, but British wealth enabled her to continue to prop up her weakened allies and carry on the war until, exhausted and impoverished, Napoleon surrendered.
   
   Over the years, America developed a similar advantage. When Nazi Germany was starving and desperate for every ounce of fuel, a German general realized the war was lost when he saw that "Americans had enough food and enough shipping capacity to send birthday cakes across the ocean to ordinary soldiers." Bankrupting the enemy while crushing him was Ronald Reagan's strategy against the Soviet Union: placing economic sanctions against the Soviets and their satellites, sending military aid to their opponents in Central America and Afghanistan, and forcing them into an expensive high-tech arms race they could not win. Like the British economy in the time of Napoleon, the American economy became a decisive weapon of war, and the Soviet Union crumbled.
   
   While their continental neighbors were busy draining their resources by fighting amongst themselves, the British would travel about the globe stealing their rivals' colonies and setting up more of their own, thus increasing their power and adding new trade routes. The drawback to all their empire-building was that the British had to conquer people and then keep them down. After World War II, their American heirs, who had always resented colonial empires, improved the game and increased the return: America supported independence movements in former colonies, and then encouraged the new states to enter the global economic system that the United States was building. But in both the British and American cases, there remained a constant: "When the wars are over and the other countries come back into world markets, they find the Anglo-Saxons better ensconced than ever.... It's a simple plan, but it works."
   
   * * *
   
   What has all this success been for? Where does it all lead? Anglo-American politicians and intellectuals "have frequently put forward the idea that the purpose of the Anglo-Saxon ascendancy is to usher in a peaceful, liberal, and prosperous world order"--from the League of Nations after World War I to the proclamation of a "New World Order" after the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet, "if the history of the last hundred years teaches one lesson it is that the Anglo-Americans consistently underestimate the difficulty of establishing the global democratic and capitalistic peace that they want." So why have utopian dreams continued to appear achievable and even imminent, despite so many discouragements, to an otherwise pragmatic and often ruthless people? Mead suggests that "The ever-recurring belief that the world is about to become a much better place...is closely related to the positive view of change that has made such great contributions to Anglo-American success." It all boils down to Progress. Anglo-Americans have come to see history as "the story of steady improvement based on the spread of rational, scientific thought."
   
   Given the phenomenal success of their agenda, the Anglo-Americans have unsurprisingly concluded that God is on their side (or, for more secular temperaments, that all the forces of history and nature are on their side), and this obliges them to take the lead in bringing forth a utopian future--the completion of history. In line with this divine call, the Anglo-American world has seen an explosion of movements for social betterment. "Workers are protected and women emancipated. Capital punishment is abolished. European prisons of today provide better living conditions than medieval aristocrats enjoyed...." Movements to abolish war continue as well. And of course, to eliminate war we must eliminate the causes of war. Thus, poverty can no longer be accepted, so we need a prosperous global economy. Since free democratic states are less likely to fight wars (or so the Anglo-Americans firmly believe), democracy must be spread worldwide. "Those who try to thwart this progress are fighting God's will or blocking human nature from its right to fulfill its aspirations and achieve its justly deserved freedom--and that is the essence of evil."
   
   * * *
   
   But to the endless consternation of reformers and utopian dreamers, not everyone agrees. Not everyone is thrilled with the grand project. Millions of people throughout the world see capitalism as nothing more than a godless, criminal system of unbridled greed, theft, exploitation, and inhumanity. "Cruelty and greed in the service of an inflexible, absolute, and utterly inhuman will to power, made more formidable by an insolently arrogant hypocrisy and exuding irresistible but intolerable vulgarity: that is what our enemies since the seventeenth century have seen when they looked our way." Fear and hatred of the political, social, and economic basis of Anglo-American civilization is one of the most powerful forces shaping world history.
   
   Not only does it represent greed, arrogance, and violence, the United States, like the old British Empire, is seen by many outsiders as "a horrifying mix of Puritanism and permissiveness, a ghastly blend of parsons and prostitutes." On the one hand, our enemies see the "stuffy hypocrisy of Victorian England." On the other hand, they cringe at "the fierceness of the American appetite." As Mead explains, the anti-American feeling reflects a profound cultural unease:
   
   "It was the vulgar popular culture, already visible in British music halls, that would exemplify both the hideous depths to which the Anglo-Saxon world had fallen and the existential threat that world presented to everything good, true, and beautiful in Europe itself.... This hideous underculture, revolting but somehow dangerously seductive, puritanical yet salacious, has been horrifying foreigners for nearly two centuries."
   
   Mass production and technology have magnified the impact of this vulgar low culture on the rest of the world. Ordinary people all over the planet go to the movies and see the American lifestyle for themselves: the uppity women, the young people ready to start lives of their own without deference to tradition or parents. Cultural products designed for the American mass market began to pour out in a steady stream, with unwelcome political and social consequences for elites and traditionalists everywhere.
   
   For many people, accepting capitalism would be tantamount to accepting the supremacy of America and Protestant Christianity--a proposition which cannot help but offend their nationalistic and religious sentiments. It would also mean bowing to a culture of vulgar consumerism and obscenity. Perhaps most daunting of all is how "Industrial and social revolutions that took decades or even generations to unwind in the Anglo-American world suddenly appear in far less developed countries where the consequences of several revolutions must be digested at once." We tend to forget that capitalism and democracy took a long time to develop in England and America, and went through difficult and painful stages of development. The steam engine changed the marketplace in the eighteenth century. Railroads did not appear until a generation later. Radio and automobiles awaited the early twentieth century. Television and mass air travel came in the middle of the century, and the computer and the internet have been transforming our lives just since the end of the Cold War. All of this progress was slow and steady compared to what other peoples are now facing.
   
   We complain, for example, when we see corruption in new governments that we are supporting. Yet, by modern standards, "eighteenth-century English governments were staggeringly incompetent and corrupt. High government officials considered bribery and theft part of the job.... Elections in nineteenth-century America were disorganized, dangerous, and notoriously corrupt." Population growth was another challenge that took a long time to cope with. Of the 3.4 million New Yorkers in 1900, for instance, "[m]ost of them lived in squalor."
   
   The point is that capitalist development presented Britain and America with problems they could not easily solve. Over two centuries, in the two countries best suited to manage capitalist change, one challenge after another relentlessly overwhelmed authorities who could barely respond. "It is small wonder then," reflects Meads, "that so many countries today are having a hard time making the adjustments and improvements that the accelerating pace of global change demands."
   
   The ability to compete successfully in the new global capitalistic world is the only modern route to wealth and power. But people who do not like the system to begin with, and people who are ill-equipped to play the game well, become poorer and less powerful, and then they become alienated and angry. "Far from satisfying the deepest desires of human beings, the present world system and world order frustrate and enrage many people." And so, for four hundred years, two world views have been taking shape. The Anglo-Americans
   
   "have seen themselves as defending and sometimes advancing liberty, protecting the weak, providing opportunity to the poor, introducing the principles of morality and democracy into international life, and creating more egalitarian and more just societies at home and abroad. Their enemies have looked at the same set of facts and seen a ruthless assault on every kind of social and moral decency."
   
   * * *
   
   How is this to be reconciled? Mead, a Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, advocates an enlightened diplomacy based on a fresh understanding of our own history and acknowledgment of the legitimate concerns of our adversaries.
   
   His first lesson is: if the plan works, stick to it. Maintain an open, dynamic society at home. Bring society's economic wealth out into world trade. Defend a balance of power in Asia and the Middle East, just as Britain did in Europe. Open the global system to others, including competitors, in times of peace. Use economic force as a weapon in times of war. Promote liberal democratic institutions and values around the world.
   
   Yet it is just this last piece--promoting democracy abroad--that has to be reexamined.
   
   On the one hand, the story of today's radical Islamic reformers is not so different from the story of Christian reformers, and this suggests that the outcomes of these stories may also be the same. The Puritans wished to return to the original, pure source of Christianity, just as contemporary Muslim reformers wish to return to the original, pure source of Islam. Both groups have sought to build a commonwealth based exclusively on the revealed word of God. Both groups have been intolerant of heresy. And both groups have been ready to defend and promote their religious views by war.
   
   But looking back at history, we see that it was precisely out of the Protestant Reformation that today's modern dynamic society grew. It was the Puritan "failure to establish a permanent theocracy in Britain that enabled British society to take the next step forward." Similarly, Mead sees signs of the same thing occurring in Islam. "The reformers are unlikely to achieve their ambition to remake the entire religious landscape of the Islamic world." There are too many rival traditions, deeply rooted in the souls of many pious Muslims. Furthermore, against the reformers' drive for a more closed and narrow view of Islam, "the Internet is making the great works of Islamic scholarship available to tens of millions of Muslims, including women, who can and will be free to draw their own conclusions about what their faith means and how it should be lived. Theological diversity within Islam seems bound to increase."
   
   On the other hand, it is imperative for Americans to acknowledge their role in the world, to fully grasp "the paradoxical relationship between the success of American society at home...and the level of global unhappiness with the American project and the American way." We need to address the profound differences that divide Islamic civilization from Anglo-American civilization. For three hundred years, Christian powers have been carving up the Islamic world; for many Arabs, the Crusades never really ended. Because "the maritime system and the European civilization from which it sprang lack legitimacy from nearly every point of view." Mead believes, "There is no way forward without a much deeper encounter between the United States and the Arab world, and this encounter cannot succeed unless [we] can learn to talk less and listen more."
   
   In pursuit of this higher diplomacy, Mead turns for inspiration to the American philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr, "whose insight contributed so much to America's moral and political self-understanding during the Cold War." Niebuhr sought to balance effective global action with serious self-questioning. America's active struggle against communism was completely necessary, but the central problem for our national destiny "was whether the United States could maintain an appropriate humility before God and man even as it embarked on a life-and-death struggle with the Soviet Union." We know, Niebuhr noted, that the position of power we hold in the world is partly due "to factors and forces in the complex pattern of history that we did not create and from which we do not deserve to benefit. If we apprehend this religiously, the sense of destiny ceases to be a vehicle of pride and becomes the occasion for a new sense of responsibility." Niebuhr told Americans that we needed to combat Soviet influence around the world and remain conscious and critical of our own moral and political claims, not confusing our "own aspirations, however noble they appeared or however virtuous it felt to revel in them, with the good of all mankind." This approach, Mead believes, is even more necessary today than it was during the Cold War. To understand the terrorists, the United States "will have to come to terms with rage and frustration that is more deeply seated, more diffuse, and harder to reconcile" than anything we faced with the Soviet Union.
   
   * * *
   
   Finally, Mead challenges us by probing an uncomfortable question: what is the point of preserving Anglo-American power? He begins by reviewing the case against capitalist society. A society with no higher purpose than mere affluence becomes materially strong, but morally and intellectually weak.
   
   "After all the fire and storm of the historical process, the struggles between good and evil, progress and reaction, the long and difficult climb from barbarism and slavery up into the light of civilization and finally of free civil society, at last and at length we struggle up to the peak of the mountain to encounter the culmination of generations of human striving: Homer Simpson.... The world turns into a big mall, and we all go shopping: forever.... Were all the heroism of the past, all the suffering, all the passionate faith, the sacrifice, the religious and political contests simply to build a shopper's paradise? Does liberal society really stand for nothing more that the accumulation of material possessions?"
   
   This is precisely the empty, meaningless society that many people around the world see when they look to the West, and it is a criticism that needs to be taken very seriously. Unfortunately, Mead's response is predictable and unconvincing. "The best and I think decisive response to this critique...[is] that humanity has an instinct for growth and change." This may well be true, but humanity has many other instincts as well. It is one thing to say that openness to change creates an ideal milieu for the development of capitalism. It is quite another to say that this capitalistic drive suffices as the spiritual meaning of life. But Mead believes he sees the true "grandeur of the human race" in the Anglo-America "quest to fulfill the human instinct for change, arising out of a deep and apparently built-in human belief that through change we encounter the transcendent and the divine." This amounts to little more than saying that the Anglo-American way of life is good because the Anglo-American way of life is good. We would do well to seek a more convincing explanation.



3. "Change" is why Great Britain and now the United States became the dominant economic, military and social leaders for the past century, writes Mead in this superb history.
   
   It's a valid lesson in this era of fundamentalist Christians, Moslems, Wall Street analysts, laissez fairists and other terrorists who assume they have discovered the perfect way of life, liberty, happiness and easy profits for all true believers. In brief, he doesn't suggest imposing change for the sake of change; he emphasizes the ability to change as conditions change and because our knowledge grows over time.
   
   The delightful element is Mead's ability to use analogies, quotes and examples from sources as disparate as Lewis Carroll to John Milton to Thomas Cranmer and Reinhold Niebuhr and ranging from The Walrus and the Carpenter to Original Sin to Greed to the Invisible Hand and the Whig narrative. It's a relevant romp through history based on the premise that even conservatives can change -- even if slowly.
   
   The writing is a delight, the history is masterful.
   
   He succinctly rejects the neo-conservative follies who argue America is in moral, military, economic and spiritual decline; instead of the usual focus on guns, butter and Bibles. Mead argues America's strength is its ability to handle change when necessary.
   
   Such intangibles are the foundation of a great society. The ability to change and yet retain impeccable financial integrity is a remarkable duality. It's why the bankers' bailouts are vital; not to prop up bozos, but to retain the integrity of the financial system.
   
   Now, for the quibbles of a quidnunc: As brilliant as Mead is in his analysis, he overlooks an equally relevant factor -- the refusal to quit, to give up, to surrender.
   
   "For three years, Hitler beat Britain and its allies everywhere he faced them . . ." Mead states, overlooking Hitler's failures to win the Battle of Britain, or to successfully blockade Britain or demoralize the people by terror bombing. It was not Churchill who stood alone against Hitler; it was 60 million Brits who refused to be bullied.
   
   This refusal to give up is the quality that defeated Napoleon, beat the British in the U.S. War of Independence and Americans in Vietnam. Many countries share it in military terms; but, the British and Americans have the same stubborn determination in most things -- not just military -- they set out to accomplish. The Panama Canal was built by determination as much as by skill, talent and intrigue.
   
   The unique American quality is often a persistence in demanding "new and improved" change, plus giving freedom to dissenters who challenge anything, everything and everyone in society. Every intelligent person can recognize a need for change; but, two further qualities are essential -- tolerating and even honouring those who advocate it, and the wisdom to know what, when and how to implement it.
   
   All in all, a superb account of how we got to where we are today and what we need to maintain leadership.



4. Dr. Russel Meade's God and Gold must add to the glory of the author's other illustrious works. His account of Anglo-American history is simply electrifying and bang on target. The dominance of the Western Civilization spearheaded by Britain and America for several centuries is unraveling now and we are faced with a stuation that prevailed at the end of the first millennium.
   
   Indeed it is necessary to go to the root in order to accurately discover the problems and ills of the successive eras. This Dr. meade has done excellently in this book.This book is a worthy successor of Huntington's ideas since the Western Civilization is now being challenged by other civilizations.
   
   It would have been better if Dr. Meade delved further into the political aspect of this Anglo-American sojourn. Nevertheless full marks to the author's efforts and every reader will find something new and absorbing in this book. I think this is a true consummation of his massive intellectual knowledge.
   
   Gautam Maitra
   
   Author of 'Tracing the Eagle's Orbit: Illuminating Insights into Major US Foreign Policies since Independence'.



5. Anglo-Americans have been on the winning side in every international conflict since the Glorious Revolution in 1688. That is an astounding record covering some ten major conflicts over 300 years, although the American Revolution was a given. According to Mead, these outcomes were not just the result of an incredible streak of good luck, but due to the inherent characteristics of Anglo-Americans and the manner that they helped to mold their respective foreign policies.
   
   Mead, in this erudite yet controversial treatise, strongly purports that the financial infrastructure and the individualistic ideology of Christianity that Anglo-American civilization came to embody were driving forces that allowed Britain, and later America, to win wars and transform the political and economic landscape of the world. Furthermore, he suggests that this commercial and religious zeal, along with the English language, democratic political institutions, and naval power were critical elements in its success.
   
   One might be tempted to reject his proposals out-of-hand as the prattling of an ethnocentric and Christian-chauvinistic ideologue, but the wealth of his knowledge and the vigor of his analysis suggest he cannot so readily be dismissed. In addition, he strongly chides the United States for giving little thought to the meaning of the power it has accumulated and some very poor choices of its use as well. He specifically states that Islam and Islamic countries are far from inherently incompatible with an Anglo-American worldview. He singles out for criticism both George Bush and Tony Blair for an overly moralistic foreign policy and the possible dire consequences of such a position.
   
   Despite the very seriousness of the topics dealt with by Mead, his style of writing is both accessible and entertaining, with many allusions to literary works from Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, and Lewis Carroll to the headier works of philosophers Henri Bergson and Karl Popper.
   
   Whether one buys all of Mead's tenets or not, his proposal is sure to evoke considerable thought, discussion, and reflection on what has made Britain - and then the United States - world powers, and what needs to be done to maintain that hierarchy.
   
   Armchair Interviews says: A 5-star read of current public affairs importance.

5 comments about A Brief History of Neoliberalism.

1. This is a very rich book. The subject, neoliberalism, must be understood if we are to understand current politics. Harvey's other books--those I have in mind being THE NEW IMPERALIASM, LIMITS TO CAPITAL, THE CONDITION OF POSTMODERNITY--are equally illuminating. What I write here, I admit, does not constitute a review of the book, neither summarizing its contents or approach, nor offering any criticisms; it is merely an assurance that your study of this book (which I am on my second reading of after having read the first two of the books above-mentioned along with Naomi Klein's uncannily brilliant THE SHOCK DOCTRINE) will give you a good grounding in the matter he treats of: neoliberalism, "its origins, rise, and implications," and will give you a sharper and quicker sense of current national and world politics. Harvey possesses the three qualities of an academic writer that justify, almost demand, studying his work on a subject of this importance: he masters the materially relevant data (i.e., he is a genuine scholar), he thinks well, and he writes well.



2. Harvey(H) has written an interesting book that ,unfortunately,confuses neoliberalism(libertarianism)with conservatism.This erroneous view is at center stage in the book whenever Adam Smith's name shows up in the discussions.H is badly mistaken when he claims that Smith's view was that "...the hidden hand of the market was the best device for mobilizing even the basest of human instincts..."(Harvey,p.20)such as greed.Smith's view was heavily qualified- in many cases such an approach would work but in other cases it would not work.For instance, consider the myth spread by the economics profession that Smith was opposed to tariffs.Smith was opposed to protective tariffs only.He favored revenue tariffs and retaliatory tariffs if there was any probability greater than 0 that such retaliation would result in the offending country removing the impediment to free trade.He would completely reject the neoliberal approach(IMF,WB,WTO) to the removal of protective tariffs,which was to end them as quickly as possible.Smith's policy is the exact opposite.Such tariffs are to be removed in very slow steps and in a careful manner so as not to create a problem of severe unemployment,which is exactly what has happened in practically ever country that has had to ask for the financial "help" of the Neoliberals.
   It is not true that the Adam Smith Institute(Harvey,p.57) in New York supports the approach laid out by Smith in BOTH The Theory of Moral Sentiments(TMS,6th edition,1790) or the Wealth of Nations(WN,1776).The Adam Smith Institute is a libertarian organization whose members have no idea about what Smith said,either in theory or in practice(applied policy).
   Finally,Neoliberalism is a failure by the standards of freedom contained in BOTH TMS and WN,and not just in TMS(Harvey,p.185).There is absolutely no conflict between the standards of freedom laid out in the best version of TMS, which was the sixth edition,and the WN.
   Smith was the first to realize that there was a dark side(severe externality) to the combined operation of the Invisible Hand and the division of labor process.He spent 7 pages [Modern Library(Cannan)edition,pp.734-741)]pointing out that only the government ,by providing free,universal education to all, if necessary,could remedy this undepletable externality that could destroy the capabilities of the working and middle classes.
   
   Harvey can earn 5 stars from me once he revises the coverage of Adam Smith so that it reflects what it was Smith actually said and recommended as policy and not what some economist ,who only knows how to manipulate a bivariate or multivariate version of the normal probability distribution,claims that Smith said or meant.



3. A good review of the development of neoliberal ideology in public opinion, government policies and global relationships



4. I'm going to do something here that I rarely do: attempt a short review. There are many excellent reviews of this fine book that I don't need to add much except to say that I agree with the bulk of them. I believe that neoliberal ideas have caused incalculable harm over the course of the last several decades. There are signs of increasingly wide discontent and distrust of the kinds of economic prognostications put forward by people like Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan (admittedly not a great economic thinker, but unquestionably the great popularizer of neoliberal ideas), and their ilk, seen in part by the great commercial success (and surprisingly popular reception) of books like Naomi Klein's THE SHOCK DOCTRINE. Increasingly, people are coming to understand that what is best for General Motors just might not be the best thing for the rest of the world. But there is little doubt that neoliberal and libertarian thinking (and yes, I do not think there are important distinctions between the two -- the best thing I've read lately about libertarianism came from the superb SF novel by Kim Stanley Robinson, GREEN MARS -- one of his characters thinks to himself, "That's libertarians for you -- anarchists who want police protection from their slaves") will continue to confuse thinking about economic and political ideas. But as those ideas have increasingly resulted in nothing more nor less than a shifting of wealth into the hands of a very small number of people, that vastly larger number of people (even in the United States, where economic inequality has been increasingly dramatically since 1979 -- neoliberal ideas were actually first embraced by Jimmy Carter, though with nothing like the religious fervor of Ronald Reagan), have started to realize that all "trickle down" economic policies are a massive con job.
   
   Harvey in this book wants to present the history of neoliberal thinking. "Neoliberal" as a term is in common usage in many parts of the world, but not in the United States. "Neoliberalism" is not a left wing but is a right wing position. The two most famous neoliberal political figures were Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Harvey's book is a marvelous recounting of that history and an accurate chronicler of the frequently devastating effects of neoliberal, free market principles. In particular, he writes of the catastrophic effects neoliberal principles have had through their forced acceptance in many non-European countries.
   
   I find very little to differ with in this book, but I would make two distinct recommendations. First, if you want to read a book by David Harvey, there are three others that I would perhaps recommend more strongly than this. If you have any interest in the postmodern debate, his THE CONDITION OF POSTMODERNITY is one of the 3 or 4 greatest works in the field. Next, if you are interested in globalization, I would recommend THE NEW IMPERIALISM, which overlaps a good deal with THE HISTORY OF NEOLIBERALISM. Also, one of Harvey's earlier works, THE LIMITS OF CAPITAL, though a bit more challenging, is one of the best contemporary works extending Marxist (not Communist -- Harvey is both anti-Communist and a Marxist) ideas into a contemporary intellectual framework. So, my first recommendation is to look at those three books. My second is to look at Naomi Klein's THE SHOCK DOCTRINE for a more popular, entertaining exploration of much of the same territory as this book. She may lack some of Harvey's sophistication, but she surpasses him as a communicator.



5. so this is how the rich and powerful do it! what will be taken away from the ordinary citizen during and after this current financial crisis? I doubt there is any way for the small fry to oppose the entrenched powers that rule our lives, our country and the world. To oppose the rulers is to be labeled "un-American", "un-patriotic", "socialist" and worse. The top 1% will NEVER let their power slip away. We're toast.
   
   Read this book and see why we can't win.

5 comments about Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class - And What We Can Do about It (BK Currents (Paperback)).

1. If you have any care at all about your finacial wellbeing in this country
   you must read this book. Few people are old enough to know what it was like in the usa when one person working one job made enough to buy a house and raise a family. health care was very affordable for all.
   Where did it all go? This book tells you.



2. Thom Hartmann's Screwed is must reading by everyone who isn't a right wing nut. In easy to understand language, Hartmann debunks right wing myths about Liberals and progressives using facts and history, not emotional mantra.
   He's on Sirius Radio each day, and he'll take on any Neo-con and every issue and argue intelligently for the need for liberal/progressive politics in America, and he shows the historical and constitutional basis for all his agrguments. All of his works are a must read. I give this book to all my Independent and moderate Republican friends( see I'm a Liberal, very tolerant).



3. Thom reveals the history of this country and how our economy has devolved away from the intentions of the founders. He explains how democracy is dependent on a strong middle class and that the founders created it to prevent the moneyed and powerful from controlling government. The book was an eye opener, illuminating, exciting, and empowering. Very easy reading. This is particularly important given our current economic crisis. It provides context for a productive society and hope for changes. We can do better...other countries are already there.



4. "Screwed," by Thom Hartman
   Book Review
   October 13, 2008
   By George Fulmore
   
   With the recent financial turmoil (Oct 2008), the word "socialism" is being thrown around like the word "communism" was being used in the `50's. "Socialism" is being used in opposition to increased oversight and regulation by the federal government. But Hartmann uses the term "cronyism" as a retort to claims of "socialism." He says the former is much better in describing the economic policies during the George W. Bush administration.
   
   I think that Thom Hartmann's book is all about the virtues of government oversight, involvement and regulation in a modern economy. He gives us the history of regulation, much of it being implemented in the New Deal. And his thesis would appear to be that the current U.S. economy puts profits before people, while in earlier times, it was the other way around. His thesis would be appear to be that government regulation is needed to keep the economy in balance and to maintain the presence of a strong middle class. His thesis would appear to be that Reaganomics gave government regulation a bad rap and that this led us to a widening between the rich and the poor, a significant increase in our national debt, and the shrinking of our middle class. He urges middle class Americans to take back its country.
   
   Hartmann argues that the founders of our country based our form of government on the principles of the Iroquois Confederation. He says that up until the founding of our nation, the idea of a dominant "middle class" was considered "unnatural" by most pundits and philosophers. But our founding founders concluded that a democracy was a "natural" state of humankind. And the reason that much of the Constitutional Convention was held in secret was because most of the wealthy delegates were betraying their own class by moving in favor of a democratic nation. Per Hartmann, America was an experiment, the likes of which the Western world had never seen.
   
   He thinks that our country has experienced two eras of a dominant middle class. The first was with the earliest settlers through the formation of the country and into the Civil War era. In the earliest times, land was taken from the Indians essentially for free, which allowed the settlers to become self-sufficient and relatively prosperous. The basis of America's first middle class was based on land and the Family Farm. But by the end of the 19th century, we had entered the "Gilded Age" of manufacturing and centralization that produced a group of extremely wealthy Americans, without regard for the maintenance of a middle class. It was not until the New Deal, per Hartmann, that a second era of middle class prominence began, created, primarily, by a government spending stimulus.
   FDR used deficit spending to put people to work and to build public works projects that gave Americans a return on investment for decades: new roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
   
   But two primary goals of the New Deal also were 1) to rebuild the middle class and 2) to establish tools that would KEEP the middle class as the dominant class, tools such as progressive taxation, Social Security, fair trade laws, and the vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws. Hartmann links these actions back to the philosophies of Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the Democratic Party, who felt that unless government sets the rules for business, there can be no middle class. ("Socialism" this is not.)
   
   Additionally, Roosevelt established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and he imposed regulations on stock sales. Thousands were put to work by the Public Works Administration and the Works Progress Administration. Public education was supported and enhanced.
   
   The New Deal worked. Well-paid workers bought goods and services from other workers. Returning veterans took advantage of the GI Bill. The economy recovered and thrived.
   
   But the cons are winning the battle of late. In 2001, for the first time since the New Deal, Americans spent more than they earned. Pension plans are disappearing. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and too many Americans are just "holding on," says Hartmann. What drives many of the cons is that greed is good. What drives others is the simplistic belief that if government would get out of the way, everything would be just fine. These folks, he terms the "true believers," naming Ronald Reagan as amongst their midst.
   
   But the result of the "trickle down" economic system introduced by Ronald Reagan has been that the rich have gotten richer, while the middle class has shrunk, and the federal deficit has increased to record levels, making the United States the most indebted nation on earth.
   
   Per Hartman, smaller government espoused by the "cons" is not really smaller government; it's a different government, one that is essentially government for the rich. And it is the aftermath of Katrina that exposed the gap between the rich and the poor and the lack of government readiness.
   
   Per Hartman, the cons will not change on their own. Leadership needs to arise to take back the government for the good of a dominant middle class. There is nothing wrong with businesses making money, but it is not to be done via workers making less than a living wage. And, at the heart of Hartmann's arguments is that there are a plethora of services provided by government for the public good.
   
   Privatization has not worked well in the health care industry, he would point out as an example, feeling that after Reagan deregulated the industry, only the wealthy could be guaranteed a good product. Public hospitals lost the support they had in earlier eras, when the dominant middle class was happy to pay taxes for these public facilities and services. The post-Reagan era saw the major health insurance companies prospering, with the giant pharmaceutical companies joining in on the high profits.
   
   Per Hartmann, we're once again entered a new Robber Barron era, with a limited number of oil companies making record profits and the average middle class family finding their purchasing power stagnating. When people complain about the rising gap between the rich and the poor, the "cons" say that it is the fault of the workers, who are less educated and less willing to work as hard as others around the world. (An extension of this can be the current arguments that too many workers were able to buy homes in the subprime market and/or that the health care system cannot "afford" to cover everyone, especially the "illegals," or that not everyone can afford to own cars or live a middle-class lifestyle.) Thus, when systems fail, the cons continue to blame the workers, while they, at the same time, fight an inheritance tax and tax increases for those who earn the most.
   
   On war, Hartmann says that even this has become a big business in America. But he points out that war is NOT an effective way to stimulate the economy. All money poured into armaments is lost once used. In contrast, building or rebuilding a bridge or road or levee or other public structure serves the public for a long time and gives us a significant return on investment.
   
   As for the Iraq War, Hartmann claims that President Bush found this to be a way to funnel public money to Halliburton, Bechtel, Fluor and other large politically connected private entities. And by convincing many that the private sector would do a better job in supporting the troops than government employees, the Bush administration oversaw the elimination of public jobs in the hundreds of thousands, in favor of private-job replacements - and at a much higher total cost. Says Hartmann, "Privatizing the military is just another way for the cons to transfer hundreds of billions of tax dollars from We the People to the corporatocracy."
   
   Hartmann covers too many areas to review in one swat. He claims that health care has been redefined as a privilege, rather than a right. He favors a single-payer, universal health care system and the strengthening of our labor unions. And there is an excellent chapter on the Social Security Trust Fund, with Hartmann pointing out the realities of a Trust Fund full of worthless IOUs. He claims the cons are purposely trying to destroy Social Security.
   
   I think the only area that I disagree with Hartmann is in the area of foreign trade and immigrant labor. He calls for us to pull out of NAFTA, CAFTA and the rest. He is for enforcing the laws against hiring illegal immigrants. He thinks, in turn, the labor done by the illegals will be done by current Americans, probably at a better wage. In this area, I find his advice simplistic and without compassion.
   
   In summary and conclusion, some other quotes from the book: "Our country has plenty of money, but the money is going to the corporatocracy, to the richest amongst us, instead of to the millions of people who - as Abraham Lincoln pointed out - actually make the country work....It's all about power....We've been conned (and screwed) enough. It's time to take back America."



5. Given the amount of praise written here in the reviews I think it would be fair to say that this book must preselect its audience. I did not find this book enlightening. Not that it did not have many good points it certainly did. I was just amazed at the flood of sloppy assumptions and illogical conclusions that it presented. Much of the evidence for arguments provided in the book relies on quotations from someone else. Should I assume that their (whomever being quoted) statement it a fact? The book spins "history" (as selectively presented)into a tangled web of accusation and muddy logic. If you consider yourself a progressive, this book you will find filled with platitudes you'll love. As an individual rights person you can both find much to hate and love in this book (though little of use). The conservatives and neo-conservatives should read this it may give them some perspective of the other side of the argument.

5 comments about The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century (Updated and Expanded).

1. This book is as relevant today as it was when it was written. Most books of this type tend to have a relatively short shelf life, but this one endures. It proves the axiom about news being the first draft of history.



2. The early years of the Bush Administration are a blurry memory for me. Partly because nothing that was going on, from tax cuts to 9/11 to the shifting recession, made any sense to the common observer. The hall of illusions structuring the public conversations of the time were all a part of the great unraveling. Paul Krugman was one man with a strong flashlight in a world of foggy numbers. He cut through the confusing lies cast forth by the Bush team in order to show us what was really going on and where these cryptic economics would take us. It is eerie to read these articles years after we know the truth. He couldn't have hit the target more accurately with a patriot arrow. After swimming through this text I have become a true fan.



3. Unfortunately, a newly awarded noble peace prize winner, further adding to his armor to attack without criticism, the opposing party politics. Nothing but a rambling Bush hit piece, only three years into his presidency, and a big government proponent. Problem is he has apparently has no offspring contributing to the "cradle to grave" society he espouses. A career without raising children? Maybe I could have as many publications in my spare time. Collection of op-eds from the NTY's that have no cohesion. Sounds like a town crier for the boy who cried wolf. No doubt to his economics knowledge, however, from the halls of academia to the street are two different gigs. Time to see if the next four years, possible eight, will corroborate what he hypothesizes about the gap betweent the rich and poor. Still a good read for the open minded from both sides of the political spectrum. One must repect his credentials, at least.



4. It is frightening how Krugman's words are so applicable to the economic crisis that is happening right now.
   I had to keep checking the publication date to make sure that it was not written just in the last month.
   The policies of the current administration; the shrub who's name we dare not say out loud, even in our heads;make you want to scream, and very much out loud.
   My wish is that economics teachers were not so dry and predictable when I was in high school. Economics is such an important part of how our country is run, and why it is run, to just be a mountain of statistics.
   Read Krugman's works, and Freakonomics to start educating yourself about how it all works.
   Cheers



5. This book is a compilation of columns written by Paul Krugman mostly addressing the economy, warning of impending crises. Another words, a warning from 2004(and earlier) about what we are currently experiencing.
   
   The author is highly critical of the current administration's use of tax cuts for the wealthy as a cure for all economic ills.
   
   He also looks at companies "moving offshore" and using "fancy footwork" to evade paying taxes.
   
   Another subject is the amount of money that can be either a "modest sum" if it's a tax cut for the rich or an "unsupportable burden on the budget" if it's an obligation to retirees like Social Security or a similar program.
   
   I can see the point Mr. Krugman makes about better media sources being the business- related media like CBSMarketWatch.
   
   He also examines how assorted administration officials, particularly the president and v.p. have aquired their wealth. Their familiarity with Enron-type accounting schemes is, well, accounted for. This is directly related to the administration's hypocritical opposition to corporate and accounting reform.
   
   The major ingredients in formulating political debate in our country are :campaign finance, lobbying, and the power of money. Mr. Krugman demonstrates that point very well.
   
   He views the California energy disaster as a result of market manipulation by energy producers and traders. Enron was evidently not the only trader involved.
   
   Mr. Krugman addresses the story of his connection to Enron as a legitimate business transaction that was used as a smear tactic.
   
   
   I will sum up my impression of the book with this quote form page 129.
   "To an extent unprecedented in recent history, this is a government of, by and for corporate insiders. I'm not just talking about influence, I'm talking about personal career experience."
   
   I don't agree with Mr. Krugman's opinions on globalization, but "The Great Unraveling" is an intelligent, clear, and accurate book about Bush's policies and the resulting economic disaster.