Sharing the Wealth: Workers and the World Economy
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.10 (741 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0393047547 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 224 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 0000-00-00 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Stephen Luby said Refreshing perspective, but a bit polemical. This book is a thoughtful and welcome response to the presentation of economic ideas and policy prescriptions written solely from the perspective of multinational corporations and global capital that monopolizes our newspapers and financial publications. Kapstein's primary thesis is that the widening income gap both in the United States and globally, is not only immoral, but threatens international security and continued economic growth. In his words, "if we believe that poverty, inequality, and want lead to disruption and even war. Lacking a wealth of insight If you want to get a better understanding of workers and the economy in the contemporary world, there must be a better book out there than Kapstein's. "Sharing the Wealth" seems to have been put together in a hurry, and consists almost entirely of paraphrased quotations from other writers. I have no idea how Kapstein got John J. Sweeney to recommend the book on the back cover; in fact, I have no idea how Kapstein got this book published, since he seems to have put so little effort into it. My recommendation to the left-leaning, eco. "Backpedaling globalization" according to Stephen A. Haines. Those seeing "globalization" as the promising "wave of the future" for a world economyshould give this book their close and undivided attention. Contrary to the claims ofglobalization advocates, the "unending prosperity of a world market" may prove a hollowpromise. Kapstein is no anti-globalization crusader, but he sees the fruits of the new economyas tainted, the structure threatened with built-in decay. The inequitable distribution of globalwealth is widening. With the rich getting richer in this new environment, governments, who
But nations eager to remain competitive in the new world economy have at the same time beggared their labourers, tearing away crucial pieces of the social safety net. The closing decades of the 20th century have seen co-operation strengthened through the growth of trading blocs and multinational firms. Bolstering his argument with historical lessons about the dangers of a dissatisfied workforce, he drives home a new view of labour's share in the world economy.. The founding premise of the post-World War II international economic agreements were that they would lead to greater wealth and that those gains would be shared equitably. The predictable result, Kapstein argues goes far beyond the alarming trends in income inequality already observed. Turning common wisdom on its head, Kapstein demonstrates that programmes to ensure the health and prosperity of workers, far from expensively undermining growth, actually promote and sustain growth over the long run. Ethan Kapstein documents how the international economic orde
His concern, though, is for the workers whose lives are affected by these shifts. But Kapstein argues that the social safety nets of government programs actually made American prosperity possible in the 20th century (as it did in European societies going back to the 16th century). --Lou Schuler. In fact, it can be argued that the mass changes of the Industrial Revolution in Western economies during the 19th century led to the major upheavals of the 20th: World War I, the Russian revolution, the Great Depression, World War II. While wealth escalates, the economic expectancy of the poorest people around the world just gets worse, bringing to mind Adam Smith's famous assertion that "for one very rich man, there must be at least 500 poor." This brings up o