The Myth Of Social Cost

For over 50 years economists have argued that where private costs or benefits differ from social costs or benefits - in noise, smells, congestion, pollution of the environment - there is a 'clear case' for government intervention to correct the divergence. This argument has been used to justify almost endless intervention. However, the original analysts of social costs/benefits were led into error by failing to test their propositions against the evidence of real life. Painstaking empirical studies clearly demonstrate these errors. A divergence between private and social cost is no decisive justification for government action to correct it. The costs of intervention often outweigh the social benefits. Moreover, the alleged 'externalities' are merely uncontracted effects. Under private property rights, the use of contracts to transact what have been regarded as 'external' effects is far more common than has been commonly recognised.

From New York Times bestselling author and economics columnist Robert Frank, a compelling book that explains why the rich underestimate the importance of luck in their success, why that hurts everyone, and what we can do about it How important is luck in economic success? No question more reliably divides conservatives from liberals. As conservatives correctly observe, people who amass great fortunes are almost always talented and hardworking. But liberals are also correct to note that countless others have those same qualities yet never earn much. In recent years, social scientists have discovered that chance plays a much larger role in important life outcomes than most people imagine. In Success and Luck, bestselling author and New York Times economics columnist Robert Frank explores the surprising implications of those findings to show why the rich underestimate the importance of luck in success—and why that hurts everyone, even the wealthy. Frank describes how, in a world increasingly dominated by winner-take-all markets, chance opportunities and trivial initial advantages often translate into much larger ones—and enormous income differences—over time; how false beliefs about luck persist, despite compelling evidence against them; and how myths about personal success and luck shape individual and political choices in harmful ways. But, Frank argues, we could decrease the inequality driven by sheer luck by adopting simple, unintrusive policies that would free up trillions of dollars each year—more than enough to fix our crumbling infrastructure, expand healthcare coverage, fight global warming, and reduce poverty, all without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone. If this sounds implausible, you'll be surprised to discover that the solution requires only a few, noncontroversial steps. Compellingly readable, Success and Luck shows how a more accurate understanding of the role of chance in life could lead to better, richer, and fairer economies and societies.

The Myth of Capitalism tells the story of how America has gone from an open, competitive marketplace to an economy where a few very powerful companies dominate key industries that affect our daily lives. Digital monopolies like Google, Facebook and Amazon act as gatekeepers to the digital world. Amazon is capturing almost all online shopping dollars. We have the illusion of choice, but for most critical decisions, we have only one or two companies, when it comes to high speed Internet, health insurance, medical care, mortgage title insurance, social networks, Internet searches, or even consumer goods like toothpaste. Every day, the average American transfers a little of their pay check to monopolists and oligopolists. The solution is vigorous anti-trust enforcement to return America to a period where competition created higher economic growth, more jobs, higher wages and a level playing field for all. The Myth of Capitalism is the story of industrial concentration, but it matters to everyone, because the stakes could not be higher. It tackles the big questions of: why is the US becoming a more unequal society, why is economic growth anemic despite trillions of dollars of federal debt and money printing, why the number of start-ups has declined, and why are workers losing out.

This book deals with the current crises from a somewhat different the usual perspectives. It claims that causes and policy implications of these crises cannot be properly assessed by focusing on allocative efficiency or income growth alone; it requires a more general approach, based on social costs. It does not deal with social costs according to the Pigouvian or the Coasian traditions. It draws on the work of Original Institutional Economics (OIE) such as Thorstein Veblen, Karl William Kapp, and Karl Polanyi, on Post-Keynesians such as Hyman Minsky and, in general, on authors who have provided insights beyond the conventional wisdom of economic thought.

This book considers Thorstein Veblen’s central preoccupation with the dark places of business enterprise, an integral part of the old institutional economics. Combining the contributions made by Karl William Kapp and Philip Mirowski, it proposes the systematization of an adjourned institutional theory of social costs of business enterprise useful for the analysis of contemporary crises. The Dark Places of Business Enterprise explores the research potential of the theory of social costs for the analysis of actual business behavior in the current globalized privatization regime. It begins with a detailed outline of Veblen’s critique of business enterprise and market competition before illustrating the methodical enrichment of this approach through Kapp’s work. Finally, it concludes by proposing the integration of the Veblenian-Kappian approach with Mirowski’s theory of markets and business doubt manufacture. The resulting theory of social costs will shed light on the ubiquitous business control of society under the now dominant computer-based technological infrastructure. This interdisciplinary foundation of the theory of social costs, encompassing knowledge from computer science and engineering to natural sciences, provides the tools required to analyze this great transformation.

A New York Times Bestseller The leading thinker and most visible public advocate of modern monetary theory -- the freshest and most important idea about economics in decades -- delivers a radically different, bold, new understanding for how to build a just and prosperous society. Stephanie Kelton's brilliant exploration of modern monetary theory (MMT) dramatically changes our understanding of how we can best deal with crucial issues ranging from poverty and inequality to creating jobs, expanding health care coverage, climate change, and building resilient infrastructure. Any ambitious proposal, however, inevitably runs into the buzz saw of how to find the money to pay for it, rooted in myths about deficits that are hobbling us as a country. Kelton busts through the myths that prevent us from taking action: that the federal government should budget like a household, that deficits will harm the next generation, crowd out private investment, and undermine long-term growth, and that entitlements are propelling us toward a grave fiscal crisis. MMT, as Kelton shows, shifts the terrain from narrow budgetary questions to one of broader economic and social benefits. With its important new ways of understanding money, taxes, and the critical role of deficit spending, MMT redefines how to responsibly use our resources so that we can maximize our potential as a society. MMT gives us the power to imagine a new politics and a new economy and move from a narrative of scarcity to one of opportunity.