Browse

The Declaration of Independence states that all people are endowed with certain unalienable rights, and that among these is the pursuit of happiness. But is happiness available equally to everyone in America today? How about elsewhere in the world? This book draws on cutting-edge research linking income inequality with well-being to show how the widening prosperity gap has led to rising inequality in people's beliefs, hopes, and aspirations. For the United States and other developed countries, the high costs of being poor are most evident not in material deprivation but rather in stress, insecurity, and lack of hope. The result is an optimism gap between rich and poor that, if left unchecked, could lead to an increasingly divided society. The book reveals how people who do not believe in their own futures are unlikely to invest in them, and how the consequences can range from job instability and poor education to greater mortality rates, failed marriages, and higher rates of incarceration. The book explains why the least optimistic people in America are poor whites, not poor blacks or Hispanics. This book highlights the importance of well-being measures in identifying and monitoring trends in life satisfaction and optimism—and misery and despair—and demonstrates how hope and happiness can lead to improved economic outcomes.

The Internet was supposed to fragment audiences and make media monopolies impossible. Instead, behemoths like Google and Facebook now dominate the time we spend online—and grab all the profits from the attention economy. This book explains how this happened. It sheds light on the stunning rise of the digital giants and the online struggles of nearly everyone else—and reveals what small players can do to survive in a game that is rigged against them. The book shows how seemingly tiny advantages in attracting users can snowball over time. The Internet has not reduced the cost of reaching audiences—it has merely shifted who pays and how. Challenging some of the most enduring myths of digital life, the book explains why the Internet is not the postindustrial technology that has been sold to the public, how it has become mathematically impossible for grad students in a garage to beat Google, and why net neutrality alone is no guarantee of an open Internet. It also explains why the challenges for local digital news outlets and other small players are worse than they appear and demonstrates what it really takes to grow a digital audience and stay alive in today's online economy. The book shows why, even on the Internet, there is still no such thing as a free audience.

Since the 1980s, neoliberalism has withstood repeated economic shocks and financial crises to become the hegemonic economic policy worldwide. Why has neoliberalism remained so resilient? What is the relationship between this resiliency and the backsliding of Western democracy? Can democracy survive an increasingly authoritarian neoliberal capitalism? This book answers these questions by bringing the developing world's recent history to the forefront of our thinking about democratic capitalism's future. Looking at four decades of change in four countries once considered to be leading examples of effective neoliberal policy in Latin America and Eastern Europe — Argentina, Chile, Estonia, and Poland — the book examines the domestic actors and institutions responsible for defending neoliberalism. Delving into neoliberalism's political power, the book demonstrates that it is strongest in countries where traditional democratic principles have been slowly and purposefully weakened. It identifies three mechanisms through which coalitions of political, institutional, and financial forces have propagated neoliberalism's success: the privatization of state companies to create a supporting business class, the use of political institutions to block the representation of alternatives in congress, and the constitutionalization of key economic policies to shield them from partisan influence. The book reflects on today's most pressing issues, including the influence of increasing austerity measures and the rise of populism. As a comparative exploration of political economics at the peripheries of global capitalism, the book investigates the tensions between neoliberalism's longevity and democracy's gradual decline.

Why are small and culturally homogeneous nation-states in the advanced capitalist world so prosperous? Examining how Denmark, Ireland, and Switzerland managed the 2008 financial crisis, this book shows that this is not an accident. The book argues that a prolonged sense of vulnerability within both the state and the nation encourages the development of institutions that enable decision makers to act together quickly in order to survive, especially during a crisis. Blending insights from studies of comparative political economy and nationalism and drawing on both extensive interviews and secondary data, the book's authors support their claim by focusing on the three states historically and, more important, on their different responses to the 2008 crisis. The authors also devote attention to the difficulties faced by Greece and Iceland. The implications of their argument are profound. First, they show that there is a positive side to nationalism: social solidarity can enhance national prosperity. Second, because globalization now requires all states to become more adaptable, there are lessons here for other states, large and small. Lastly, the formula for prosperity presented here is under threat: highly homogeneous societies face challenges in dealing with immigration, with some responding in ways that threaten their success. This book demonstrates how the size and culture of a nation contribute in significant ways to its ability to handle political and economic pressures and challenges.

This book studies how America's global financial power was created and shaped through its special relationship with Britain. The rise of global finance in the latter half of the twentieth century has long been understood as one chapter in a larger story about the postwar growth of the United States. This book challenges this popular narrative. Revealing the Anglo-American origins of financial globalization, the book sheds new light on Britain's hugely significant, but often overlooked, role in remaking international capitalism alongside America. Drawing from new archival research, the book questions the conventional view of international economic history as a series of cyclical transitions among hegemonic powers. Instead, it explores the longstanding interactive role of private and public financial institutions in Britain and the United States—most notably the close links between their financial markets, central banks, and monetary and fiscal policies. The book shows that America's unparalleled post-WWII financial power was facilitated, and in important ways constrained, by British capitalism, as the United States often had to work with and through British politicians, officials, and bankers to achieve its vision of a liberal economic order. Transatlantic integration and competition spurred the rise of the financial sector, an increased reliance on debt, a global easing of regulation, the ascendance of monetarism, and the transition to neoliberalism. From the gold standard to the recent global financial crisis and beyond, this book recasts the history of global finance through the prism of Anglo-American development.

Many low-income countries and development organizations are calling for greater liberalization of labor immigration policies in high-income countries. At the same time, human rights organizations and migrant rights advocates demand more equal rights for migrant workers. This book shows why you cannot always have both. Examining labor immigration policies in over forty countries, as well as policy drivers in major migrant-receiving and migrant-sending states, the book finds that there are trade-offs in the policies of high-income countries between openness to admitting migrant workers and some of the rights granted to migrants after admission. Insisting on greater equality of rights for migrant workers can come at the price of more restrictive admission policies, especially for lower-skilled workers. The book advocates the liberalization of international labor migration through temporary migration programs that protect a universal set of core rights and account for the interests of nation-states by restricting a few specific rights that create net costs for receiving countries. It analyzes how high-income countries restrict the rights of migrant workers as part of their labor immigration policies and discusses the implications for global debates about regulating labor migration and protecting migrants. It comprehensively looks at the tensions between human rights and citizenship rights, the agency and interests of migrants and states, and the determinants and ethics of labor immigration policy.