Economic Sociology

The world’s largest company, WalMart Stores, has revenues higher than the gross domestic product of all but twentyfive of the world’s countries. Its employees outnumber the populations of almost one hundred nations. The world’s largest asset manager, a New York company called BlackRock, controls assets greater than the national reserves of any country on the planet.

Bicycle/Race paints an unforgettable picture of Los Angeles—and the United States—from the perspective of two wheels. This is a book of borderlands and intersections, a cautionary tale about the dangers of putting infrastructure before culture, and a coming-of-age story about power and identity.

"Dass ich den Dieselmotor erfunden habe, ist schön und gut. Aber meine Hauptleistung ist, dass ich die soziale Frage gelöst habe." Jeder kennt Rudolf Diesel (1858 - 1913) als Erfinder des gleichnamigen Motors. Doch weit wenigeren ist bekannt, dass er im Jahre 1903 mit seinem Werk "Der Solidarismus" das Bild einer neuen Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftsordnung entwarf, das Konzepte wie Grundeinkommen und Crowdfunding praktisch einhundert Jahre vorwegnahm!

Come può una società signorile essere anche di massa? Con questa paradossale definizione, Luca Ricolfi introduce una nuova, forse definitiva, categoria interpretativa, che scardina le idee correnti sulla società in cui viviamo. Oggi, per la prima volta nella storia d'Italia, ricorrono insieme tre condizioni: il numero di cittadini che non lavorano ha superato ampiamente il numero di cittadini che lavorano; l'accesso ai consumi opulenti ha raggiunto una larga parte della popolazione; l'economia è entrata in stagnazione e la produttività è ferma da vent'anni.

La vida es movimiento y la dirección de este movimiento es hacia arriba. Si todos debemos movernos para sobrevivir, vale la pena preguntarse: ¿qué factores de nuestro entorno nos impulsan a movernos y cuáles, por el contrario, nos detienen? ¿Por qué algunas personas tienen la oportunidad de moverse hacia donde quieren y otras no? ¿Por qué ciertas sociedades evolucionan y otras no? El autor del libro estudió los códigos culturales y el comportamiento Bio-Lógico de 71 países para desarrollar un índice de que permite medir la movilidad social dentro de estas sociedades.

Health insurance, student loan debt, retirement savings, child care, work-life balance, access to home ownership - these are the issues driving America's current political debates. And they are all linked, as this brilliant and timely book reveals, by a single question: should we allow the free market to determine our lives? In the tradition of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, noted economic commentator Mike Konczal answers this question with a resounding no. Freedom from the Market blends passionate political argument and a bold new take on American history....

Black Picket Fences is a stark, moving, and candid look at a section of America that is too often ignored by both scholars and the media: the Black middle class. The result of living for three years in "Groveland", a Black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, sociologist Mary Pattillo-McCoy has written a book that explores both the advantages and the boundaries that exist for members of the Black middle class.

Simon Anholt has spent decades helping countries, from Austria to Zambia, to improve their international standing. Using colorful descriptions of his experiences - dining with Vladimir Putin at his country home, taking a group of Felipe Calderon’s advisors on their first Mexico City subway ride, touring a beautiful new government hospital in Afghanistan that nobody would use because it was in Taliban-controlled territory - he tells how he began finding answers to that question.

Do we have to choose between equality and prosperity? Many think that reducing economic inequality would require such heavy-handed interference with market forces that it would stifle economic growth. Heather Boushey insists nothing could be further from the truth. Presenting cutting-edge economics with journalistic verve, she shows how rising inequality has become a drag on growth and an impediment to a competitive United States marketplace for employers and employees alike.

In this book, the listener will learn why the gap between the rich and everyone else grows wider. In this book, the listener will get an explanation of why savers are losers. In this book, the listener will find out why debt and taxes make the rich richer. In this book, the listener will learn why traditional education actually causes many highly educated people, such as Robert's poor dad, to live poorly.

This groundbreaking study of agriculture's role in the war defies long-held notions that Northern industrialization and urbanization led to clashes between North and South. Huston argues that the ideological chasm between plantation owners in the South and family farmers in the North led to the political eruption of 1854-1856 and the birth of a sectionalized party system.

Through meticulous research, author Gini Graham Scott paints a stark portrait of this growing division in modern society, drawing surprising accurate parallels to the Middle Ages and telling how our present course is ripe for social and political upheaval.

Hvad betyder overklassen i dag? Har den nogen reel magt i nutidens Danmark? Søren Jakobsens korte svar er, at overklassens magt i erhvervs - og i kulturlivet er undervurderet. Fuldstændig undervurderet. "Overklassemagt" er en selvstændig fortsættelse af den anmelderroste Overklasseliv - fra landadel til magtelite og jetset. I denne bog søger Søren Jakobsen om bag overklasselivet og endnu dybere ind i, hvad overklassens magt i virkeligheden består af.

Our world is constantly buffeted by new and dramatic changes we can't fully grasp. No one is fully prepared for the challenges, crises, and risks that lie ahead. The Extreme Future is a blueprint for what's next and how to navigate these changes.

The Theory of the Leisure Class was written by Thorstein Veblen at the turn of the 20th century. It delves deeply into the nature of economics and the social institutions, exploring the forces that create and maintain class division, how these forces evolved through history, and how they influence the economy. In this work, Veblen presents a critique of capitalism on the basis of "conspicuous consumption", a term that he himself coined. He examines economics as a function of evolution, tracking the division of labor and stratification of class during the development of society.

Weaving the brackish humor of Chuck Palahniuk with the empathy of Barbara Ehrenreich, J. R. Helton brings to life an obscured underside of the American psyche in this unflinching account of life inside the working class of Texas in the 1980s. We first meet Helton as a struggling writer succumbing to the bleak reality of what it means to support himself and a wife. That despair is transformed into resilience as Helton insightfully narrates his wayward years, enduring hateful employers and mind-numbing manual labor.

America’s unique prosperity is based on its creation of a middle class. In the 20th century, that middle class provided the workforce, the educated skills, and the demand that gave life to the world’s greatest consumer economy. It was innovative and dynamic; it eclipsed old imperial systems and colonial archetypes. It gave rise to a dream: that if you worked hard and followed the rules you would prosper in America, and your children would enjoy a better life than yours. Incredibly, however, for more than 30 years, government and big business in America have conspired to roll back the American dream....

We are all fascinated by them - that enigmatic class of people often referred to as the rich. With all the emphasis on the rich and famous in America, it seems we would know everything about them. In reality, very few of us truly understand those who make up the very wealthiest Americans - those with liquid assets of $5 million or more. What is this new class of people, and how did they get that way?

The United States is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with few families in the middle. In this book, MIT economist Peter Temin offers an illuminating way to look at the vanishing middle class. Temin argues that American history and politics, particularly slavery and its aftermath, play an important part in the widening gap between rich and poor. Temin employs a well-known, simple model of a dual economy to examine the dynamics of the rich/poor divide in America.

Just as the industrial capitalism of the 19th century gave way to corporate capitalism in the 20th, recent decades have witnessed corporate capitalism evolving into a new phase, which Ehrenreich calls "Third Wave Capitalism." Third Wave Capitalism is marked by apparent contradictions: Rapid growth in productivity and lagging wages; fabulous wealth for the one percent and the persistence of high levels of poverty; increases in the standard of living and increases in mental illness, and much more.