The Economists' Hour
False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society
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The Economists' Hour
Narrated by:
Dan Bittner
Buy Now for $37.28
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Narrated by:
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Dan Bittner
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Written by:
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Binyamin Appelbaum
About this listen
Before the 1960s, American politicians had never paid much attention to economists. But as the post-World War II boom began to sputter, economists gained influence and power.
In The Economists' Hour, Binyamin Appelbaum traces the rise of the economists, first in the United States and then around the globe, as their ideas reshaped the modern world, curbing government, unleashing corporations and hastening globalization.
Some leading figures are relatively well-known, such as Milton Friedman, the elfin libertarian who had a greater influence on American life than any other economist of his generation, and Arthur Laffer, who sketched a curve on a cocktail napkin that helped to make tax cuts a staple of conservative economic policy.
Others stayed out of the limelight, but left a lasting impact on modern life: Walter Oi, a blind economist who dictated to his wife and assistants some of the calculations that persuaded President Nixon to end military conscription; Alfred Kahn, who deregulated air travel and rejoiced in the crowded cabins on commercial flights as the proof of his success; and Thomas Schelling, who put a dollar value on human life.
Their fundamental belief? That government should stop trying to manage the economy.Their guiding principle? That markets would deliver steady growth, and ensure that all Americans shared in the benefits.
But the Economists' Hour failed to deliver on its promise of broad prosperity. And the single-minded embrace of markets has come at the expense of economic equality, the health of liberal democracy, and future generations.
Timely, engaging and expertly researched, The Economists' Hour is a reckoning -- and a call for people to rewrite the rules of the market.
A Wall Street Journal Business BestsellerWinner of the Porchlight Business Book Award in Narrative & Biography
What the critics say
Winner of the Porchlight Business Book Award in Narrative & Biography A New York Times Editor's ChoiceA Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller One of Oprah Magazine's Best Political Books to Read Ahead of the 2020 Election One of Book Riot's 50 Best Books to Read this Fall One of Five Books' Best Political Books of 2019One of Vanity Fair's Best Books of 2019One of MIT Technology Review's Best Books of the Year
"His book is a marvel of popular historical writing, propelled by anecdotes and just the right amount of explanation but also impressively well grounded in the latest academic research by historians, sociologists and others. Much of the territory it covers was familiar to me, but I was constantly learning new twists and nuances."—Justin Fox, The New York Times
"Lively and entertaining...The Economists' Hour is a reminder of the power of ideas to shape the course of history."—Liaquat Ahamed, The New Yorker
"It is, I will tell you - and this is not just me, a Marketplace geek, saying this - it's fascinating. It's totally, totally fascinating."—Kai Ryssdal, Marketplace
"The rise and fall of the Chicago School is chronicled by Binyamin Appelbaum in his admirable book The Economists' Hour. As he shows, economists were treated as little more than backroom statisticians until the late 1960s.... Appelbaum argues that their heyday ended on October 13 2008, when the chief executives of America's largest banks were marched into the US Treasury for a crisis meeting. He is surely correct. The mother of all Wall Street bailouts shattered the reputation economics had gained over the previous 40 years. Yet economists' hubris lingers. Perhaps it is a lagging indicator. Economists might call it "sticky".—Edward Luce, Financial Times
"The Economists' Hour provides a novel perspective on the conservative revolution that dominated the past half-century of American political history."—James Kwak, The Washington Post
"A kind of ur-text, revealing the destructive role of centering economists in shaping public policy. It's not that we don't need economists and economic theory, but The Economist's Hour patiently reveals the many times and multiple ways they've had an outsized influence at key times and have steered us wrong. It's a fascinating analysis."—John Warner, The Chicago Tribune
"The Economists' Hour is a work of journalism rather than polemic. It is a well reported and researched history of the ways in which plucky economists helped rewrite policy in America and Europe and across emerging markets."—The Economist
There is no market system without people
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