If You're Curious About These Questions...
You should listen to this audiobook
- Have you ever wondered why economists, rather than politicians or social leaders, became the ultimate authority on how our society should function?
- Did you know that a radical shift in economic thinking in the 1960s laid the groundwork for the massive inequality and political polarization we see today?
- Are you curious about how a small group of market-driven intellectuals managed to reshape the entire global landscape in just a few decades?
Listen to The Economists’ Hour — Free Audiobook
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Key Takeaways from The Economists’ Hour
- Discover how obscure free-market economists transformed American life post-WWII by shifting political power away from governments and toward corporations.
- Learn how conservative economists successfully campaigned to abolish the military draft in 1973 by framing military service as a voluntary, wage-based job.
- Understand why Keynesian economics lost its dominance in the 1960s, paving the way for Milton Friedman's monetarist theory that the state should simply step out of the economy.
- Find out how the Federal Reserve tackled 1970s stagflation by restricting the money supply, a controversial move that triggered massive unemployment but highly rewarded the financial sector.
- Explore the rise of supply-side economics under Ronald Reagan, where thinkers successfully argued that massive tax cuts for corporations and investors would cure both inflation and unemployment.
The Economists’ Hour — Full Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: Recommendation
Chapter 2: Free-market economists pushed to end the draft, and prevailed.
Chapter 3: Throughout the 1960s, Keynesian economic power gradually started to fade away.
Chapter 4: With Reagan, supply-side economics and tax cuts dominated policy.
Chapter 5: Chasing economic efficiency let monopolies dominate and tightly control the markets.
Chapter 6: Economists swapped moral judgment for cost-benefit analysis.
Chapter 7: Abandoning fixed exchange rates spawned a vast, volatile new global trading system.
Chapter 8: Pinochet implemented Friedman’s ideas in Chile, yielding chaotic outcomes.
Chapter 9: Unregulated markets frequently produce severe financial disasters.
The Economists’ Hour Summary & Overview
The Economists’ Hour (2019) is a compact history of how economists came to dominate our political discourse. This work traces the rise of neoliberal ideology from the 1960s to today.
Who Should Listen to The Economists’ Hour?
- Political wonks wanting to parse the current climate
- Citizens concerned about America’s rightward shift
- Anyone asking, “how did things get so bad?”
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