As middle-class incomes stagnate in advanced economies while the rich experience record income gains, the eleventh semi-annual Munk Debate pits wealth redistribution supporters Paul Krugman and George Papandreou against Newt Gingrich and Arthur Laffer to debate taxation — should the rich pay more?
For some the answer is obvious: redistribute the wealth of the top income earners who have enjoyed, for almost a generation, the lion’s share of all income gains. Imposing higher ...

In the past fifty years, more than $1 trillion in development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Has this assistance improved the lives of Africans? No. In fact, across the continent, the recipients of this aid are not better off as a result of it, but worse—much worse.In Dead Aid, Dambisa Moyo describes the state of postwar development policy in Africa today and unflinchingly confronts one of the greatest myths of our time: that billions of do...

"The most consistent and courageous—and unapologetic—liberal partisan in American journalism." —Michael Tomasky, New York Review of BooksIn this "clear, provocative" (Boston Globe) New York Times bestseller, Paul Krugman, today's most widely read economist, examines the past eighty years of American history, from the reforms that tamed the harsh inequality of the Gilded Age and the 1920s to the unraveling of that achievement and the reemergence of immense...

For the past three decades, America has steadily become a nation of haves and have-nots. Our incomes are increasingly unequal. This steady growing apart is often mentioned as a troubling indicator by scholars and policy analysts, though seldom addressed by politicians. What economics Nobelist Paul Krugman terms "the Great Divergence" has till now been treated as little more than a talking point, a rhetorical club to be wielded in ideological battles. But this Great Divergence may be the mo...

Renowned as a passionate Canadian, bestselling author Mel Hurtig has combed through world statistics to see how Canada really measures up — and the results are astonishing, and often shocking.This book is about how Canada has changed, very much for the worse, in the last twenty years. As a result of these profound (often hidden) changes, we are no longer the people we think we are. To take one example, the Canadian media usually leaves us with the impression that Canadians are real...

A “provocative” (Kirkus Reviews), timely, and topical work that examines what’s good for American business and what’s good for Americans—and why those interests are misaligned.In American Amnesia, bestselling political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson trace the economic and political history of the United States over the last century and show how a viable mixed economy has long been the dominant engine of America’s prosperity. We have l...

Never before have we stood to gain or lose as much from understanding the international economy. Scandals plague the world's largest corporations, the American trade deficit has soared to historic heights, and international organizations from the World Bank to the WTO are accused of being inefficient and corrupt. Is our global economy as unhealthy, and as unjust, as we think? And what can be done about it?At this critical juncture, George Soros, a major proponent of globalization, ...

At a time when the national political debate is about inequality and fairness, bestselling author David Horowitz and coauthor Jacob Laksin have written an unsettling book about the distribution of power in America. Thoroughly researched and amply documented, The New Leviathan overturns the conventional wisdom about which end of the political spectrum represents the rich and powerful, and which represents the people.The Democratic Party presents itself to the electorate as ...

One of our most prescient political observers provides a sobering account of how pitched battles over scarce resources will increasingly define American politics in the coming years—and how we might avoid, or at least mitigate, the damage from these ideological and economic battles.In a matter of just three years, a bitter struggle over limited resources has enveloped political discourse at every level in the United States. Fights between haves and have-nots over h...

In this agenda-setting essay, journalist and historian Eric Alterman explains what is really happening with the Obama presidency. While Obama's many compromises have disappointed liberals, Alterman argues that these concessions are largely due to a political system that is rigged against progressive change. These structural impediments to democracy have made the keeping of Obama's campaign promises all but impossible.Brilliantly blending incisive political analysis with a clear age...

Why the United States has developed an economy divided between rich and poor—and how racism helped bring this about.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. Te...

How can the poorer countries of the world be helped to help themselves through freer, fairer trade? In this challenging and controversial book Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and his co-author Andrew Charlton address one of the key issues facing world leaders today. They put forward a radical and realistic new model for managing trading relationships between the richest and the poorest countries. Their approach is designed to open up markets in the interests of all and not...