Efnisyfirlit

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface and acknowledgements
• ONE: A new perspective on capitalism’s “sickness”
• Introduction
• Capitalist economies: the realities
• Stagnation and its consequences
• A new world of necessary luxuries
• Necessary luxuries
• The failure of pro-investment policy
• Supply-side economics and “small government”
• Alternatives to supply-side economics
• We need a systemic change
• About this book
• TWO: Inspiration in the Kaufhaus des Westens
• The Kaufhaus des Westens
• “Necessary luxuries”
• Persistent lack of demand
• Changing demographic trends
• Unequal distribution of income
• Negative balance of trade
• Conclusion
• THREE: Unreal tax rates
• Introduction
• The US
• The lowest corporate tax rate in decades
• Japan
• Germany
• The downward trend in interest rates
• Liberal politicians and conservative fiscal policy
• Conclusion
• FOUR: Printing money
• Introduction
• Ultra-easy monetary policy
• The lack of a common macroeconomic theory
• Three Nobel laureates
• The Jackson Hole meeting of 2014
• Disagreement in the policy committees
• Neoclassical economic theory
• The ineffectiveness of ultra-easy monetary theory
• Currency depreciation
• The impact on emerging economies
• Asset price bubbles
• Negative interest rate policy
• The risk of falling government bond prices
• Difficulties of ending the policy
• Increasing disparity in the distribution of income and wealth
• Positive interest rate is indispensable lubricant
• The fallacy of composition: more price competition, less inflation
• Conclusion
• FIVE: Inequality and discontent
• Introduction
• The Occupy Movement
• Responses to Occupy
• Thomas Piketty and Capital in the 21st Century
• Disparity in income and wealth distribution
• The US
• Measuring disparity by the Gini coefficient
• Some statistics on income and wealth distribution
• Japan
• Declining permanent employment
• Germany
• Other developed economies
• Conclusion
• SIX: Buckling bridges and crumbling mountains
• Introduction
• Social safety nets and infrastructural investment
• The crumbling Eiger
• Nothing but a major global effort
• Effective policies on emissions
• The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report and the Paris Agreement of 2015
• Conclusion
• SEVEN: The United States: stagnation and gridlock
• From Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, 1981-2009
• A brief history of technological change
• The Industrial Revolution
• The second wave of change
• The IT Revolution
• Stagflation in the late 1970s
• Small government
• The Great Recession
• Societal problems and ideological conflict
• The Obama years, 2009-16
• The Tea Party movement
• Obamacare
• Legislative gridlock
• A stagnating economy and unemployment
• Political paralysis
• Conclusion
• EIGHT: Japan: bubbles, “lost years” and Abenomics
• Introduction
• The bubble and the “lost” years, 1980-2008
• Ineffective government
• A stagnating economy
• Changing employment practice
• Government since 2009: from incompetent to delusional
• “Abenomics”
• The outcomes of Abenomics
• Other policies
• Conclusion
• NINE: Unified Germany: a divided nation
• Introduction
• 1980-2008: German politics move to the Right
• The consequences of unification
• Gerhard Schroeder and Agenda 2010
• Angela Merkel and the recovery of the sick man of Europe
• Rising inequality
• The Great Recession
• From 2009 to the present: the high cost of Merkel’s policies
• Recovery from the financial crisis
• “Energiewende”
• Voter discontent
• Further rising inequality
• Further challenges at home
• Conclusion
• TEN: Four European economies
• Introduction
• From the 1980s to 2008
• France
• The UK
• Italy
• Spain
• From 2009 to the present
• France
• The UK
• Italy
• Spain
• Conclusion
• ELEVEN: Reform to the rescue
• Great Britain
• The United States
• TWELVE: Adapting capitalism and changing politics
• Introduction
• Increasing tax revenues
• The US
• Japan and Germany
• Other taxes
• Wealth
• Luxuries
• Tobin tax
• Environmental taxes
• The expected public response
• Political change
• The US
• Japan
• Germany
• Can “big government” and democracy coexist?
• Quality and quantity in GDP growth
• THIRTEEN: Conclusion
• Postscript
• In the new world of too much stuff, you will be poorer than your parents
• Income and wealth distributions are still unequal and becoming more so.
• The real unemployment rate is not falling and wages are not rising
• The undesirable effects of printing money are proliferating
• Germany cannot continue fiscal austerity and its huge trade surplus
• The more things change, the more they remain the same
• Projected growth rates of the developed economies remain dismal
• Notes
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Chapter Nine
• Chapter Ten
• Chapter Eleven
• Chapter Twelve
• Postscript