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Binyamin Applebaum. The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society. Little, Brown and Company, 2019. See here to purchase the book.
Binyamin Applebaum writes about business and economics for the New York Times. The Economists’ Hour is about the historical influence of economists on U.S. policy. Applebaum primarily focuses on the time between the 1970’s and the 2008 financial crisis.
Among the topics that Applebaum engages are monetarism, deregulation, the role of cost-benefit analysis in federal regulatory policy, supply-side economics, the abrogation of the gold standard, and anti-trust.
Applebaum’s perspective appears to be rather Keynesian. He believes that the government can play a stimulative role in the economy. More than once, he observes that anti-government economists financially flourished due to government. Applebaum is also skeptical about supply-side economics. You can cut taxes so businesses can buy computers, but how many computers can they possibly need?
There were things that I learned or came to appreciate more deeply from reading this book:
—-Applebaum lucidly presents the pros and cons on the question of whether inflation is caused by an increased money supply.
—-Applebaum clarifies Milton Friedman’s monetarist perspective, which supports limiting the money supply as a way to ameliorate inflation, while rejecting the gold standard.
—-The discussion of cost-benefit analysis in regulatory policy is disturbing, for can one really put a price on a human being’s life? Yet, some cost-benefit analysis may be necessary, for very few things are absolutely safe and lacking in risk to life and health.
—-One might think that monopolies or duopolies lead to higher prices, for, without competition, companies will raise their prices as much as they can. From what Applebaum presents, though, monopolies and duopolies often charge lower prices because with their large size comes greater efficiency in production. Those who favored anti-trust argued on social grounds: that there should be many competing companies so that a few large companies would not have disproportionate wealth and power.
In terms of where Applebaum could have connected the dots a little better than he did, he was somewhat ambiguous about whether the 1970’s sought to combat deregulation or regulation. Airports were afraid that anyone could set up a little airport in his or her backyard, which seems to be a call for greater regulation. Yet, even Ted Kennedy was favoring a rollback on airport regulation, for the sake of airports and consumers. Was regulation or lack of regulation the perceived problem, or was it both?
Another issue on which Applebaum could have connected the dots better was exchange currency. The U.S. in the 1970’s abrogated the gold standard because, quite frankly, the U.S. was running out of gold. The result, for a time, was chaos in international currency. Applebaum perhaps could have given the basics about how currency works: what the gold standard was, why it existed, and how other countries are affected by U.S. currency.
Overall, though, Applebaum effectively connected the dots and painted a picture of how economic policy affected people, businesses, and countries on the ground. The biographical details about the economists and government officials made this book compelling reading.
I temporarily received a complimentary copy of this book through Netgalley. My review is honest.
Binyamin Applebaum writes about business and economics for the New York Times. The Economists’ Hour is about the historical influence of economists on U.S. policy. Applebaum primarily focuses on the time between the 1970’s and the 2008 financial crisis.
Among the topics that Applebaum engages are monetarism, deregulation, the role of cost-benefit analysis in federal regulatory policy, supply-side economics, the abrogation of the gold standard, and anti-trust.
Applebaum’s perspective appears to be rather Keynesian. He believes that the government can play a stimulative role in the economy. More than once, he observes that anti-government economists financially flourished due to government. Applebaum is also skeptical about supply-side economics. You can cut taxes so businesses can buy computers, but how many computers can they possibly need?
There were things that I learned or came to appreciate more deeply from reading this book:
—-Applebaum lucidly presents the pros and cons on the question of whether inflation is caused by an increased money supply.
—-Applebaum clarifies Milton Friedman’s monetarist perspective, which supports limiting the money supply as a way to ameliorate inflation, while rejecting the gold standard.
—-The discussion of cost-benefit analysis in regulatory policy is disturbing, for can one really put a price on a human being’s life? Yet, some cost-benefit analysis may be necessary, for very few things are absolutely safe and lacking in risk to life and health.
—-One might think that monopolies or duopolies lead to higher prices, for, without competition, companies will raise their prices as much as they can. From what Applebaum presents, though, monopolies and duopolies often charge lower prices because with their large size comes greater efficiency in production. Those who favored anti-trust argued on social grounds: that there should be many competing companies so that a few large companies would not have disproportionate wealth and power.
In terms of where Applebaum could have connected the dots a little better than he did, he was somewhat ambiguous about whether the 1970’s sought to combat deregulation or regulation. Airports were afraid that anyone could set up a little airport in his or her backyard, which seems to be a call for greater regulation. Yet, even Ted Kennedy was favoring a rollback on airport regulation, for the sake of airports and consumers. Was regulation or lack of regulation the perceived problem, or was it both?
Another issue on which Applebaum could have connected the dots better was exchange currency. The U.S. in the 1970’s abrogated the gold standard because, quite frankly, the U.S. was running out of gold. The result, for a time, was chaos in international currency. Applebaum perhaps could have given the basics about how currency works: what the gold standard was, why it existed, and how other countries are affected by U.S. currency.
Overall, though, Applebaum effectively connected the dots and painted a picture of how economic policy affected people, businesses, and countries on the ground. The biographical details about the economists and government officials made this book compelling reading.
I temporarily received a complimentary copy of this book through Netgalley. My review is honest.
