User:Oceanflynn/sandbox/The Economists' Hour

The Economists' Hour is a 2019 non-fiction book by Binyamin Appelbaum, lead economics writer for The New York Times.

Summary
Inequality

Responses
The Atlantic "A little more than a generation ago, a stealthy revolution swept America. It was a dual changing of the guard: Two tribes, two attitudes, two approaches to a good society were simultaneously displaced by upstart rivals. In the world of business, the manufacturing bosses gave way to Wall Street dealmakers, bent on breaking up their empires. “Organization Man,” as the journalist William H. Whyte had christened the corporate archetype in his 1956 book, was ousted by 'Transaction Man,' to cite Nicholas Lemann’s latest work of social history. In the world of public policy, lawyers who counted on large institutions to deliver prosperity and social harmony lost influence. In their place rose quantitative thinkers who put their faith in markets. It was The Economists’ Hour, as the title of the New York Times editorial writer Binyamin Appelbaum’s debut book has it."

"Together, Lemann and Appelbaum contribute to the second wave of post-2008 commentary. The first postmortems focused narrowly on the global financial crisis, dissecting the distorted incentives, regulatory frailty, and groupthink that caused bankers to blow up the world economy. The new round of analysis broadens the lens, searching out larger political and intellectual wrong turns, an expansion that reflects the morphing of the 2008 crash into a general populist surge. By excavating history, Lemann and Appelbaum remind us that Transaction Man and his economist allies were not always ascendant, and that they won’t necessarily remain so. This frees both writers to ask whether an alternative social contract might be imaginable, or preferable."

The Washington Post said that "The current political wars are unfolding in a context that was created largely by the failure of elite economists and their dogmatic faith in markets. That’s the thesis of a compelling new book by Binyamin Appelbaum, an economics writer for the New York Times."

""It’s often argued that the recent explosion in inequality is fueling the rise of populism on the left and the right — the latter of which has also given rise to the virulent nationalist strain of it that President Trump has demagogued to perfection, doing immense damage to our civic bonds and harming untold numbers of real people in the process."

"In 'The Economists’ Hour,' Appelbaum blames much of this on the economics profession."

"He charts a confluence of factors beginning in the 1960s: the rising influence of economists over policymaking and their unshakable adherence to the idea that lightly regulated markets are the only way to deliver prosperity and social progress."