Re: [Nepal News] Digest for nepal-news@googlegroups.com - 1 Message in 1 Topic

[Prakash Shrestha]

Congratulation Bob.

May peace prevail on Earth.

Happy International Day of Peace

Prakash 

NEPAL

On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 8:55 PM, <nepal...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

  Today's Topic Summary

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• The Darwin Economy [1 Update]

 Topic: The Darwin Economy

Robert Frank <rh...@cornell.edu> Sep 18 04:28PM -0400 ^

 
I hope this note finds you well.
 
I write to let you know that my new book, The Darwin Economy: Liberty,
Competition, and the Common Good, will be published by Princeton
University Press this Wednesday, September 21, as the lead title on
its fall list. An essay excerpted from the book was published in
today’s Sunday Business section of the New York Times (“Darwin, The
Market Whiz”). And another excerpt from the book was recently
published by the Cornell Alumni Magazine (“Starve the Beast”).
I was moved to write this book by feelings of despair about our
impoverished political/economic debate. With a solid majority in the
House and enough votes to block legislation in the Senate, Republicans
have vowed to balance the federal budget with spending cuts alone.
But as anyone familiar with the numbers knows, that’s impossible.
We’ll also need new revenues. Yet Republicans on the Congressional
budget supercommittee have all signed a formal pledge never to approve
increased taxes under any circumstances. And in a recent debate,
Republican presidential candidates all said they would reject any
proposal that had even one dollar of tax increases for every ten
dollars of spending cuts. An economic train-wreck looms.
 
That’s the bad news. The good news is that there’s a painless way to
avert it. In The Darwin Economy, I describe simple steps could
liberate literally trillions of dollars in additional resources each
year—enough not just to balance the budget but also to restore our
crumbling infrastructure. No painful sacrifices would be required.
No cherished freedoms would be threatened. Just a few unintrusive
changes in the tax code would suffice.
 
These bold claims, inspired by insights of Charles Darwin, evoke the
alchemist’s promise to transform lead into gold. But they rest on
sound logic and compelling evidence.
 
Darwin understood that individual and group interests sometimes
coincide, as in Adam Smith’s Invisible-Hand theory. But he also
understood that group interests often conflict sharply with individual
interests, and that in those cases, individual interests trump. In
ways that non-human animals cannot, we can act collectively to curb
the enormous waste that often results from such conflicts. And
therein lies the way forward.
 
The policies I propose rest on a simple, uncontroversial observation—
that the forces driving luxury consumption are strongly context-
dependent. When the rich all build larger mansions, they succeed only
in raising the bar that defines how big a mansion they feel they
need. Simple changes in the tax code could cause across-the-board
reductions in luxury spending whose effects would be similar to those
of parallel cutbacks in weapons spending caused by military arms
control agreements. Such agreements also create new resources out of
thin air, by enabling rival nations to spend more on domestic services
without jeopardizing their national security.
 
Implausible though my claim might sound on first hearing, many
respected economists (including the two I admire most—Tom Schelling
and Will Baumol) have endorsed my arguments. For example, Baumol, a
past president of the American Economic Association, wrote that the
book's "message is my only hope for a rational economic future."
Amazon.com has compiled long list of other endorsements here.
 
I’ve been at this long enough to know better than to expect that any
single book will make much difference. But conversations about change
have to start somewhere, and if you’re concerned about the paralysis
gripping our political process, I hope you’ll give The Darwin Economy
a look. Its first chapter is posted on Princeton’s website here, and
there’s lots more information about it on the book’s Facebook page here.
 
All good wishes,
 
Bob


 

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