The Enlightened Economist | Economics and business books. It’s clear that I’m one of the slowest readers of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century around – only a bit over half way through, when other reviews are pouring out. Most are adulatory; Paul Krugman’s in the New York Review of Books the latest (Why We’re In a New Gilded Age). The problem is the size of the book – I do most of my reading while travelling, and just can’t read long e-books, as nothing sticks. Anyway, the process got me ferreting about in my old books looking for earlier work on wealth and inheritance, so this morning I was browsing through J.A.Hobson’s The Science of Wealth (1911) and Josiah Wedgwood’s The Economics of Inheritance (1929).
Here is Hobson on ‘unproductive surplus’: “The plain facts of modern business show that capital like land can get a share of unproductive surplus. He immediately identifies the banking industry as a key locus of unproductive surplus. No change there, then. Why Nations Fail - Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. Economic Principals. Marginal Revolution — Small steps toward a much better world.