Plutocrats : the rise of the new global super-rich and the fall of everyone else

by Chrystia Freeland   (Get the Book)
Even Alan Greenspan is worried about the troubling trend of income inequality. International financial reporter Freeland looks beyond worries about the 1 percent to the even more troubling trend of the 0.1 percent of the world's most wealthy having more in common with each other than their countrymen and acting on those interests, guaranteeing even more inequality. Is the gap between the superrich and everybody else the product of impersonal market forces or political machinations? Freeland offers an engaging and deeply analytical look at the history, politics, and economics behind the rise of the plutocrats. She draws parallels between current inequality and the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, when the top 1 percent of the U.S. population held one-third of the national income. Globalization and the technology revolution are the major factors behind what she sees as new and overlapping gilded ages: the second for the U.S., the first for developing nations. Drawing on interviews with economists and the elite themselves, Freeland chronicles lavish parties, hubris, and hand-wringing over the direction of the global economy. As she laments, The feedback loop between money, politics, and ideas is both cause and consequence of the rise of the super-elite. Readers will appreciate the broader political and economic implications of Freeland's penetrating examination of growing global income inequality. --Booklist

J.K. Lasser's your income tax: 2013

There are two reasons to read this book. 1) You are preparing a paper return and wish to learn more that what is printed in the IRS "Forms and Instructions". 2) You want to read and learn more than what you get from a tax preparer or computer program. Since your economic activities have tax consequences you should read or browse the relevant sections of this book as it applies to you. Some ignore the tax consequences until its too late. Since most people don't have tax lawyers, and may not be able to get advice on a telephone, or even from the Internet, you need to reference this book as needed. Do not be afraid of the size of this book as most people will not need all chapters. Pages xxv to xxvii has "What's New for 2011". (Publisher)    
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The dawn of innovation : the first American industrial revolution

by Charles R. Morris     (Get the Book)
An unprecedented 3.9 percent average annual rate of economic growth sustained for more than a century propelled the U.S. to global economic leadership. Morris chronicles the remarkable story behind the remarkable number. To begin with, it is a story of American shipwrights frenetically attempting to match Great Britain in building warships during the War of 1812. Peace meant that American industrialists turned to making shoes, stoves, steam engines, and locomotives, yet they still strove to wrest world economic leadership from Britain. Readers soon realize that American capitalists who surmounted daunting technical challenges (through homegrown Yankee ingenuity and through industrial espionage) also solved a formidable social problem. Instead of building British-style Coketowns that enriched a few while immiserating the masses in the factories, America's economic pioneers spread the benefits of modern productivity throughout a mass-consumption society. Morris concludes with a provocative comparison of the nineteenth-century duel pitting the U.S. against Great Britain and today's rivalry between China and the U.S. Economic history freighted with social and political relevance. --Booklist

Automate this : how algorithms came to rule our world

by Christopher Steiner    (Get the Book)
The Arab Spring of 2011 did not surprise analyst Bueno de Mesquita, who in May 2010 predicted that Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak would fall within a year basing his prediction on the workings of an algorithm. As readers follow Steiner in his whirlwind tour of algorithm applications, they will marvel at the versatility of a mathematical tool understood only by a small circle of experts. Readers peer over the experts' shoulders long enough to trace the decision-tree logic of an individual algorithm and to follow the cascading dynamics of the linked algorithms that drive the bots now handling everything from putting astronauts into space to matching compatible personalities venturing into the dating scene. Steiner acknowledges that a world reliant on bots must cope with new challenges flash crashes on Wall Street, unemployment among accountants, dangerously powerful technocrats. Still, Steiner remains hopeful that resourceful computer whizzes will weave algorithms that will enrich and safeguard our future. An accessible foray into computer programming that has become a hidden but pervasive presence. --Booklist