23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

Honestly spent the whole book pumping my fist and going, YES. YYYEEEEEESSSSSS.

I think I also highlighted more than half of it.

Some highlights of the highlights:
- Structual adjustment programs, the World Bank, the 1990s, and how they killed growth.
- Protectionism as a good thing.
- REALLY fun/interesting/provocative stuff about global labor competition - wages in rich countries being a function of immigration control. Really interesting stuff about the interaction effects between immigration control, wages, and class.
- The rise of shareholder capitalism, and its perverse incentives (e.g. businesses avoid making long-term investments, and instead focus on short-term cuts like layoffs and finance tools).
- Lots of really cool historical economics about the “Asian miracle” - e.g. the ENORMOUS and mind-boggling growth + development of South Korea, Taiwan, Japan. Very very cool.

Anyway, a lot of this stuff was also covered in Doughnut Economics. I wish I could take a class with Ha-Joon Chang. I got a lot of other books added to my want-to-read list thanks to this one. Woohooooo economics