Description
In Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, activist Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's former finance minister and the author of the international bestseller Adults in the Room, pens a series of letters to his young daughter, educating her about the business, politics, and corruption of world economics. Yanis Varoufakis has appeared before heads of nations, assemblies of experts, and countless students around the world. Now, he faces his most important and difficult audience yet. Using clear language and vivid examples, Varoufakis offers a series of letters to his young daughter about the economy: how it operates, where it came from, how it benefits some while impoverishing others. Taking bankers and politicians to task, he explains the historical origins of inequality among and within nations, questions the pervasive notion that everything has its price, and shows why economic instability is a chronic risk. Finally, he discusses the inability of market-driven policies to address the rapidly declining health of the planet his daughters generation stands to inherit. Throughout, Varoufakis wears his expertise lightly. He writes as a parent whose aim is to instruct his daughter on the fundamental questions of our age and through that knowledge, to equip her against the failures and obfuscations of our current system and point the way toward a more democratic alternative.… (more)
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But the fundamentals on economics, from why it was the whites who took over Australia and not the Aborigines colonizing us Brits; how a society with markets developed into a Market Society; how value can't be all exchange based, but is experiental too...all made me stop and think.
Varoufakis concludes that economics is NOT a science - there are too many outside influences for it ever to be that - concluding "We are, at best, worldly philosophers." We see the complexity of the whole thing: the fact that 'independent' central banks are no such thing; that such apparently sensible economics as lowering wages to increase jobs may actually work against itself, as companies foresee a corresponding fall-off in orders from a poorer population, they may cut back operations still further rather than hiring more workers!
Illustrated with examples from literature (debt explained by Dr Faust; the dangers of technology by Frankenstein; the importance of 'real life' over a sensory illusion from 'The Matrix') and from real life (a market economy pictured by a POW camp, where the various constituents of Red Cross parcels to the prisoners create a whole micro-market with all the fluctuations, price equilibriums etc seen in the outside world.
I can't say economics would ever be interesting (and it took a determined decision to plough on with it) but this is a very well crafted work that almost achieves that!
Later editions give it the subitle "How Capitalism Works and how it doesn't"
This was
He goes on basically to say that capitalism is working just fine, and the problem with it is when people don't want to give the banks all the control. And everyone should forgive Greece because Greece is special. He REALLY hates Bitcoin for some reason.