(Part 2) Best products from r/AskSocialScience

Both Friedman and Bernanke have good books on this subject.

http://www.amazon.com/Contraction-1929-1933-Princeton-Classic-Editions/dp/0691137943/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

http://www.amazon.com/Essays-Great-Depression-Ben-Bernanke/dp/0691118205/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421083324&sr=1-1&keywords=bernanke+depression

Bernanke and Friedman are in basic agreement on the Federal Reserve being the cause of the depression. Bernanke is famous for having said: "Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again." I should add that although Friedman is sometimes seen as a free-market hack, his work on monetary theory and the great depression is respected by economists of all political stripes.

Modern central bankers now know to increase the money supply during a recession. This is necessary to prevent deflation because the effective amount of money circulating in the economy is increased by lending. Lending decreases during a recession, so if the central bank does not increase "base money", then the effective amount of money will decrease in the recession. A fall in the money supply can cause problems, particularly for banks if the duration of their assets and liabilities differ (as is almost always the case) (fyi, the duration of and asset or liabilities is basically when it pays out. Mortgages have a long duration because mortgage holders will be baying back their debts over decades. Demand deposits have a short duration -- consumers can withdraw their deposits on a day's notice to take them to another bank or take them home. If the interest rate goes up, then consumers can withdraw their deposits to get a bigger return on them, but banks cannot call their mortgages. Thus, banks are typically hurt when interest rates go up. Furthermore, if enough people start withdrawing their deposits, the bank can run out of cash -- even if their mortgages are good and they'd be able to pay back their depositors if given enough time. This can result in a bank run. If a lot of people withdraw their deposits, then the bank will go bankrupt and the other depositors could be ruined. Thus, lots of depositors may withdraw their deposits in anticipation that others will, causing a bank failure that would not have happened otherwise. Banks failing and being close to failure will reduce the supply of credit to various enterprises, which directly reduces output (this is the link between the "real economy" and the financial economy. In a market economy, the financial sector plays a crucial role in determining to which enterprises capital is allocated. Banks can do a good job identifying where capital is most productive, but during a liquidity crises they will fail to extend this credit -- they know the project is good but they can't give the money without going bankrupt).

At the start of the great depression, the US Federal reserve decreased the money supply rather than increasing it, transforming what would probably have been a sharp but brief recession (as the United States had experience regularly throughout its history) into the great depression. Indeed, the effective money supply decreased by over a third early in the great depression.

There were a couple of reasons for this, but part of it came from a power struggle between the New York Fed and the Washington DC fed. In the 1800's and early 1900's, big financiers like J.P.Morgan played the role of the federal reserve by generously extending financing during contractions to avert catastrophe. After the panic of 1907 (where J.P. Morgan assembled a coalition of other bankers to extend credit to banks during the liquidity crisis), many bankers urged the creation of a government body to play the role that J.P. Morgan had played in the past, thinking something like "we only avoided catastrophe because J.P.Morgan saved the day - what if someone like J.P. Morgan is not around for the next crisis? We need an official body to play this role". This resulted in the Federal reserve board.

The Federal reserve board is a fairly decentralized system. The D.C. fed is responsible for controlling money supply. But the New York Fed has always been better connected with the banks and more proactive in extending credit during liquidity crises. When the federal reserve boards were founded, Benjamin Strong was appointed the first governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and continued the practice of providing strong support of the banks during liquidity crises (exe. extending emergency credit).

However, the D.C. fed wanted to centralize power, and reflexively opposed the actions of the New York Fed as a means to acquire this power. Benjamin Strong was an effective leader and was able to resist the encroachment of the D.C. fed. Unfortunately, he died in 1928 on the eve of the stock market crash. Thus, when the crash happened, the D.C. fed was able to assert its authority unopposed and prevent the New York Fed from extending credit to distressed banks at the outset of the crises.

In addition, many banks around the world at this time were trying to strengthen their currencies (the dollar is strong if it can buy relatively more euros, for example). One way to accomplish this is to raise interest rates, because money from foreign countries will rush in to buy the higher-interest rate assets, thus bidding up the price of the dollar. If many central banks in different countries do this at once, the result is no change in the strength of the currencies but large increases in the interest rate in all countries. Many countries were caught up in this game of competing for a strong currency, with the US and France at the forefront (France also had a terrible great depression). Unfortunately, the Fed increases interest rates by buying up bonds, so the Fed was actually reducing the money supply at the outset of the great depression, which is the exact opposite of what should be done.

As for other countries, the UK did not tighten monetary policy after the initial recession like the United States did. They had a relatively brief and less severe recession.

Canada also did not tighten monetary policy. In addition, Canada had fewer, larger banks, whereas the United States had an abundance of small banks. Small banks are less diversified and are more likely to go under during a credit crunch. This is why not many (actually, i don't think any) of the banks in Canada went under. But something like a third of all banks in the United States went bankrupt in the early phases of the great depression. The reason the United States had many small banks was because there were regulations preventing banks from growing very large. I can't remember the details of these regulations, but I believe they prevented banks from operating in multiple states.

TLDR
the great depression probably would have been a minor recession except for the fact that a recently founded federal agency led by naive and power-hungry leadership both failed to extend credit to banks during a liquidity crisis (as banking giants like J.P. Morgan had done in the past) and actively reduced the money supply in pursuit of a strong dollar. In addition, regulations limiting the size of banks made the US financial system more vulnerable to financial shocks.

It sounds like I am blaming government and saying that the Fed should not exist. That is not the case. The Fed can be beneficial if it is run correctly, and the current leadership is much more knowledgeable about how the macro economy works than the leadership was in the past. Criticizing bad regulation is not the same as criticizing regulation. In any case, the Great Depression probably would not have happened if either the Fed didn't exist or the Fed had been properly managed.

“How much power does the media have?” Sounds like a question of measurement, but that’s an oversimplification. This is a question that’s been asked by many social scientists for literally decades, and the research into newer forms of media is ongoing. It’s far too vast a literature to describe in a Reddit comment. I am literally getting a PhD in this and I will never be able to read it all.

But, in short, the media does have an effect of some size on almost everyone because almost everyone consumes media. Most do so for both entertainment and information, and that then influences our attitudes and beliefs, the way we think about social reality (what the society we are in is like even though we will never meet even 1% of the people in it, what our position is in that society and how it relates to other people or groups), which in turn influences our judgements/decisions and behavior choices. There are effects for both entertainment and informational media. It may be different effects for different people or groups, depending on your personality and social identity (or rather, identities). It may be different sizes of effects depending on your personal style of information processing and volume of information, personal or information consumption circumstances, and other forms of information you consume and have access to and use, like interpersonal conversations or direct experience. But effects exist in some size for most people a significant amount of the time.

Media is just a systematic way of distributing or consuming information and stories, usually such that it doesn’t require an in-person transfer anymore. Much of the power of media derives from the power of information and the power of stories. Information and stories existed before media in general and mass media in particular. If you think you are influenced by and use information, then you can be influenced by media.

One common trope used by such researchers is that media do not successfully tell you what to think, but DOES succeed in telling you what to think ABOUT. (This isn’t quite true...sometimes the media can successfully tell you what to think, but it’s much more difficult because people aren’t passive consumers, any more than they are of religion or things told to them by their parents or friends.) Know that trope how “Don’t think of an elephant” doesn’t work because you have to think of the concept of an elephant in the process of consuming the words? And now you are thinking about elephants, positively or hatefully or with boredom but you are still thinking about them. Media effects and media power is more like that.

That said, media effects do not exist in a vacuum and you don’t consume media in a vacuum. They are enhanced or contradicted by your family, your friends and peers, your coworkers and industry, and other elements of your social world in a cycle. Would you say your parents had no effect on the way you think about things and the decisions you make and the way you behave? No. Would you say they have an absolute effect such that you are exactly what they made you and what they intended? Also no. Even if you went against the grain, what they did influenced you specifically enough to reject it. Parenting is powerful, but it’s not determinate. Same for media.

Don’t think of media as brainwashing or copy/paste editing. Thing of it more like the flow of a river you are swimming in. It pulls and pushes you in a particular direction and influences where you end up, but it’s not the only element of the equation in the journey nor the destination. You aren’t totally powerless in the river but you also aren’t in total control, and how much you can influence where you end up compared to an Olympic swimmer compared to a young child or some other person varies.

If you want to know what kinds of effects exist and have been demonstrated, the search term you are looking for is “media effects” or “media impact” and you can look in media psychology, communication, political communication, political science, social psychology and sociology academic disciplines for books and studies.

If you want a place to start, my favorite overview book is “Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research” by Bryant and Oliver. The 3rd edition is here: https://www.amazon.com/Media-Effects-Advances-Theory-Research/dp/0805864504
but you can get a free sample intro on the Kindle version to get an overview of the state of the research at the beginning, and either rent it or search for individual chapters online based on your interest, some of which have been posted for free fair use purposes by their authors. I like agenda setting, priming, framing, and cultivation theory, but there are many more.

Hope that helps.

I really hoped I could avoid that. Instead of freely talking about colonialism, you just intensly focused on my statements and picked on them in a sort of tunnel vision.

>Only a few months ago David Cameron said the British Empire should be celebrated, and public sentiment towards it is generally positive according to some polls.

He also said that he would like to see an asian prime minister in his lifetime. So who knows that rather than nationalistic pride, he just sees the benefit of multiculturalism the colonies have provided for Britain?

>But I suppose in postcolonial studies, this is rare

Let's be honest. It would be a scandal. Academia, especially social "sciences" are somewhat left-influenced, one might say.

>why don't people more readily talk about positive aspects of colonialism?". This isn't a taboo as you describe. Only a few months ago David Cameron said the British Empire should be celebrated, and public sentiment towards it is generally positive according to some polls.

A poll is not a talk. A poll is not a 2 way discussion.
A poll is not adademical discourse.

You already admitted yourself that looking at positive influences of colonialism is rare and there is an effort, so you said yourself, "to correct" previous historical positive sentiments of it, rather than being purely rational.

>https://www.amazon.com/Rhetoric-Empire-Administration-Post-Contemporary-Interventions/dp/0822313170

Thanks, I will take a look at that.

I have some solid copy pasta on this, and am happy to go into more detail on the particulars:

> There is no student loan bubble:

> 1. A bubble is a term with a specific meaning - "Bubbles refer to asset prices that exceed an asset's fundamental value because current owners believe they can resell the asset at an even higher price. ". There is no mechanism for which this can work in the education market.
> 2. The last 30 years have been characterized by a huge increase in the college wage premium. In 1979, a college educated worker made 35% more than an HS graduate on average, by 1999, they would be making 80% more. The Race Between Education and Technology is a great overview of this. A college education is still a really good investment. This isn't because of selection effects - see The Causau Effect of Education on Earnings.
> 3. Virtually no one pays market price for a college education. The financial aid process allows universities to practice almost-perfect price discrimination. They can effectively charge a different price for every student, so that the market just follows the demand curve up until their maximum tuition level.
> 4. The is definitely is a sheepskin effect - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)#A_basic_job-market_signalling_model - for college diplomas. But this is extremely well understood (Spence shared the economics Nobel with Akerlof for signalling theory). I think that separating bright, talented and hard working 18 year olds from bright, talented and lazy 18 year olds is a non-trivial process.
> 5. Tons of articles imply that you don't need higher education, because you can take classes online. If this was the case, why did the university lecture have survived the invention of the printing press? Books reduced the cost to the diffusion of knowledge far more than the internet did, without ending the university system. This implies that there is something else going on to me.

Yes, a lot, for various definitions of "easily accessible".

Let's first assume, you have some kind of academic education or background. In this case, you're like most psych students who would usually start with a text book. I'm not an English speaker, so my experience is limited (and outdated). However, a quick search leads me to suggest:

• Introduction to Psychology (11th Ed.) by James W. Kalat (because of its emphasis on "how do we know")
  
• Psychology: A Concise Introduction by Richard Griggs due to its price.
  
  Of course, textbooks are not what a friend of mine would call "bathtub books". They need to be read with attention and dedication. The advantage is that you get a comprehensive overview. Which might be what you want if you're considering to study psychology.
  
  If you're looking for books that are closer to bookstore bestsellers, the problem is that there's too much one could recommend. Psychology is such a vast field, and most books only pick a few sections (often to sell the author's personal ideas).
  
  Rather than trying to make specific recommendation for every possible topic, here's a very short introduction.
  
  Basically, you can think about psychology as an apartment building with four main stories or floors.
  
  
• The ground floor might be called "methodological". This is where people discuss what methods to use to reach their goals. To some degree people here also discuss what goals to pursue in the first place. Many people who live here may not call themselves psychologists, but statisticians, or philosophers (of science).
  
• The first floor might be called "biological" (in a wider sense). People here discuss two sorts of questions: (a) How does the brain work on a physical and chemical basis? And (b) why is it the way it is, and not some other way? This is the evolutionary (or biological in the more narrow sense) approach. Again, not everybody working here is a psychologist. Some are physicians, others are biologists, still others are anthropologists.
  
• The second floor might be called "personal". Here, people wonder about observations you can make about yourself when you watch yourself thinking. For instance, you know you remember things, so you have a memory. You make decisions, so you need to make judgments. This is the floor where you'll probably find the most people who called themselves psychologists.
  
• The third floor might be called "social". This is where people wonder about the interaction of people, their relationships, and possibly the things that arise because of it, such as friendships, institutions, norms, etc. Generally speaking, you probably find the most diversity here, because this is the floor also inhabited by economists, sociologists, etc.
  
  Now, questions asked on one floor are obviously related to questions on other (lower) floors. People who work in the second floor may emphasize other approaches in the ground floor than people working in the first or third floor.
  
  It's therefore helpful to also imagine that these floors are inhabited by different teams or coalitions of psychologists. Some teams are mostly situated in one or at most two floors. Others have apartments in all floors.
  
  And, of course, the constellation keeps on changing. Some teams who once dominated one or more floors now find themselves with only a couple of apartments, and maybe the closet.
  
  This is what happened to the team called "psychoanalysis" which was founded by people like Freud and Jung. It's probably fair to say that most psychologists today think that their work in the ground floor (the methodological floor) was not quite persuasive. Therefore I would advise against reading books by Freud or Jung, unless you're specifically interested in psychoanalysis, or the history of psychology.
  
  Another team which once dominated the second floor, but mostly lost it again, is called behaviourism. Although their insights and methods are still in use, they stumbled due to a decision made in the ground floor (namely to reduce the second floor to a single apartment called 'behavior'). This turned out to be too cramped for most psychologists, so this aspect is nowadays mostly ignored.
  
  Today, the second floor is mostly dominated and inhabited by cognitive psychology, I'd say. Unless, you have other interests, I recommend this one as a good place to start.
  
  From there, it's easier to explore other floors. Going up to the third floor, for instance, you'll find it mostly dominated by social psychology (as least as far as the building called 'psychology' is concerned). Going down into the first floor, you'll find neuropsychology and evolutionary psychology; the latter still quite young and in some quarters still quite controversial.
  
  That said, my standard recommendation for getting started in cognitive psychology is:
  
  
• The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us by Chabris and Simons.
  
  It's a fast tour through the basic sections of the (cognitive) mind – attention, perception, memory, judgment – and, more importantly, the many ways it goes wrong. Although it probably wasn't written to be a readable and short introduction to cognitive psychology, I think it works quite well as such.
  
  After reading it, you should be able to ask a central and important question: If humans make so many mistakes, how can psychologists (in particular, but also scientists, in general) prevent making these themselves? This basic question brings you straight to the ground floor from which most of psychology's history can be understood.
  
  Hope this helps.

In addition to the fact that it would demobilize that parties activists, like /u/vincentstaples already mentioned, because "single-issue voters" aren't really voting based on a single issue, they are using a single issue as a litmus test for ideology. If that test was taken away they'd just get another one.

According to Lau and Redlawsk (2006), single issue voters don't really care about only one issue. They just use politicians stance on some issue (i.e. abortion, marijuana, gay rights, etc...) as a heuristic for a specific bundle of other preferences. And it's effective too. For example, if I told you, "I am pro-choice," would you be able to reliably guess my opinion on the Affordable Care Act, gerrymandering, medical marijuana, or Kavanaugh's confirmation? You probably could make a pretty accurate guess. That's because my (hypothetical) support for women's choice is associated with my other preferences due to a phenomenon known as partisan conflict extension (Layman and Carsey 2002).

​

For example:

>I am Pro- choice.
>
>Pro-choice people are probably liberal.
>
>Liberals probably think X.
>
>Therefore: If I am pro-choice then I am probably a liberal.
>
>Therefore: If I am a liberal I probably think X.

​

People who are "single-issue" voters are really no less partisan than anyone else. Even "independents" predominantly vote for one party over the other (V.O. Key 1966, Klar 2016). The only difference, according to Lau and Redlawsk, is that single-issue voters use a tiny-amount information in one key area and about only one candidate to determine if that candidate is sufficiently conservative or liberal (Republican or Democrat). Meaning: a Low-information, Low Comparability strategy.

Interestingly, low information voting was more effective at determining the candidate closest to the voters own naive-preferences than "rational-actor" strategy (high information, high comparability) for all but the most politically knowledgeable voters. Lau and Redlawsk suggest this is because voters don't know how to prioritize and process the huge amount of information available to them in the "rational actor" strategy. Voting for your party ID (low information, high comparability) was actually the most effective strategy for choosing the candidate that best matched their net preferences.

So what does this mean to your question? It means that if a party switched positions on, for example, abortion and the Democrats became "pro-life" then "pro-life" would stop being a useful proxy for "Republican" and those single issue voters would just select a different heuristic.

​

Ok, here are my thoughts on some things a country can do to become more equal (which, for all you Neo-liberals out there may just mean equally poor) are:

• aggressive, progressive, redistributive tax policies.
  
  I.e. the rich pay a lot more tax, to bring them down toward the level of the poor, and the poor get paid some form of welfare to bring them up towards the level of the rich. This is the simplest way, but it's a pretty blunt instrument, and has the possibility cause all sorts of economic problems.
  
  
• Subsidised Education
  
  If education determines your ability to earn high wages, and your parents must pay for education, it will be limited to what your parents can afford. By subsidising education (be it primary, secondary or tertiary) governments or other groups can help to narrow the gap between the next generation of rich and poor. It also encourages more social mobility. For a great example of this see Finland's Education System
  
  
• Subsidised Healthcare
  
  If healthcare is subsidised, people are less likely to spend large portions of their income on emergency medical treatments. because healthcare has a pretty much flat rate (you can get better doctors or medicine, but in general, in Western countries, they do the same job) medical expenses are likely to consume a larger proportion of poorer people's wealth. by subsidising healthcare it may mean poorer people can afford more medical treatments, meaning they are sick/injured &c less often, allowing them to work more.
  
  
• Japanese Culture
  
  Japan has remarkably low levels of inequality, between workers and CEOs at least. Some have suggested the reason for this may lie in Japanese culture, where success is a more communal undertaking and failure is personal, as opposed to "Western" ideas where success is personal, and failure is everyone else's fault. Moreover, a culture of ingrained modesty helps promote more equality.
  
  
• A culture focussed on fairness or equality.
  
  In the book Fairness and Freedom David H. Fischer argues that America has a culture focused on Freedom, while New Zealand is focused on fairness. This focus on fairness is suggested to be one of the reasons for New Zealand's commendable history in terms of race-relations, gender equality and social equality. This situation has radically changed since the 'Rogernomics' policies of the 1980's.
  
  
• Ethnic Homogenity
  
  It seems that all the most equal countries (Scandinavia, Japan etc.) are very ethnically homogeneous (Japan has >1% immigrants). while more ethnically diverse countries (the US, Singapore etc) seem to be more unequal. Why this is so, I'm not sure.

In political science most of the literature on vote choice, at least in contexts with stable party systems, builds out of the loyalties people have to political parties. Partisanship creates what the authors of the seminal work The American Voter call a "perceptual screen" which filters information in ways that reinforce these ties. In other words, people first identify with a political party, then interpret the world in ways that support these views (think confirmation bias and motivated reasoning). This identification, moreover, typically [comes from parents](http://press.princeton.edu/titles/654.html] or other early social experiences.

Vote choice and candidate preference then follows from these loyalties. Loyalties to a political party is symbolically and psychologically meaningfully, much like supporting a sports team or adhering to given religious tenets. That's why you'll see people sticking by candidates regardless of information, among many other political phenomena.

See this in the NYTimes for a quick overview.

As someone who majored in economics as an undergrad and who is now studying decision-making/psychology in grad-school, I suggest you focus more on economic philosophy than on traditional intro to econ stuff, like the text books being suggested, which usually focuses on micro and macro models.

I feel this way for two reasons.

1. The of field of economics has not given up on B.F. Skinner-esk behaviorism. Many of the theories about preference, risk, and decision-making are just now starting to accommodate what Psychologists have understood for around 40 years. People are not perfectly rational decision makers. An example of this: It has only been a decade since Daniel Kahnemen won the nobel prize in Economics for Prospect Theory. A theory he devised in the 70's and which is increasingly seen as out of date/incomplete in the psychology literature.
   
   Utility theory was a useful first attempt at understanding how people make decisions, but like many first attempts, it just doesn't hold water 60 years later. Unfortunately economics has not adapted.
   
   Much of this is focused on the micro side, but I can do an equally long rant about how ridiculously out of date metrics like GDP, CPI, etc are in the realm of macro economics.
   
   
2. Learning the models and mechanism won't actually illuminate which side of debate is right or wrong. Economics simply isn't advanced enough to tell us if Keynes, Marx, or Milton Friedman was right. I could go on at length about this, but I feel strongly that none of these theories will ever really be able to undermine the others because they start with the incorrect hypothesis that human behavior can only be predicted by strictly observing people's choices (meaning that the mechanisms driving those choices do not matter) and that people behavioral rationally.
   
   So, with that being said, I suggest a broader approach. Something like The Big Three which details the lives and philosophies of the 3 most influential thinkers in Economics (Smith, Marx, and Keynes)
   
   To further round out you knowledge I would also recommend Vienna & Chicago Which gives a good overview of classical and modern free market economics.
   
   Finally, I recommend Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman and Predictably Irrational, if you are unfamiliar with the work, as a good moderators of the two fields.

Two great books on this very topic, but the short answer is you have the best chance to change someone's mind when they see you as someone "on their side" or in their group/tribe. If they perceive you as someone from the "opposition" then they will get defensive and no amount of convincing, facts, or persuasion is likely to have an impact on their point of view.

The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0052FF7YM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003WEAI4E/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

>Higher minimal wages and the existance of paid parental leave suggests that stuff like Marxism or the chartist movement has been more successful in New Zealand as well.

It was. Or is. New Zealand prioritises justice and fairness while the US prioritises liberty, to grossly over simplify. Fairness and Freedom: A History of Two Open Societies: New Zealand and the United States is a historical analysis of exactly that ideological difference.

>What makes Indonesia and Vietnam and the USA so different from France and NZ?

This will be drifting outside of my areas of study, but one factor would be the differences in political structures that SEA nations were transitioning from. The US had a fairly strong, assured, and internally respected constitutional structure, that would have been resilient to revolution. But various SEA nations were experiencing recent transitions from monarchies of varying degrees of strength and support, or transitioning away from recently departed colonial powers, and were experimenting with various constitutional structures imported from elsewhere. So potential communist revolutions had much weaker states to overthrow, and much more open and receptive ideological ground to plant their ideas in.

Aside: Thailand has some fascinating history on that front, although I can't legally discuss it right now due to being in Thailand and it being illegal to discuss. If you look for books on Thailand's constitutional history and interactions with the rise of communism, you'll find some interesting things.

You can see that difference persisting today, where democracy in SEA states is fragile, and constantly suffering from credibility and legitimacy weaknesses. Authoritarian Rule of Law is a legalistic analysis of how the post colonial Singapore government overcame that weakness of legitimacy by continuing the colonial power's subjugation of the people, and effectively establishing their legitimacy by becoming a quasi self colonial government.

Which are the last two? Assuming capitalist development and codes...

By far the most famous geographer studying global capitalism is David Harvey. He recently wrote The Enigma of Capital which is a pretty easy introduction to his work. I think his Spaces of Global Capitalism is a more useful summation. He's very famous for a few other books, but I think the most important work he's done is in The Limits to Capital. The last one is a tough, meticulous book. Also worth checking out is his protege Neil Smith, either his Uneven Development or for a focus on cities The New Urban Frontier.

There really are not many books that take up housing and building code specifically, though Ben-Joseph's The City of Code is a useful introduction. If you're looking for a good rant (and a reliable one) on how we got to the less-than-stellar spatial arrangements of American cities, James Howard Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere will get your blood pumping. If you're more interested in the cultural politics of place, one of my all time favorites is Landscapes of Privilege by the Duncan's.

It is going to depend upon definition. Within political science, neoliberalism absolutely exists as one of the major branches of IR theory. For the philosophical origins, read Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace, as many of the ideas that Kant discusses helped to form a foundation for later authors. To dig into Neoliberalism itself, the best place to start is with Keohane and Nye's Power & Interdependence and After Hegemony by just Keohane. In the first, they argue effectively that the 9/11 problem (the situation whereby states do not have any higher authority beyond themselves to police one another) is solved by strong international institutions that can take the form of a peacekeeping apparatus, the spread of democracy as democracies don't seem to fight one another, and expanding trade as increased trade between states causes an increased cost going to war (namely, the loss of that trade). These things create structures which allow state behavior to be seen as more consistent and therefore, more easy to calculate and expect behavior. In such a system, states do not have to be as concerned with their survival as Realists would argue. In the second, he argues that these international institutions can eventually take on a life of their own after a hegemon has set them up, as there would be sufficient interest of all states involved in the system to keep it going.

So the ideas of Neoliberalism are clearly there and well established. However, it isn't so much whether these exist as much as whether this theoretical framework is better than its competitors at explaining the international system as we observe it unfolding. Other schools of thought would probably say that neoliberalism is insufficient for explaining all of the international system for one reason or another, just as neoliberalism would defend itself as well as say the others are also insufficient.

Which brings us back to the beginning, what is meant by it existing? It at least exists as a major branch of thought in international relations.

This is a very contested area of economics. I liked this book, though:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Rich-Countries-Poor-Stay/dp/1586486683

It sort of states that the rich countries are ones that set up protectionist policies to support infant industry and subsidized them heavily. Policies that promote free trade for developing countries may end up harming them. Hence, they should follow the development models of the West in using government support to create industry then later open up to free trade.

This is one of those questions that can't be answered mainly due to the implicit statements that need to be examined.

>When I look at the not outright imperalistic motiavations for colonialism I see a lot of direct parallels to modern sentiments of helping less developed countries.

>Given that sentiment and mindset existed back then and was a motivation for colonies, why don't people more readily talk about positive aspects of colonialism?

The first statement - that charitable or altrustic motivations for colonies/colonalism existed - needs to be examined alone. All because someone says they're colonising X country to help them develop, doesn't mean it is necessarily true. The wider public generally needed to be convinced by the political authorities on the merits of empire and so ideas such as White Man's Burden emerged as a result. The Rhetoric of Empire is a good book which looks at this more closely.
https://www.amazon.com/Rhetoric-Empire-Administration-Post-Contemporary-Interventions/dp/0822313170

The second statement - "why don't people more readily talk about positive aspects of colonialism?". This isn't a taboo as you describe. Only a few months ago David Cameron said the British Empire should be celebrated, and public sentiment towards it is generally positive according to some polls. See http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-people-are-proud-of-colonialism-and-the-british-empire-poll-finds-a6821206.html

> I see some educated native africans talk about their colonial past in a positive light and Christopher Hitchens even shared an anecdote about meeting some and discussing their obvious disasterous situation in their country. They answered that they never had the benefit of being a french colony.

Sort of proving going against your initial point. It isn't taboo to speak of the positive aspects of colonialism. But I suppose in postcolonial studies, this is rare, but that is perhaps largely due to what has been a concerted academic effort to introduce a critical and sceptical view of colonialism within Europe, and highlight its faults and problems - which have arguably been glossed over by previous historians and academics.

So the reverse of your statement is in some ways true. It is common to speak about the positive aspects of colonialism, but within academia at least, there has been an effort to consider these claims more closely and critically examine the impact of colonialism and empire.

First off, Okun's law is partly observational (though it can be derived through IS-LM), and because of that it is really only tested for "normal" situations, and there are no completely fixed economies in the real world, even Japan has a certain level of churn even when the aggregates hover around zero. Like most economic theories, the predictions are strongest at the margin.

To address the main question, to a certain extent the answer is implied in the question. When dealing with mathematical (textbook) macro, we simply assume that GDP is equivalent to welfare, because on a micro level it is impossible to aggregate utility. From a theoretical standpoint, assuming GDP growth equal to zero is equivalent to assuming welfare change equal to zero.

Now, from a societal standpoint this becomes more complicated. As mentioned, even when the macroeconomic aggregates are relatively steady the underlying real economy can experience tremendous fluctuations. For example, US inflation over the last few years has been overall rather moderate, even though food prices have risen and technology costs have fallen. Similarly, if Consumption falls by a trillion dollars and Gov't Spending rises by a trillion dollars, it is possible (though not necessary) that this could represent a fairly large decrease in consumer welfare even though the aggregate figure is static.

Further, there are socio-economic reasons to assume that stagnant GDP would hurt welfare. Tyler Cowen theorizes that US economic growth is due for a drastic slowdown in the near to mid term, and that because so many contracts and expectations are based on the idea of continuous economic growth this will cause a great deal of disruption. If we wish away these fairly high transition costs, a society that was organized and expecting zero growth would be so very different from what economic science typically studies that it is hard to say what would happen, though leaning heavily on IS-LM equations seems like a reasonable first estimation of what would occur.

Studies like this one Politico published have shown that Trump supporters share views that align with traditional authoritarian views: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533

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There are a few books and studies that show a correlation between conservative viewpoints and authoritarian viewpoints. This one from Hetherington and Weiler is one of them: https://www.amazon.com/Authoritarianism-Polarization-American-Politics-Hetherington/dp/052171124X In short, American conservatives and authoritarians both value obedience, an adherence to traditional norms in behavior and speech, as well as deference to elders and positions of power. American Democrats, obviously, have a strain of this but are far more likely to value individuality and personal choices at this point.

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I don't, unfortunately, have time to pull psychology studies on the issue (psychology is mostly my area of expertise). These were google searches of existing knowledge, and hopefully acceptable to this sub. If y'all have to pull this post down I'll understand - still new to this.

I would also recommend The Globalization of World Politics as an introductory text to the field. It's an absolutely phenomenal textbook, while summaries you've posted are indeed comprehensive and succinct.

To elaborate, with more comprehensive texts (should the OP choose to read them), IR is a broad field. But specifically regarding International Politics, I would recommend Nye's The Future of Power, as a current perspective on international power (and the fairly recent differentiation in power resources, eg. "hard" and "soft" power). Focusing specifically on International Politics (as opposed to other IR subfields like development), the seminal works for the current theories on international politics include:


Theory of International Politics by Kenneth N. Waltz (1979), which serves as the foundation for structural realist (or neorealist) school. Neorealists are generally split between offensive realists (like Mearsheimer) and defensive realists (Waltz and Walt) as general categorizations, and you can find related works from these scholars for a focused view from either on the issues they disagree upon.

After Hegemony (1984) by Robert Keohane is the neoliberal institutionalist response to Waltz (Power and Interdependence by Keohane & Nye (1977) is probably its founding text), and one of the leading works of the theoretical field itself.

Finally, Social Theory of International Politics by Alexander Wendt (1999) is the comprehensive overview of the social constructivist school.

These largely cover all the major theoretical branches of current International Political theory (without diverging too heavily into IR subfields), though I do emphasize that these classifications are fairly fluid, given the readiness of offensive realists like Mearsheimer to look into the "black box" of domestic politics in the (highly controversial) piece, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. Again, these are the main theoretical works in these respective schools, and it is not necessary for you (the OP) to read through all of them to understand the subject.

While not exclusively International Politics focused, World Systems Theory is highly influential critical theory for IR studies, and understanding it (and Marxist-influenced dependency theory) as well as game theory (Nash Equilibrium etc) are both integral to modern IR methodologies and theories. By in large, Hobbes and the Leviathan (and a bit of Rousseau) is the only political theory that you need to start delving into IR theory, so you should be good on that front.

There are also specialized and diversified IR fields such as Development, Peace and Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights, but those are most likely not necessary given the scope of your conference (by the sounds of it, predominantly focused on state-centric International Politics).

Actually, the development of private property rights is strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly associated with improvement of quality of life for the poor. I have yet to see any data suggesting there is any credible alternative to the market if your interest is a healthy and wealthy society.

On inequality I think Piketty and Piketty and Saez are probably about right, but there isn't that much variation across societies where "ownership of assets" varies. I'm prepared to argue that North Korea might stand as the world's most unequal society however (perhaps asymptotically so?), even though we lack for real data on the subject.

If your interest is in reducing inequality, you should probably be thinking more about taxing the stuff that the rich earn rather than eliminating the social construct of the rich owning stuff.

Not a stupid question at all. You - quite delightfully - observed something many social scientists have been tracking for some time. A common Sociological perspective is that it isn't gender equality pushing women into the economy. Rather, it is the economy pushing women for increased labor equality. The common term for this phenomenon is 'economic determinism' and you may find terms in "Feminist Theories."

In the US after WWII, for example, households had made a lot of money, so there needed to be only one breadwinner. This was in large part, as Piketty's "Capital" describes, because the rest of the world was pretty much devastated. Money for goods and services flowed to the US. Essentially, Americans made a lot of $$ from simple jobs so there needed to be only one income.

When the rest of the world starts catching up and competes with the US, single income wages started declining. This was because international competition drove wages down. Therefore, in order to maintain a certain lifestyle and purchasing power for the people and for businesses to produce more than its competition, the economy required women to have jobs. More people in labor force = increased profits = maintain standard of living.

So what you're seeing is that the economy did not accommodate the new members of the labor force as you wrote. It's the opposite. The labor force is accommodating the economy's needs for more labor participation (caused by global competition). Prices aren't going higher (necessarily) because of increased demand with more streams of income, but the streams of income is a response to declining purchasing power. (Economically speaking, prices of things has actually gone down in the long term! The difference is that our 'purchasing power' has been either stagnant or declining, making things seem more expensive.)

Hope this helps!

Good question. So far I've seen the documentary "Century of the Self" and Bernays' "Propganda," listed, both good sources, though I think the latter will tell you less on why it is effective.

I suggest these reads, some of them are easier to read than others:

• Chomsky and Herman: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
  
  
• Herman and McChesney: The Global Media
  
  
• Chomsky: Media Control and Necessary Illusions
  
  
• Badgikian: The New Media Monopoly
  
  
• I know I keep coming back to him, but Chomsky has a good lecture titled "Propaganda and the Public Mind" if you want to dive into this question immediately.

How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes is a really good primer for macroeconomics and will set you on the right path.

Economics in One Lesson is a great book that will give you a solid theoretical foundation and perspective.

I also recommend anything by Thomas Sowell, such as Basic Economics or Applied Economics.

Fair enough, but I believe the third paragraph is the most easily supported. Just off the top of my head I think OP is citing Neil Smith and his theories on capitalism, urban development etc .http://www.amazon.com/Uneven-Development-Nature-Capital-Production/dp/082033099X

erik s. reinert examined medieval Venice and Renaissance-age Holland in his book "How Rich Countries Got Rich . . . and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor"

According to him, it historically had to do with the synergetic effects spawned by a huge diversity of trades and businesses trying to share the same dense business space. The policy focus was on fostering the business diversity

There's an entire discipline in social science (communication) devoted to answering questions like this, and you're kind of asking to have summarized most of the findings of that discipline, which is a tall order.

I'll start by pointing you to two good overviews of the subfield of media effects, which seems to be what you're getting at.

Jennings & Oliver's Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, Third Edition

https://www.amazon.com/Media-Effects-Advances-Theory-Research/dp/0805864504/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527168732&sr=8-1&keywords=media+effects

Nabi & Oliver's The SAGE Handbook of Media Processes and Effects

https://www.amazon.com/SAGE-Handbook-Media-Processes-Effects/dp/1412959969/ref=sr_1_38?ie=UTF8&qid=1527168732&sr=8-38&keywords=media+effects

This is absolutely brilliant :)

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https://www.amazon.co.uk/Watching-English-Hidden-Rules-Behaviour/dp/0340818867

>The shift in family is causing the suburbs to decline in population.

How is that a bad thing?

> The race and ethnic makeup in America is changing significantly

America has always taken in lots of immigrants. In fact, the native-born share of the population was about the same in 1900 and 2000.

>Student loan debt has destroyed college education

This is completely, absolutely, not true. For the average student, college is not only a great investment, but becoming even more so over time. In 1974, an average college grad made 32% more than a high school grad, in 1999, the difference had risen to 80% (lots in this book, also thanks to jambarama for this nice post which I've borrowed from). Also, here is a good review of attempts to isolate the causal effect of education on earnings. In short, for most people, overwhelming evidence indicates that college is a great inverstment.

>Religion is less popular than ever

Again, how is this a bad thing? Many European countries, especially, are much less religious than the US (example), and they seem to be doing just fine.

>is the American Dream dead?

I don't see what any of these things have to do with the American Dream, or even capitalism.

>What do social scientists think?

I think this narrative is a bunch of fear mongering...

Pikkety is articulate and speaks in a way that a novice can understand and I do think you should read what he has to say. That said, his works also fit a very common narrative that is frequently reinforced here on reddit. Therefore, for an alternate perspective, I would also like to recommend Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. He is also very adept at breaking down complex topics in a way that can be understood.