Two interesting books
Not what you expect in a book by two Nobel Prize winning economists
Yes, it’s about economics but Good Economics for Hard Times is more focused on how humans treat one another.
A few of my favorite quotes (emphasis added)
“A better conversation must start by acknowledging the deep human desire for dignity and human contact, and to treat it not as a distraction but as a better way to understand each other, and to set ourselves free from what appear to be intractable oppositions.”
On immigration-related fears: “For instance in Italy, the actual share of immigrants in the population is 10 percent, but the average perceived percentage . . . is 26 percent.” The perceived problem is more than 2.5 times the size of the actual “problem.”
“Unsurprisingly, partisanship (defined as the ease with which an observer can infer a congressperson’s party from a single sentence)has exploded in recent decades.” Part of this is because the two parties use different words for what is objectively the same thing: “estate taxes” vs. “death taxes,” for example. (I was flabbergasted that there is a measure to detect someone’s party based upon one sentence!)
Putting dignity into poverty relief
The second also touches on human dignity, but in a very different way. When Helping Hurts – How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor and Yourself is about doing with rather than doing for.
A few quotes I liked (emphasis added)
“If we reduce human beings to being simply physical – as Western thought is prone to do – our poverty alleviation efforts will tend to focus on material solutions.”
“ . . . this lack of freedom to be able to make meaningful choices – to have an ability to affect one’s situation – that is the distinguishing feature of poverty.”
“ . . . the goal is to restore people to a full expression of humanness . . .”
This is all in the context of Christianity and the biblical tenets for helping others. And though they chide do-gooders for imposing their opinions on the poor, they leave room for deciding whether the recipient is “learning the right lessons” from their behavior. This seems suspiciously like imposing one’s opinions.
Even if I disagree with what I am reading, I am glad that people are writing books about this stuff. If you have read a good book, please drop me a line. I love to add to my “To Read” pile.
