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Book Synopsis
There's little doubt that most humans today are better off than their forebears. Stunningly so, the economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey argues in the concluding volume of her trilogy celebrating the oft-derided virtues of the bourgeoisie. The poorest of humanity, McCloskey shows, will soon be joining the comparative riches of Japan and Sweden and Botswana. Why? Most economists from Adam Smith and Karl Marx to Thomas Piketty say the Great Enrichment since 1800 came from accumulated capital. McCloskey disagrees, fiercely. Our riches, she argues, were made not by piling brick on brick, bank balance on bank balance, but by piling idea on idea. Capital was necessary, but so was the presence of oxygen. It was ideas, not matter, that drove trade-tested betterment. Nor were institutions the drivers. The World Bank orthodoxy of add institutions and stir doesn't work, and didn't. McCloskey builds a powerful case for the initiating role of ideas ideas for electric motors and free elections,

Bourgeois Equality

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    A Paperback / softback by Deirdre N. McCloskey

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      Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
      Publication Date: Publication Date: 13/10/2017
      ISBN13: 9780226527932, 978-0226527932
      ISBN10: 022652793X
      Also in:
      Political science and theory

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      There's little doubt that most humans today are better off than their forebears. Stunningly so, the economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey argues in the concluding volume of her trilogy celebrating the oft-derided virtues of the bourgeoisie. The poorest of humanity, McCloskey shows, will soon be joining the comparative riches of Japan and Sweden and Botswana. Why? Most economists from Adam Smith and Karl Marx to Thomas Piketty say the Great Enrichment since 1800 came from accumulated capital. McCloskey disagrees, fiercely. Our riches, she argues, were made not by piling brick on brick, bank balance on bank balance, but by piling idea on idea. Capital was necessary, but so was the presence of oxygen. It was ideas, not matter, that drove trade-tested betterment. Nor were institutions the drivers. The World Bank orthodoxy of add institutions and stir doesn't work, and didn't. McCloskey builds a powerful case for the initiating role of ideas ideas for electric motors and free elections,

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