Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction -- Richard Arkwright -- Henry Ford -- Steve Jobs -- Machine Learning -- Plan of the Book -- 2 Prelude: Manchester -- The Factory as a Mechanical Monster -- The Immiserization of the Working Class -- The Threat of Revolution -- A Truncated Franchise -- 3 The Golden Age: Detroit -- The Technology of Mass Production -- The Affluent Worker -- Falling Inequality -- The End of Ideology -- Consolidating Democracy in Europe -- Catch-All Parties -- 4 Transformation: Silicon Valley -- The Power of Information and Computation -- Computer Algorithms and the Evolution of Employment -- Globalization 2.0 -- Wage Polarization -- The Employment-Equality Dilemma -- Alternative Explanations -- 5 Dire Straits -- Disaffected Democracies -- The Stability of Mainstream Parties -- Politics Unhinged -- 6 Robots vs. Democracy? -- Some Guidelines for a Prognosis -- Democracy in the West -- Democracy in the Rest -- Responding to Automation -- A Reversal of Fortunes? -- Notes -- References -- Index.

"The fundamental question of political theory, one which precedes all other questions about the nature of political life, is why there is a state at all. Is human cooperation feasible without a political authority enforcing it? Or do we need a state to live together? This question also reveals two further problems. If a state is necessary to establish order, how (and when) does it come into place? If it isn't necessary, what are the consequences for the political status and economic welfare of its citizens? Combining a wealth of ethnographical materials, historical cases, and statistical analysis, this book describes the foundations of stateless societies, why and how states emerge, and the basis of political obligation. This book models the economic and political roots of inequality, describes the causes of the stagnation of the preindustrial world, and explores what led to the West's prosperity of the past two centuries"..

Given the increased openness of countries to international trade and financial flows, the general public and the scholarly literature have grown skeptical about the capacity of policy-makers to affect economic performance. Challenging this view, Political Parties, Growth, and Equality shows that the increasingly interdependent world economy and recent technological shocks have actually exacerbated the dilemmas faced by governments in choosing among various policy objectives, such as generating jobs and reducing income inequality, thereby granting political parties and electoral politics a fundamental and growing role in the economy. To make growth and equality compatible, social democrats employ the public sector to raise the productivity of capital and labor. By contrast, conservatives rely on the private provision of investment. Based on analysis of the economic policies of all OECD countries since the 1960s and in-depth examination of Britain and Spain in the 1980s, this book offers a new understanding of how contemporary democracies work