or, How Capitalism Works--and How It Fails
Paperback, 224 pages
Published May 21, 2019 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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 …
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.
A clever non-technical left-wing survey of all of economics that is written as if addressed to the author's daughter.
Explains economics through stories, often Greek myths but also more contemporary ideas such as the movie The Matrix.
Debunks classical and neo-liberal economics and makes suggestions as to how we can arrive at a more democratic economics.
When his daughter asked him why inequality exists, the ex-finance minister of Greece wrote this book to explain the basics of the economy. It's important to have a grasp of what the news means when it talks about the economy and this was a great introduction. It covers the history of money and capitalism, and has plenty of literary and pop-culture examples.
A clear, honest, and insightful analysis and critique of how capitalism works (and how it fails), and what we've allowed it to do to the rest of culture, and to the world in general.
Varoufakis was Minister of Finance for Greece during part of the fleecing and gutting of that country by the global banks; but he doesn't fulminate, he doesn't go into jargony financial detail or any specific condemnation of who did what to the country. Instead he talks in clear general terms, with specific but not gossipy examples, of the general facts about capitalism and how it functions now in the world. His tone is simple without being at all condescending, and clear without oversimplifying.
Highly recommended.
