Innovation And Inequality

Capitalism is under attack. Defenders say that capitalism has raised billions of people from poverty. But a central activity of capitalism today, Wall Street style, is speculation (gambling), using other people’s money, and privatizing the profits while socializing the debts. Skeptics argue that capitalism has redistributed the wealth of the planet in favor of a very few, meanwhile leaving the planet in bad shape and leaving billions of people out in the cold. Wealth is now extremely mal-distributed, opportunity is far from equal, and upward social mobility has declined significantly in recent decades. This book reviews the evidence and arguments pro and con in considerable detail.

China’s efforts in searching for new sources of growth are increasingly pressing given the persistence of the growth slowdown in recent years. This year’s book elucidates key present macroeconomic challenges facing China’s economy in 2017, and the impacts and readiness of human capital, innovation and technological change in affecting the development of China’s economy.