Description
Winner of the Best Achievement Award in the 2016-7 PEOPLE’S BOOK PRIZE COLLECTION
Rent Unmasked explores the new economic paradigm that policy-makers need to solve global problems in the post-2008 era. With conventional economic theories discredited, the new model must equip governments with tools to re-stabilise societies in a dangerous world. Rent Unmasked explains why one paradigm only qualifies to serve this purpose: the dynamic model that reinstates time and space in economic theorising.
The Flat Earth economics of the neo-classical school is analysed by the 13 contributors to this volume, which honours the seminal role played by Mason Gaffney, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of California (Riverside), in exposing the way in which classical economics was debased to serve rent-seeking interests.
In a world divided by dangerously misleading theories of governance, Rent Unmasked recovers the concepts that integrate macro-economics with the common good; interrogates the interface between private incomes and public revenue; and identifies strategies for lifting the stalled global economy out of the low-growth straightjacket that is blocking the rise of real wages and capital formation to levels that deliver sustainable growth.
The authors are drawn from the legal and property professions and from universities around the world. They evaluate the key contributions from Mason Gaffney, the Ultimate Heterodox economist, and they apply the new insights to current challenges. The issues confronted in Rent Unmasked range from corporate tax evasion to the rise of irrational forces within democratic societies; the housing crisis to the fractured politics of the Eurozone; the misdemeanours in the banking sector to the way in which financial policies must be framed if economics is to be harmonised with ethics. The social science branded as “dismal” because of the ideological prejudices of past exponents is shown to be empowering for problem-solvers in the 21st century.
Mason Gaffney is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of California (Riverside). His recent books are The Mason Gaffney Reader (2013) and After the Crash: Designing a Depression-Free Economy (2009). He has written extensively on resource economics, urban economics, tax policy and capital theory.
______________________________________________
Contributors
For contributor details visit this page.
______________________________________________
Reviews
Read the Blog post celebrating Fred’s Best Achievement Award (including video).
“An inveterate optimist [who] makes an excellent case that, by applying the Henry George principle, we can reduce inequality, and raise ample public revenues to be directed at any one of a multitude of society’s ills”.
Joseph Stiglitz
“Each contributor to this volume offers a unique view of the issues in economic theory and social organization analysed by Mason Gaffney during his long career.”
Edward J. Dodson, International Journal of Environmental Studies
“Rent Unmasked is a tour de force, skilfully demonstrating that Georgist analysis can be presented in a form acceptable to modern economists … the clear exposition of the merits of collecting land and natural resource rents whilst reducing or eliminating taxes on income earned by labour and capital is strongly recommended to all who wish to see economics recover its rightful place as the master social science.”
Brian Hodgkinson, American Journal of Economics and Sociology
Praise for Rent Unmasked by voters in The People’s Book Prize:
“If only the wisdom contained in these essays and in Mason Gaffney’s own writings will find their way into the public dialogue over economic policy the future would be much brighter than it is likely to be.”
“As world economies descend into a hopeless quagmire, the most obvious measure of the failure of modern economics is the extent to which we now allow publicly-generated land rent to be privately capitalised into ever higher land prices (and bubbles) at a clear cost to wages, earned profits and social health.”
“If you want to know how to cure the economic ills that produce vast inequalities, this is the book to buy. A thorough assessment of today’s economic system, written for the layman.”
