Pragmatic Liberalism

Pragmatic Liberalism
Author: A. Hunter
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2007-04-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 023060305X

This book analyzes the problems of U.S. politics and public policy and proposes a solution rooted in a deep American consensus that often goes unrecognized. The authors critique three dominant ideological perspectives - conservative, radical, and liberal - and propose a fourth eclectic 'outcomes' perspective rooted in American pragmatism.

Free Market Conservatism

Free Market Conservatism
Author: Edward Nell
Publisher:
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2009-09-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0415567157

First published in 1984, this book carefully dissects and convincingly demonstrates that conservative economics is incoherent in theory and disastrous in practice. The three main schools of thought supporting "free-market" policies âe" supply side economics, monetarism and rational expectations âe" are examined in turn and each is found defective. Three case studies of conservative policy in action follow: Reaganâe(tm)s U.S., Thatcherâe(tm)s U.K. and Pinochetâe(tm)s Chile and their courses are charted in depth. In addition, Robert Heilbroner and Edward Nell analyse economic conservatismâe(tm)s ideology and social policy, and the book concludes with an assessment of the political reasons for the continuing appeal of free-market conservatism despite its theoretical incoherence and practical failure. This is a careful and comprehensive look at this subject which tackles both the theory and the practice head-on. It will make useful and stimulating reading for students of economics and political economy on courses of economic policy and macro-economics and in addition will be of keen interest to all those involved in the debate about one of the major policy issues of our time.

Free Market Conservatism (Routledge Revivals)

Free Market Conservatism (Routledge Revivals)
Author: Edward Nell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2009-10-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1135162840

First published in 1984, this book carefully dissects and convincingly demonstrates that conservative economics is incoherent in theory and disastrous in practice. The three main schools of thought supporting "free-market" policies – supply side economics, monetarism and rational expectations – are examined in turn and each is found defective. Three case studies of conservative policy in action follow: Reagan’s U.S., Thatcher’s U.K. and Pinochet’s Chile and their courses are charted in depth. In addition, Robert Heilbroner and Edward Nell analyse economic conservatism’s ideology and social policy, and the book concludes with an assessment of the political reasons for the continuing appeal of free-market conservatism despite its theoretical incoherence and practical failure. This is a careful and comprehensive look at this subject which tackles both the theory and the practice head-on. It will make useful and stimulating reading for students of economics and political economy on courses of economic policy and macro-economics and in addition will be of keen interest to all those involved in the debate about one of the major policy issues of our time.

Conservatives Against Capitalism

Conservatives Against Capitalism
Author: Peter Kolozi
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2017-08-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231544618

Few beliefs seem more fundamental to American conservatism than faith in the free market. Yet throughout American history, many of the major conservative intellectual and political figures have harbored deep misgivings about the unfettered market and its disruption of traditional values, hierarchies, and communities. In Conservatives Against Capitalism, Peter Kolozi traces the history of conservative skepticism about the influence of capitalism on politics, culture, and society. Kolozi discusses conservative critiques of capitalism—from its threat to the Southern way of life to its emasculating effects on American society to the dangers of free trade—considering the positions of a wide-ranging set of individuals, including John Calhoun, Theodore Roosevelt, Russell Kirk, Irving Kristol, and Patrick J. Buchanan. He examines the ways in which conservative thought went from outright opposition to capitalism to more muted critiques, ultimately reconciling itself to the workings and ethos of the market. By analyzing the unaddressed historical and present-day tensions between capitalism and conservative values, Kolozi shows that figures regarded as iconoclasts belong to a coherent tradition, and he creates a vital new understanding of the American conservative pantheon.

The Predator State

The Predator State
Author: James Galbraith
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2008-08-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 141656683X

A progressive economist challenges popular conservative-minded economic practices, in a scathing critique of Reagan-Bush policies that contends that the political right is misrepresenting the consequences of free-market and free-trade ideals. 50,000 first printing.

Family Values

Family Values
Author: Melinda Cooper
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2017-02-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 194213004X

Why was the discourse of family values so pivotal to the conservative and free-market revolution of the 1980s and why has it continued to exert such a profound influence on American political life? Why have free-market neoliberals so often made common cause with social conservatives on the question of family, despite their differences on all other issues? In this book, Melinda Cooper challenges the idea that neoliberalism privileges atomized individualism over familial solidarities, and contractual freedom over inherited status. Delving into the history of the American poor laws, she shows how the liberal ethos of personal responsibility was always undergirded by a wider imperative of family responsibility and how this investment in kinship obligations recurrently facilitated the working relationship between free-market liberals and social conservatives. Neoliberalism, she argues, must be understood as an effort to revive and extend the poor law tradition in the contemporary idiom of household debt. As neoliberal policymakers imposed cuts to health, education, and welfare budgets, they simultaneously identified the family as a wholesale alternative to the twentieth-century welfare state. And as the responsibility for deficit spending shifted from the state to the household, the private debt obligations of family were defined as foundational to socio-economic order. Despite their differences, neoliberals and social conservatives were in agreement that the bonds of family needed to be encouraged — and at the limit enforced — as a necessary counterpart to market freedom. In a series of case studies ranging from Clinton’s welfare reform to the AIDS epidemic, and from same-sex marriage to the student loan crisis, Cooper explores the key policy contributions made by neoliberal economists and legal theorists. Only by restoring the question of family to its central place in the neoliberal project, she argues, can we make sense of the defining political alliance of our times, that between free-market economics and social conservatism.

Defending the Free Market

Defending the Free Market
Author: Robert Sirico
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2012-05-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1596988118

Thirty years ago, the economic system of the Soviet empire—socialism—seemed definitively discredited. Today, the most popular figures in the Democratic Party embrace it, while the shapers of public opinion treat capitalism as morally indefensible. Is there a moral case for capitalism? Consumerism is an appalling spectacle. Free markets may be efficient, but are they fair? Aren’t there some things that we can’t afford to leave to the vicissitudes of the market? Robert Sirico, a onetime leftist, shows how a free economy—including private property, legally enforceable contracts, and prices and interest rates freely agreed to by the parties to a transaction—is the best way to meet society’s material needs. In fact, the free market has lifted millions out of dire poverty—far more people than state welfare or private charity has ever rescued from want. But efficiency isn’t its only virtue. Economic freedom is indispensable for the other freedoms we prize. And it’s not true that it makes things more important than people—just the reverse. Only if we have economic rights can we protect ourselves from government encroachment into the most private areas of our lives—including our consciences. Defending the Free Market is a powerful vindication of capitalism and a timely warning for a generation flirting with disaster.

Why Conservatives Should Support the Free Market

Why Conservatives Should Support the Free Market
Author: Hannes H. Gissurarson
Publisher: New Direction
Total Pages: 35
Release: 2018-10-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

In the report, the author first briefly discusses the ideas of Burke, Hume and Menger, moving on to Hayek and his ambivalent attitude towards conservatism and then turning to the ideas and arguments of two conservative British philosophers, Michael Oakeshott and Sir Roger Scruton. In the chapters that follow, he analyses the most relevant conservative objections to economic liberalism and try to show how they can be met, and accommodated, by conservative liberalism. The main conclusion of this study is that it is perfectly coherent to be both a social conservative, in favour of stability, family values and patriotism, and an economic liberal, supporting free trade and the market process.

The Great Persuasion

The Great Persuasion
Author: Angus Burgin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2012-10-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674067436

Just as economists struggle today to justify the free market after the global economic crisis, an earlier generation revisited their worldview after the Great Depression. In this intellectual history of that project, Burgin traces the evolution of postwar economic thought in order to reconsider the most basic assumptions of a market-centered world.

Free Market Fairness

Free Market Fairness
Author: John Tomasi
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2013-05-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691158142

A provocative new vision of free market capitalism that achieves liberal ends by libertarian means Can libertarians care about social justice? In Free Market Fairness, John Tomasi argues that they can and should. Drawing simultaneously on moral insights from defenders of economic liberty such as F. A. Hayek and advocates of social justice such as John Rawls, Tomasi presents a new theory of liberal justice. This theory, free market fairness, is committed to both limited government and the material betterment of the poor. Unlike traditional libertarians, Tomasi argues that property rights are best defended not in terms of self-ownership or economic efficiency but as requirements of democratic legitimacy. At the same time, he encourages egalitarians concerned about social justice to listen more sympathetically to the claims ordinary citizens make about the importance of private economic liberty in their daily lives. In place of the familiar social democratic interpretations of social justice, Tomasi offers a "market democratic" conception of social justice: free market fairness. Tomasi argues that free market fairness, with its twin commitment to economic liberty and a fair distribution of goods and opportunities, is a morally superior account of liberal justice. Free market fairness is also a distinctively American ideal. It extends the notion, prominent in America's founding period, that protection of property and promotion of real opportunity are indivisible goals. Indeed, according to Tomasi, free market fairness is social justice, American style. Provocative and vigorously argued, Free Market Fairness offers a bold new way of thinking about politics, economics, and justice—one that will challenge readers on both the left and right.