Rentier capitalism

According to Karl Marx, capitalism entails maximization of personal profit making activities to get rich. This theory emerged during the industrial revolution in Western Europe and it spread through the world through the philosophies of Karl Marx. It is applicable to many activities in the human life like production where production and distribution of goods and services is done within capitalist societies. The forms of making money or getting rich by private individuals may include merchant…

Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, by David Brooks, is an insightful exploration of societal roles throughout the 20th and 21st century in North America. I believe this book provides a framework to understand how and why standards and class have developed in the way they have and, in my case, allows the reader to draw conclusions regarding their own goals and desires in their private and professional endeavours. The term Bobo is derived from combining the terms…

The process of globalization is so uniquely displayed as Timothy Brooks uses Johannes Vermeer’s painting to illustrate the important events in the seventieth and eighteenth centuries, as well as shed light on the world, causing readers to think in a different manner. He shows that globalization was not simply because of one person, or one group of people, but many different cultures, thoughts, and ideas. Through the use of Vermeer’s paintings, Timothy Brooks discusses the rise of the global…

The article “We Are Not the World” by Greg IP contrast the recent upsurge of nationalism with the philosophy of globalism and the effects of globalization. “Globalization is the global movement into economic, financial, trade and communication integration” (Greg IP 2017). It also looks into the broader interconnected and interdependent world with free trade of capital, goods, and services across nations, but it is limited to the movement of labor making globalization the recent national trends.…

Cavanaugh spends the chapter on the issues of consumerism. He starts by explaining that consumerism is not an issue of attachment to the material world, but rather an issue of detachment, “What really characterizes consumer culture is not attachment to things but detachment. People do not hoard money; they spend it. People do not cling to things; they discard them and buy other things” (Cavanaugh, 34). As we become more and more dependent on manufactured goods and further separated for the labor…

Both “Letter To His Father And Mother” and “Letter to Michael Willingsworth” illuminates important social economic and cultural differences in Puritan and Massachusetts society. “Letter to His Father And Mother” highlights the separation that one feels from the rest of society due to the plantations being far apart and the consequences of such actions, with not as much emphasis placed on societal benefits or rules. Instead, a heavier emphasis is placed on personal profits, with the poor and…

The argument between whether socialism or capitalism is better has been a long-standing debate within the economic community for years. In the article, Capitalism or Socialism? Another Two-Pole Solutions from the “Journal of Global Economics”, Paul Cusack suggests that the best option is somewhere in the middle. He uses the two-pole technique to understand what the best amount of government spending is within an economy. The two-pole technique is a mathematical way of comparing two contrasting…

In Joseph E. Stiglitz's essay Rent Seeking and the Making of an Unequal Society, he talks about inequality and how drastic it has become. Inequality in society was made by the people that benefited from it. The inequality level in America isn't normal compared to other countries and even the past in America it is an unnatural inequality. This is very unusual even in a recession, the economy weakens and wages drop which causes the price of goods to drop. But now even with the wage drop, many…

I H. HAVE-NOTS: GENERAL MEANING The word 'have-not' is specifically used for those human beings who are deliberately denied of the means of livelihood by the those who welter in wealth. The term can be better understood if it is juxtaposed with its antonym, 'have'. Apart from its direct and literal meaning, it has wider connotations. In fact, all human beings are 'haves' and 'have-nots' both in some way or the other. 1. Have-nots: Genesis and Etymological Interpretation - The…

Richard Peet and Elaine Hartwick’s book Theories of Development explains about Development as Modernization in chapter 4. In the beginning of this chapter, Peet and Hartiwick provided history of approaches to modern economic progress through explaining about Naturalism and Rationalism. Herbert Spencer clarified about Naturalism which is if there were great environments, these were able to create increased economic and make better politics and well supported societies. Also, they explained about…