Ask Dr. Dollar: Essays on Economic Power, Inequality, and Climate Change (1st edition)

By Arthur MacEwan

Over the last 25 years, Arthur MacEwan (a.k.a. “Dr. Dollar”) has provided Dollars & Sense readers with analyses, information, and arguments about the U.S. and world economies to better equip them to bring about progressive social change. This effort, embodied in the articles in this book, represents what has been the mission of Dollars & Sense, the leading magazine of popular economics, since its founding in 1974. The well-researched, clearly written articles in this book provide highly accessible analysis of a range of issues, including tax and financial policies, inequality, and the environment and climate change, as well as the global economy, finance, and education.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part One

• Chapter 1—Economic Foundations
  • 1.1 Everything Is Connected to Everything Else
  • 1.2 Does U.S. Prosperity Depend on Exploitation?
  • 1.3 Will Artificial Intelligence Mean Massive Job Loss?
  • 1.4 Inequality, Power, and Ideology: Getting it Right About the Causes of the Current Economic Crisis
  • 1.5 Are We Stuck in a Period of Economic Stagnation?
  • 1.6 Why the Loss of Manufacturing Jobs?
    
    
• Chapter 2—Policy Issues
  • 2.1 How Important Is Citizens United?
  • 2.2 Are Governments Economically Stupid in Failing to Suspend Patent Protections for Vaccines?
  • 2.3 Corporate Taxes: Less, Less, and Less
  • 2.4 Do Low Taxes on Dividends and Capital Gains Encourage Economic Growth?
  • 2.5 Is There Any Evidence for “Trickle-Down”?
  • 2.6 Why Do They Oppose More Stimulus?
  • 2.7 What Are the Effects of a $15 per Hour Minimum Wage?
  • 2.8 Eminent Domain and the Keystone XL Pipeline
    
    
• Chapter 3—Inequality
  • 3.1 Power, Wages, and Inequality: All in a Government Report!
  • 3.2 Are Taxes the Best Way of Dealing with Inequality?
  • 3.3 Black-White Income Differences: What’s Happened?
  • 3.4 Unions and Economic Performance
  • 3.5 Why CEO Salaries Skyrocket
  • 3.6 What’s Wrong with Inequality?
    
    
• Chapter 4—The Global Economy
  • 4.1 What Would a Progressive Trade Policy Look Like?
  • 4.2 Is It Oil?: The Issue Revisited
  • 4.3 Do Trade Agreements Foreclose Progressive Policy?
  • 4.4 Does Globalization Inevitably Lead to Low Wages and Job Loss?
  • 4.5 Local, or Far Away?
  • 4.6 Puerto Rico’s Colonial Economy
  • 4.7 Neoliberalism and Infant Mortality
  • 4.8 Who Benefited from Growth in East Asia?
    
    
• Chapter 5—The Environment and Climate Change
  • 5.1 Growth, Growth, Growth: What Will Happen?
  • 5.2 Is Economic Growth Environmentally Sustainable?
  • 5.3 Climate Change, Social Justice, and the Green New Deal
  • 5.4 Is a Rapid Green-Energy Switch Prohibitively Costly?
  • 5.5 Reducing Greenhouse Gases
  • 5.6 Jobs vs. Environment?
    
    
• Chapter 6—Finance
  • 6.1 Financialization and Inequality
  • 6.2 The Greed Fallacy
  • 6.3 Is “Short-Selling” Bad for the Economy?
  • 6.4 Stock Buybacks: Any Positive Outcome?
  • 6.5 The Fed and the “International Banking Conspiracy”
• Chapter 7—Education
  • 7.1 Education: Not Just “Human Capital”
  • 7.2 Why Is Student Debt Cancelation Such a Big Deal?
  • 7.3 Has Neoliberalism Underfunded Schools?

Part Two

• Chapter 8—Five Essays on Equality, Democracy, and Globalization
  • 8.1 An End in Itself and a Means to Good Ends: Why Income Equality Is Important
  • 8.2 Neoliberalism and Democracy
  • 8.3 The Wealth-Power Connection
  • 8.4 Property: Who Has a Right to What and Why?
  • 8.5 What Is Globalization?

Edition: 1st
Date of publication: April 2023
ISBN: 978-1-939402-64-6
Pages: 209
Price: $23.50