Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

Library Journal Review

In this wide-ranging work, Brockway revisits themes from his earlier work, Eco nomics: What Went Wrong, and Why, and Some Things To Do About It ( LJ 2/1/85). Here his idea that economics is a humanistic discipline is more forcefully expressed and its philosophical underpinnings more deeply explored. In spite of uneven chapters, his message of putting people at the heart of economics comes shining through. This work would be most accessible to readers with a broad background in economics and thus is most appropriate for large university libraries.-- Richard C. Schiming, Mankato State Univ., Minn. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

``Property is not a thing but a bundle of enforceable rights.'' Such is the plain talk and good sense with which Brockway ( Economics ) here attempts to dismantle the ``dismal science'' of economics in favor of his own rubric seeking stable interest and inflation rates with ``free and full employment in a just society.'' Analyzing both the substance and ephemera in banking, real estate, stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies and so on, the author identifies labor as industry's true value base. Competition does not lower prices, especially in banking, he argues convincingly, faulting Federal Reserve interest-rate manipulation to curb inflation, which, he maintains, has the opposite effect. Brockway also denounces federal deregulation that left financial safeguards ``in a shambles,'' tax policies favoring ``all the rich'' and what he sees as ``neo-imperialist'' capital loans and labor exploitation that, according to him, will boomerang against the industrial West. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Most social science disciplines now include a humanistic school of thought, which asserts the need to include moral principles and values in theoretical constructs. Brockway adds to the several recent books outlining a humanistic economics. A regular columnist for the New Leader, he argues for a philosophical rather than a mathematical economics and debunks the notion of "economic man," the hypothetical creature whose actions are motivated by self-interest. Brockway lays the theoretical framework for those seeking alternatives to what some see as the science of greed. ~--David Rouse