Employers' Economics versus Employees' Economy: How Adam Smith's Legacy Obscures Public Investment in the Private Sector

by John F. M. McDermott

Overview

This book argues that economic activity in the public sphere now underwrites private corporations, and rejects rigid adherence to traditional economic theories that no longer apply. Adam Smith's widely used "merchant's model" assumes that most investment is private, when in fact research demonstrates that public investment in the workforce through education and training far outweighs the private sector, and does not account for the growing presence of consensual pricing, the diversification of modern businesses, or the increasing internal authoritarianism of globalizing companies. With de facto public support for these adaptations undermining the universally presumed economic model, private corporations are able to increase their profits while misrepresenting the investment of their own global labor forces. This book suggests an "economy of laws" solution that balances the needed degree of central investment planning with the continuation of our pluralist economy of largely autonomous firms, principally by extending the full rights of citizens into the workplace itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783319501482
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	01/24/2017
Edition description:	1st ed. 2017
Pages:	191
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

John F. M. McDermott is Professor Emeritus of the State University of New York. He is the author of four previous books, two of them on economics: Corporate Society (1991) and Economics in Real Time (2004).

Table of Contents

1. We Invest More Than They!
2. The Paradoxes of Market Economics
3. Economics and Mis-Mathematics
4. Cornucopia, Inc.
5. From Employees to Servants
6. A Reformed Economic Science and Economic Reform