● One Fair Wage: Ending Subminimum Pay in America
Saru Jayaraman
Summary via publisher (The New Press)
Before the COVID-19 pandemic devastated the country, more than six million people earned their living as tipped workers in the service industry. They served us in cafes and restaurants, they delivered food to our homes, they drove us wherever we wanted to go, and they worked in nail salons for as little as $2.13 an hour—the federal tipped minimum wage since 1991—leaving them with next to nothing to get by. These workers, unsurprisingly, were among the most vulnerable workers during the pandemic. As businesses across the country closed down or drastically scaled back their services, hundreds of thousands lost their jobs. As in many other areas, the pandemic exposed the inadequacies of the nation’s social safety net and minimum-wage standards.

● There’s No Free Lunch: 250 Economic Truths
David L. Bahnsen
Summary via publisher (Simon & Schuster/Post Hill Press)
What David Bahnsen does here is pull from the masters—the great economic voices of the past and the present—to remind readers of the basic economic truths that must serve as our foundation in understanding the challenges of today. In 250 vital points, he combines pearls of wisdom from economic legends with his own careful commentary to provide readers the perspective, information, and reaffirmation they need in order to see economics for what it is. It will empower you and equip you with the truth—250 truths—that are crucially needed to keep the lights on in civilization and advance the cause of human flourishing.

● Crimes Against Nature: capitalism and global heating
Jeff Sparrow
Excerpt via The Guardian
The IMF’s paper simply assumes that, without price signals, people will exterminate whales, with human behaviour determined by rational profit maximisation and nothing else. It treats markets as more natural than nature itself; it considers the ocean’s inability to evolve an adequate pricing measure a failing that benevolent economists must carefully amend.
Such is the profound strangeness of our current moment, a strangeness that often escapes our recognition. If you or I encountered a whale stranded on the beach, we wouldn’t construct a market to reward its potential saviour. We would do our best to push it back into the sea.

● Ultrasocial: The Evolution of Human Nature and the Quest for a Sustainable Future
John M. Gowdy
Summary via publisher (Cambridge U. Press)
Ultrasocial argues that rather than environmental destruction and extreme inequality being due to human nature, they are the result of the adoption of agriculture by our ancestors. Human economy has become an ultrasocial superorganism (similar to an ant or termite colony), with the requirements of superorganism taking precedence over the individuals within it. Human society is now an autonomous, highly integrated network of technologies, institutions, and belief systems dedicated to the expansion of economic production. Recognizing this allows a radically new interpretation of free market and neoliberal ideology which – far from advocating personal freedom – leads to sacrificing the well-being of individuals for the benefit of the global market. Ultrasocial is a fascinating exploration of what this means for the future direction of the humanity: can we forge a better, more egalitarian, and sustainable future by changing this socio-economic – and ultimately destructive – path? Gowdy explores how this might be achieved.

● Flywheels: How Cities Are Creating Their Own Futures
Tom Alberg
Excerpt via GeekWire
The most dynamic way to think about the economic flywheels of Seattle and Silicon Valley is that creative people combined with innovation to beget startups.
Those small startups—including not only Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Facebook but also less famous ones—grew into successful companies that attracted talented people who generated new wealth. Many of those creative types, in turn, came up with innovations and launched new startups such as Netflix, Instagram, Redfin, and Rover—an ever-expanding constellation of companies.
The flywheels kept spinning, faster and faster, such that both regions are now home to hundreds of technology startups—most with names you’ve never heard of—adding millions of dollars to the tax base, alongside their Amazons and Googles.

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