The Pricing of Progress

The Pricing of Progress
Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Total Pages : 365
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780674982543
ISBN-13 : 0674982541
Rating : 4/5 (541 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Pricing of Progress by : Eli Cook

Download or read book The Pricing of Progress written by Eli Cook and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did Americans come to quantify their society’s progress and well-being in units of money? In today’s GDP-run world, prices are the standard measure of not only our goods and commodities but our environment, our communities, our nation, even our self-worth. The Pricing of Progress traces the long history of how and why we moderns adopted the monetizing values and valuations of capitalism as an indicator of human prosperity while losing sight of earlier social and moral metrics that did not put a price on everyday life. Eli Cook roots the rise of economic indicators in the emergence of modern capitalism and the contested history of English enclosure, Caribbean slavery, American industrialization, economic thought, and corporate power. He explores how the maximization of market production became the chief objective of American economic and social policy. We see how distinctly capitalist quantification techniques used to manage or invest in railroad corporations, textile factories, real estate holdings, or cotton plantations escaped the confines of the business world and seeped into every nook and cranny of society. As economic elites quantified the nation as a for-profit, capitalized investment, the progress of its inhabitants, free or enslaved, came to be valued according to their moneymaking abilities. Today as in the nineteenth century, political struggles rage over who gets to determine the statistical yardsticks used to gauge the “health” of our economy and nation. The Pricing of Progress helps us grasp the limits and dangers of entrusting economic indicators to measure social welfare and moral goals.


The Pricing of Progress Related Books

The Pricing of Progress
Language: en
Pages: 365
Authors: Eli Cook
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-09-25 - Publisher: Harvard University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How did Americans come to quantify their society’s progress and well-being in units of money? In today’s GDP-run world, prices are the standard measure of n
The Significance of the Frontier in American History
Language: en
Pages: 32
Authors: Frederick Jackson Turner
Categories: Travel
Type: BOOK - Published: 2014-02-13 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

2014 Reprint of 1894 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition. The "Frontier Thesis" or "Turner Thesis," is the argument advanced by historian Frederick
Re-Union
Language: en
Pages: 263
Authors: David Madland
Categories: Political Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2021-05-15 - Publisher: Cornell University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Re-Union, David Madland explores how labor unions are essential to all workers. Yet, union systems are badly flawed and in need of rapid changes for reform.
Demolition Means Progress
Language: en
Pages: 399
Authors: Andrew R. Highsmith
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2016-12-30 - Publisher: University of Chicago Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Flint, Michigan, is widely seen as Detroit s Detroit: the perfect embodiment of a ruined industrial economy and a shattered American dream. In this deeply resea
The Shriver Report
Language: en
Pages: 685
Authors: Maria Shriver
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2014-01-11 - Publisher: Rosetta Books

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Facts, figures, and essays on women and poverty by Barbara Ehrenreich, Kirsten Gillibrand, LeBron James, and other high-profile contributors. Fifty years after