The Audiobook
Are the Rich Necessary?
Great Economic Arguments and How They Shape Our World
Or in print: Amazon·Barnes & Noble
Hear the Opening
Chapter One
Ten dollars, left to compound at three percent, doubles every twenty-five years. Carry that out a thousand years and it comes to twice the wealth of the world. So why is anybody still poor? The book opens there, and takes about a minute to get where it is going.
Chapter One
Why Are We Still So Poor?
Most books about economics argue for something. This one argues with itself. Eight questions sit underneath almost every quarrel about money and government, and each is put twice: once as strongly as its supporters would put it, then as strongly as its opponents would.
Teach it flat and teach it round, and then let the reader choose.
Are the rich necessary? Are private profits? Should we accept inequality, or the market's glorifying of greed? Can government protect us from the excesses of the profit system, and can central banks protect us from depressions? Nobody tells you the answers. The last chapters set out four ways of thinking about how people should live together, and leave you to notice which one your own answers have been pointing at all along.
A Library Journal Best Business Book of the Year
“Worth reading aloud on a family vacation.”Gene Epstein, Barron’s
“Lewis . . . presents the arguments both for and against . . . allowing readers to judge for themselves.”David Gordon, The Mises Review
“Pits the likes of Al Sharpton against Milton Friedman. Fair fight.”Jesse Eisinger, Condé Nast Portfolio
“Highly readable . . . [with] punchy . . . argument[s].”Harvard Magazine
However You Want It
Three ways to take the book
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The Audiobook
All twenty-five chapters read aloud. Three hours and fifty-five minutes, and it remembers where you stopped.
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The Complete Text
The whole book as a PDF, free to download and keep. Notes and sources included.
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Eight Questions
Take each question yourself. Hear both sides, pick one, and find at the end which of four social systems you have been agreeing with.
Begin question oneOr own it in print
