What Kinds of Non-Fiction Books Do I Read?

I've posted a lot about a book I've been reading called 'Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent', but it just occurred to me that I forgot to mention one important thing about this book.

I've been quoting a lot of interesting facts to do with economics and finance, but this book is a sociological study of wealth managers. Brooke Harrington is a sociologist who spent nearly eight years studying wealth managers as a group of people. I'm learning about what these people are like. The same with 'Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence'. It's a sociological study of 50 wealthy New Yorkers.

I've read books on economics too, but to be honest I'm only interested in the way economics affects us as people, as a society and in politics. I don't need to know the nuts and bolts of finance and law to get an overall picture of what's going on. That's what you have experts for. I'm happy to take the word of economists like Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Picketty, Paul Frijter and Cameron Murray. I do try and look at the counter argument and get a sense of what their critics are saying. I don't like to cherry pick economists.

But I feel I've read enough to know where I stand with economics theory, which is I think neo classical economics is outdated, and that we need to experiment with new ways of thinking about economics, and a new model for setting policy (neoliberalism has dominated policy for few decades).

What I'm interested in now is the effects neoliberalism and high inequality have had on us as individuals and a as a society. What we can do about it. A bit of the history of money to put it into context.

I've also read books by authors like Keith Payne (psychologist), Rachel Sherman (sociologist), Brooke Harrington (sociologist), Richard Wilkinson (economic history, epidemiologist), Kate Pickett(epidemiology), David Graeber (anthropologist, economic history).

And a little bit about how we might go about fixing things:

• George Monbiot’s ‘Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis’
•  Kate Raworth’s ‘Doughnut Economics’
• Joseph Stiglitz’s ‘Creating a Learning Society’

I’ve also read a handful of books like ‘The Happiness Industry: How the Governement & Big Business Sold Us Well-Being’, and a few books about medicine, psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry, including Robert Whitakers award-winning ‘Anatomy of an Epidemic’, James Le Fanu’s ‘The Rise & Fall of Modern Medicine’, & Marcia Angell’s ‘The Truth About The Drug Companies’.

I’ve got a great book full of essays on the Trans-Pacific Partnership put together by Jane Kelsey called ‘No Ordinary Deal’, which together with the Australian Fair Trade & Investment Network’s website (aftinet.org.au) is where I learned much of what I know about trade deals.

I’ve read a couple of books about the global financial crisis and what caused that, as well as more local issues, like ‘Game of Mates: How Favours Bleed the Nation’ by Cameron Murray and Paul Frijters, and also a fair bit of material about tax and the property market. In particular I’ve read a fair bit of both sides of the argument about negative gearing, and a bit about property bubbles.

I’ve also been keeping up with any local news about the effects of the property market on renters and the homeless.

I’m interested in how much money we give away to the wealthy, how much tax they evade and how much wealth is being traded away in secret because I’m interested in finding the money to pay for social services, and how truthful claims that social services are a massive burden really are. Turns out there’s plenty of money out there, we’re giving it away to wealthy, connected people and lot of it is doing more harm than good. Furthermore, there’s good evidence that having properly funded social services a happy, healthy population and less income, wealth and social inequality makes for a good, healthy, stable economy.

I’ve read a bit about economics, war, international relations and globalisation:

• Joseph Stiglitz ‘Globalization and it’s Discontents’
• Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler’s ‘War is a Racket’
• John Perkin’s ‘Confession of an Economic Hitman’

A little philosophy, ethics and social commentary by people like Curtis White, Martin Luthor King Jr. and some of the classics.

That should give you a bit of an idea of the general direction my non-fiction reading has been taking me. I've been finding it very therapeutic.