Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals by Tyler CowenMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I actually really liked the ideas in this book, but felt like he didn't pursue them enough. They seemed original enough to try to run some studies on (see how different long-term policies worked out, despite the vagaries and randomness of life, vs. short-term policies, and study the effects on wealth plus). If a member of congress always works with a 2-year horizon (until the next election), will long term policies ever be enacted? How often has this hindered long-term wealth in the past?
The idea that we should take the future more into account rings true. He seems to advocate basically getting rid of the discount rate, although I'm sure part of that rate is due to uncertainty. I guess his argument is that, as a society, we shouldn't take that uncertainty into account though.
I enjoyed what seemed like a jab at Piketty, when he states that economic growth is occurring but the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and how this just means that the rich have a higher return on capital than the poor, so in the long-term it makes more sense to invest more in the rich (he sort of hints that Piketty ended up arguing for Trickle-down economics).
Anyway, I think this could have been a definitive sort of book had it gone more into detail, but maybe Cowen just wanted to bring these ideas up and have others debate them.
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