The US Economy

The current state of the US economy is one of my favorite topics. Here’s a few books, all pretty recent, that I’ve found particularly helpful in thinking through what might be going on.

• Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World Graham Allison, Robert D. Blackwill, and Ali Wyne A collection of interview and public-speaking excerpts from Lee Kuan Yew. Worth it for his take on what the US got write (and wrong) over the past few decades.

• Average is Over Tyler Cowen An argument that people in all modern economies will segment into one fo two groups: wealthy tool builders and operators .. and everyone else. It’s a good introduction to the “middle is disappearing” argument, though you’ll probably want more on the topic after reading this. (Good thing you’ve got this list!)

• The Unwinding George Packer Packer profiles a few Americans to show how America’s middle class is unwinding. The argument’s not as normative or moral as it sounds it would be, in part because the character sketches are very well written.

• Think and Grow Rich Napolean Hill A guide to getting rich, from the 1930s, which I discovered through George Packer’s The Unwinding. I found it better as an anthropology of robber-baron America than a financial management guide. The book’s suffused with the confident stain of meritocracy (“work hard enough and the riches will yours.”)

• Coming Apart Charles Murray A look at the cultural and economic “pulling apart” of American whites after World War II. The argument’s pretty blunt, but it’s probably worth reading as an argument strawman.

• The New Venturers John W. Wilson The story of venture capital as it was just getting going — how New Yorkers moved west and the asset class came into its own. Most interesting for its explanation of one of the faster-growing parts of the economy.

• Triumph of the City Edward Glaeser An argument for cities rather than suburbs or rural areas, as vectors for economic development. He’s all about density — more happenstance interaction, more competition that sharpens, more mobility, more needs entrepreneurs can fill. (Most of the US is not very dense.)

• Too Big to Fail Andrew Ross Sorkin A long narrative of the 2008 financial crash and its aftermath; the inside take on conversation feels a little salacious (how’d we end up getting access to Dick Fuld’s phone conversations again?) and the reporting’s quite good.

• Katherine Boo in the New Yorker Katherine Boo (Articles, not a book.) Boo writes long form narratives about the people no one else writes about: small families scrapping by on the Texas-Mexico border; unwed mothers in Oklahoma City; teenagers in Louisiana’s Bayou. It’s some of the most empathy-inducing writing that I know.

• The Age of Edison Ernest Freeburg A comparative look at electrification in the US and Europe. It seems the US electrified faster through stronger state support and less regard for safety precautions during the run up. Interesting frame to use when thinking about modern technology deployment across the US and China.

• The Great A&P Marc Levinson The story of “Walmart before Walmart,” with all its innovation — the first grocery store and supermarket in the US, the first national radio program, the first women’s magazine with recipes, the introduction of private-label items — and the regulation and mismanagement that crippled it.

• Two Lucky People Rose and Milton Friedman An economic history of the United States from the 1930s to the 1980s; also a love story.