Books like The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton

An introduction to free-market economics.

Today's most widely read economist challenges America to reclaim the values that made it great. Here he studies the past eighty years of American history, from the reforms that tamed the harsh inequality of the Gilded Age to the unraveling of that achievement and the reemergence of immense economic and political inequality since the 1970s. Seeking to understand both what happened to middle-class America and what it will take to achieve a "new New Deal," Krugman has woven together a nuanced account of three generations of history with sharp political, social, and economic analysis. This book, written with Krugman's trademark ability to explain complex issues simply, may transform the debate about American social policy.--From publisher description.

"Federal entitlement programs are strewn throughout the pages of U.S. history, springing from the noble purpose of assisting people who are destitute through no fault of their own. Yet as federal entitlement programs have grown, so too have their inefficiency and their cost. Neither tax revenues nor revenues generated by the national economy have been able to keep pace with their rising growth, bringing the national debt to a record peace-time level. The High Cost of Good Intentions is the first comprehensive history of these federal entitlement programs. Combining economics, history, political science, and law, John F. Cogan reveals how the creation of entitlements brings forth a steady march of liberalizing forces that cause entitlement programs to expand. In this process--as visible in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as in the present day--each benefit expansion establishes a new base for future expansions and the entitlement ultimately spreads to a point where the program's original noble purposes are no longer recognizable. His work provides a unifying explanation for the evolutionary path that nearly all federal entitlement programs have followed over the past two hundred years, tracing both their shared past and the financial risks they pose for future generations"--Jacket flap.

This classic study chronicles the revolution in fiscal policy that occurred in the United States between the administrations of Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy. Unforeseen by any economist or school of economists, this period witnessed the doctrine of balancing the budget give way to the principle of managing government expenditures and taxes to ensure stability and growth. With his characteristic wit and authority, the author vividly relates how the thinking and decisions of the leading participants interacted with changing conditions, objectives, and experience to produce this major change of policy. Kenneth Boulding said that this is the "kind of book that is all too rare" - "well-written and beautifully documented.". In addition to the complete text of the original 1969 edition, this volume includes a new introduction by the author covering the past twenty years (studied in greater detail in his Presidential Economics: The Making of Economic Policy from Roosevelt to Reagan and Beyond).

Against the Dead Hand explores how the legacy of central planning still shapes today’s global economy, offering a fresh analysis of the political and economic forces driving globalization.