Everything Has a Price
Cover of Everything Has a Price 05: The World Today

Everything Has a Price, Book 5 of 5

The World Today

The State, the Economy, and the Twenty-First Century

Every headline about rates, taxes or debt is the end of a story. This book tells the beginning.

The economy you hear about in the news: what the state does when it raises rates, taxes, or borrows, why some countries prosper and others do not, and the forces rewriting the rules in this century.

Read Chapter 1 freeComing soon to Amazon

Or all five books in one Kindle ebook, one by one $24.95 now $9.99: The Complete Series (on Amazon from November 15).

New to the series? It stands on its own, but it starts with Book 1, Foundations.

The story inside

  1. Part 1The State and the Economy

    A government raises the tax on phone companies, and three months later the phone bill goes up: who really paid? In 2021 alone Google paid more than $26 billion to come preinstalled, and a federal judge answered with a law from 1890. In September 2022 British pension funds, holding a byword for safety, faced cash demands they could not meet. And in 1902 Hanoi paid a bounty for every rat tail, until tailless rats were running through the city.

  2. Part 2The Twenty-First-Century Economy

    Then the questions that are still open. Finland gave 2,000 unemployed people 560 euros a month with no conditions, even if they found work. South Korea’s fertility rate fell to 0.72 children per woman in 2023. In 1932 a small Austrian town issued money that lost value every month. And in 2018 Sweden, the most advanced country in the world in digital payments, asked its parliament to make banks keep providing cash. Why?

Read Chapter 1 free

17%

One finding from this book

of the votes at the IMF belong to the United States. Big decisions need 85%, so no fundamental change can pass without it.

International Monetary Fund, Articles of Agreement

Full contents

See all 20 chapters in 2 parts

  1. Part 1: The State and the Economy

    1. The money lever
    2. The spending lever
    3. Who really pays taxes
    4. Government debt
    5. Who writes the rules
    6. The safety net in practice
    7. Why some nations fail
    8. The gap: inequality in numbers
    9. Social mobility
    10. When the state gets it wrong

  2. Part 2: The Twenty-First-Century Economy

    1. Who runs the world economy?
    2. The digital economy
    3. Crypto and digital money
    4. Robots, AI, and the future of work
    5. Demography rules
    6. The economics of a warming planet
    7. MMT and the money debate
    8. Ideas that almost changed the world
    9. The future of money
    10. The farmer, the shoemaker, and the future