Capitalism in America

Why it’s on the list: Greenspan and Wooldridge narrate four centuries of American economic history around creative destruction: the United States outgrew its peers by letting failure happen faster than anyone else, and has since accumulated the entitlements, regulation and incumbent protection that slow it down.

Where I heard about it

• Spotted at Amazon Books at Washington Square, Tigard — December 2018 (Books photo album)

• Spotted at Barnes & Noble, San Bruno — January 2019 (Books photo album)

• Li Lu — on Li Lu’s Recommended Book List, in the section on Value Investing, Finance, and Capitalism, which pairs the how-to-invest literature with structural economic history — on the view that an investor’s returns depend on what kind of economy he is investing in. The section circulated in posts by @F_Compounders and @themattharbaugh.

Connections

• Li Lu’s Recommended Book List — the bibliography this came from.
• Creative Destruction — the organising mechanism; the list also carries Schumpeter, where the term comes from.
• Capitalism · Economic History — the subject.