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Talking to My Daughter About the Economy

or, How Capitalism Works--and How It Fails

Yanis Varoufakis; Translated from the Greek by Jacob Moe and Yanis Varoufakis

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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ISBN10: 0374538492
ISBN13: 9780374538491

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224 Pages

$19.00

CA$25.00

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Yanis Varoufakis offers a series of letters to his young daughter about the economy: how it operates, where it came from, how it benefits some while impoverishing others. Taking bankers and politicians to task, he explains the historical origins of inequality among and within nations, questions the pervasive notion that everything has its price, and shows why economic instability is a chronic risk. Finally, he discusses the inability of market-driven policies to address the rapidly declining health of the planet his daughter’s generation stands to inherit.

Throughout, Varoufakis wears his expertise lightly. He writes as a parent whose aim is to instruct his daughter on the fundamental questions of our age—and through that knowledge, to equip her against the failures and obfuscations of our current system and point the way toward a more democratic alternative.

Reviews

Praise for Talking to My Daughter About the Economy

"It's a sharp analysis mixed with philosophical rumination told in a breezy mix of family anecdotes, Greek myth, world history and a surprisingly deep dive into the hidden meanings embedded in Star Trek and The Matrix . . . It's a book for everyone. Varoufakis dispenses with technical jargon, and when he does use it, he goes to great lengths to clearly define what he's talking about."—Mark Haskell Smith, Los Angeles Times

"Varoufakis has used his considerable talents . . . to demystify complex financial concepts designed to elude us . . . 'Ensuring that everyone is allowed to talk authoritatively about the economy is a prerequisite for a good society and a precondition for an authentic democracy' [he writes]. If this is his goal, then Varoufakis has more than achieved it . . . He clearly and patiently helps readers come to an understanding of just how much power global corporate finance—and the supranational institutions that serve it—wields over our lives."—Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, The Nation

"Varoufakis [promises] to explain economics in a language that everyone can understand, in place of the jargon-infested pseudo-scientific language of mainstream economics . . . Varoufakis comes up with a vivid comparison between money supply and the market in cigarettes in a German prisoner-of-war camp to explain inflation, deflation and interest rates, in terms any teenager—or adult—will understand."—Anna Minton, The Guardian

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BOOK EXCERPTS

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1

Why So Much Inequality?


All babies are born naked, but soon after some are dressed in expensive clothes bought at the best boutiques, while the majority wear rags. Once they’ve grown a little older, some get annoyed every time...

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About the author

Yanis Varoufakis; Translated from the Greek by Jacob Moe and Yanis Varoufakis

Yanis Varoufakis is a former finance minister of Greece and a cofounder of an international grassroots movement, DiEM25, that is campaigning for the revival of democracy in Europe. He is the author of the international bestseller Adults in the Room, And the Weak Suffer What They Must?, and The Global Minotaur. After teaching for many years in the United States, Great Britain, and Australia, he is currently a professor of economics at the University of Athens.

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