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Author: Visit Amazon's David Stuckler Page
ISBN : 0465063985
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Format: PDF
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From Publishers Weekly
Can the economic crisis have an effect on our health? Oxford Senior Research leader Stuckler and Stanford epidemiologist Basu offer insight into the economic crisis—including the Great Recession—and its effect on public health, arguing that countries attempt to fix recessions by balancing budgets, but have failed to protect public well-being. They demonstrate how maintaining a healthy populace is intimately entwined with the health of the social environment. Filled with graphs and charts, the book shows how government's investment in social welfare improves the public's health, due to the creation of unemployment programs, pensions, and housing support. Each chapter offers historical facts from the 1930s in United States, to Russia and Indonesia in the 1990s, to present-day Greece, Britain, Spain, and the U.S., revealing how the government's mismanagement of the economic crisis has resulted in the public's poor health and an epidemic of diseases. The authors argue that it is the politicians' job to ensure that people's health needs are met, rather than their ability to pay. Societies will prosper when they invest in people's health both in good times and in bad. The question remains: what steps need to be taken to prevent widespread suffering both now and in the future? (June)
From Booklist
Stuckler and Basu, academics and public-health experts, examine how governmental budgets and economic choices affect life and death, as well as resilience and risk, for entire populations. With extensive study on the health effects of global economic policies during the December 2007 recession, they conclude that economies paid a deadly price for austerity in terms of ticks to growth rates, life lost, and avoidable deaths. Instead of austerity, the authors recommend evidence-based policies (stimulus) to protect health during hard times: If administered correctly, these programs don’t bust the budget, but . . . boost economic growth and improve public health. Stuckler and Basu ultimately blame the failure of austerity on the economic ideology of those who support small government and free markets over state intervention; they contend that governments that have increased public-sector spending have seen faster economic recoveries, which in turn helps them to grow out of debt. This informative book will add important perspective to the ongoing debate on the consequences of economic policies. --Mary Whaley
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Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation Free The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills Hardcover
- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: Basic Books (May 21, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0465063985
- ISBN-13: 978-0465063987
- Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Free The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills
The Body Economic is a refreshing change in the monotonous age of blogs that have no accountability,articles that haven't been reviewed by critical peers, and books that are backed up with nothing but ideology (and a willing publisher).
The book starts by saying that we are all part of a clinical trial. This sounds cute at first but becomes more chilling as you read along. The book looks at populations around the world (Iceland, Greece, historical and contemporary United States, the UK, Sweden, Thailand, post-Soviet Nations etc) and how they fared based on which decisions their governments made (cut spending or maintain social programs). The results are unequivocal and will threaten the ideologues on the right but can actually change their minds, if they give data a chance.
This book has the passion of "Pathologies of Power", but takes a more direct look at the economic determinants of health. It has the empathy and global reach of "Development as Freedom" but has a remarkably accessible language, especially given that the authors are academicians (sorry Amartya Sen, you are a brilliant economist but you work faster than Ambien for the average Jane). It has the data-driven approach of "Poor Economics" but it is unapologetic in its conclusion that austerity kills.
The last point is sure to ruffle some feathers. Academics who make conclusions that are backed by politically-neutral data often take a cautious approach in their language, perhaps in an attempt to engage those who might be turned off by a subtitle as seemingly polarizing as "Why Austerity Kills". However, The Body Economic is unapologetic and strongly backed by solid data.
Saving money in times of scarcity is a theme passed along to most of us from our parents and grandparents. Many of us deeply value and respect individual frugality, even if it is not easily or effectively put into practice. Indeed, spending and saving wisely is a key foundation for individual and community prosperity. Somewhere along the way, however, large number of influential economists and politicians intuitively and understandably tried to apply this logic to governments at times of financial crisis. Thus was born the idea of "austerity", a fiscal principal of cutting back spending in order to avoid debt and deficits. The results over the last quarter century of global austerity policies were devastating on both economic growth and population health. The austerity policy "experiment", as epidemiologists David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu describe in their new book, The Body Economic, has led to large losses to both the economy and to population health.
As an epidemiologist and a physician myself, I see on a daily basis the real and deep morality to statistics and their accurate collection, interpretation, and discussion. Real people live and die on the basis of how we as citizens, policy makers, and clinical providers process data. Indeed, all of us, regardless of our professions, are confronted with statistics about life and death on a daily basis. What we or our policy makers rarely do, however, is analyze deeply these statistics and how they actually impact our lives. This is the heart of the approach that Drs. Stuckler and Basu take to analyzing economic policies at times of recessions: what do data tell us, beyond rhetoric and intuition and biases, about how governments should respond?
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