NCF’s Top Ten Reading Selections 2006
NCF’s mission is to drive the policy debate on the important emerging issues by formulating arguments, developing options, and influencing thinking in an effort to move the American business agenda forward. As part of that mission, we consulted with industry specialists and Chamber staff to select an annual list of books that both advance our agenda and challenge our thinking.
The following are this year’s top ten recommended books by leading think tanks, business leaders, and policy experts.
Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy
by Moises Naim
Illicit takes a hard look at black market trafficking networks. Naim makes a case that the technologies that facilitate the legitimate and efficient movement of goods have at the same time enabled markets for illegal and counterfeit goods to thrive. These dispersed trafficking networks are tricky for governments to battle and intensify political and social instability in certain regions.
Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East
by Clyde Prestowitz
Three Billion New Capitalists examines the rapidly expanding Asian economic power and markets in relation to current U.S. economic hegemony, and how this relationship will progress in the future. Prestowitz addresses the addition of three billion new capitalists to the global labor pool and argues that the two most pressing issues facing the U.S. today are America’s eroding competitiveness and its lack of will to reverse this strong movement.
The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy
by Peter Huber and Mark Mills
The Bottomless Well is a unique glimpse at today’s perceived energy crisis. With scientific and technological sophistication, Huber and Mills say that energy is essentially infinite. Humans have, or will develop, the technological means to extract more fuel and turn it into more refined power. They explain why efficiency means more energy usage, not less, and how using more energy can lead to a better, wealthier, cleaner world.
In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State
by Charles Murray
In Our Hands is a critique of the entitlement system in the U.S. Murray contends that unsuccessful programs like Medicare and Social Security have indeed disadvantaged the elderly and poor rather than helped. He proposes granting every citizen a flat annual grant of $10,000, beginning at age twenty-one as a solution to the bureaucracy that has been created. He suggests that this plan would end poverty, improve health care, and empower people to control their destiny.
Our Brave New World
by Charles Gave, Anatole Kaletsky, and Louis-Vincent Gave
Our Brave New World addresses U.S. trade deficits and federal debt, and questions if these issues are as precarious as we think. The authors argue that trade deficits are in fact insignificant, and make credible arguments that the U.S. trade deficit can last forever and that it is in fact a sign of economic strength, not weakness. They believe reduced volatility due to greater wealth has fundamentally changed macroeconomic events.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Debacle: What We’ve Learned; How to Fix It
by Henry N. Butler
The Sarbanes-Oxley Debacle exposes failures of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) and offers some lessons. In addition to the large direct and indirect costs of SOX, the act sets up hungry trial lawyers for a new round of harmful lawsuits. Butler recommends that SOX be revoked. If it is not eliminated, he suggests that lawsuits could provide the leverage to make some important and necessary amendments.
An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths
by Glenn Reynolds
An Army of Davids is having a colossal impact on both the economic and social characteristics of our society through the use of technology. Via “blogs” and other new media channels, millions of everyday men, “the Davids,” can now share their opinions with the entire world. Reynolds explores the new balance of power between the individual and the organization and stresses that this astonishing trend has taken over quite unnoticed.
The Innovator’s Solution
by Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor
The Innovator’s Solution demonstrates that although the outcomes of the innovation process may appear arbitrary, the process itself is foreseeable. Christensen shows how established companies can manage The Innovator’s Dilemma of disruptive technologies that he described in his first widely acclaimed book.
Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care
by Arnold Kling
Crisis of Abundance proposes that the main problem with America’s health care system is that we have countless specialists, technologies, and other resources but we do not know when to use them or how to pay for them. Kling argues that markets would better assign these resources. He suggests trimming government health care budgets and shrinking third-party payment as a method of making wiser heath care decisions.
Education Myths What Special-Interest Groups Want You To Believe About Our Schools – And Why It Isn’t So
by Jay P. Greene
Education Myths examines eighteen common views of American education and finds that they are not accurate. Greene combats conventional wisdom with facts and figures and says that our schools can be fixed. He makes key recommendations that once put into practice could lead to success.
For questions regarding this program, please contact us at (202) 463-5500 or ncfevents@uschamber.com.
