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Bernard McKenna's avatar

You may be interested in this 2024 book reviewed in this month's London Review of Books.

It's Melinda Cooper's "Counterrevolution: Extravagance and austerity in Public Finance" (Princeton).

It argues that focusing on the withdrawal of government benefits under neo-liberalism, while true, misses the bigger point that tax subsidies and deductions are a form of money transfer from the government to asset-holders.

Cooper identifies how the family (i.e. the wealthier ones) have now become a "a tax shelter and a vehicle for holding assets".

The reviewer summarises her argument: "Today ... capitalism is no longer based on returns on industrial investment, 'a regime of accumulation organised around production and measurable in terms of growth'. Instead, we have 'a regime of asset price appreciation' - managed largely through tax exemptions and expenditures, and based on capital gains.

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James Wimberley's avatar

"i’m pushing slowly through books on Heyting algebras (Esakia), Stone spaces (Johnstone) and (always scary for me) Category theory (Simmons).."

Have you tried asking a chatbot for summaries in the format of comic books?

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