MARC record from Internet Archive

LEADER: 03299cam 2200397 i 4500
001 9925310098601661
005 20171021045108.4
008 170328t20172017mau b 001 0 eng c
010 $a 2017011999
020 $a9780674976283$qhardcover$qalkaline paper
020 $a0674976282$qhardcover$qalkaline paper
035 $a99976423441
035 $a(OCoLC)981979757
035 $a(OCoLC)ocn981979757
040 $aMH/DLC$beng$erda$cHLS$dDLC$dYDX$dOCLCO$dOCLCF$dBDX$dERASA$dYDX$dSINLB$dOBE
042 $apcc
043 $an-us---
050 00 $aHC110.C3$bC66 2017
082 00 $a339.373$223
100 1 $aCook, Eli,$d1981-$eauthor.
245 14 $aThe pricing of progress :$beconomic indicators and the capitalization of American life /$cEli Cook.
264 1 $aCambridge, Massachusetts :$bHarvard University Press,$c2017.
264 4 $cỨ́2017
300 $a352 pages ;$c25 cm
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$bnc$2rdacarrier
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (pages 269-338) and index.
505 0 $aIntroduction -- The political arithmetic of price -- Seeing like a capitalist -- The spirit of non-capitalism -- The age of moral statistics -- The hunt for growth -- The coronation of King Capital -- State of statistical war -- The pricing of progressivism -- Epilogue : Toward GDP.
520 $aHow did Americans come to quantify their society's progress and well-being in units of money? In today's GDP-run world, prices are the standard measure of not only our goods and commodities but our environment, our communities, our nation, even our self-worth. The Pricing of Progress traces the long history of how and why we moderns adopted the monetizing values and valuations of capitalism as an indicator of human prosperity while losing sight of earlier social and moral metrics that did not put a price on everyday life. Cook roots the rise of economic indicators in the emergence of modern capitalism and the contested history of English enclosure, Caribbean slavery, American industrialization, economic thought, and corporate power. He explores how the maximization of market production became the chief objective of American economic and social policy. We see how distinctly capitalist quantification techniques used to manage or invest in railroad corporations, textile factories, real estate holdings, or cotton plantations escaped the confines of the business world and seeped into every nook and cranny of society. As economic elites quantified the nation as a for-profit, capitalized investment, the progress of its inhabitants, free or enslaved, came to be valued according to their moneymaking abilities. Today as in the nineteenth century, political struggles rage over who gets to determine the statistical yardsticks used to gauge the "health" of our economy and nation.The Pricing of Progress helps us grasp the limits and dangers of entrusting economic indicators to measure social welfare and moral goals.--$cProvided by publisher.
650 0 $aCapitalism$zUnited States$xHistory.
650 0 $aEconomic indicators$zUnited States$xHistory.
650 0 $aValuation$zUnited States$xHistory.
650 0 $aProgress.
947 $hCIRCSTACKS$r31786103117062
980 $a99976423441