Just out and worth reading is IMHO a book by B.Y. Times writer David Cay Johnston. The title is FREE LUNCH. I'm not sure if I mentioned it or not here.

Read this from: TaxProf Blog: David Cay Johnston's New Book, Free Lunch

December 7, 2007
David Cay Johnston's New Book, Free Lunch
David Cay Johnston's next book, Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and StickYou with the Bill), will be released on December 27, 2007. Here is the publisher's description:

How does a strong and growing economy lend itself to job uncertainty, debt, bankruptcy, and economic fear for a vast number of Americans? Free Lunch provides answers to this great economic mystery of our time, revealing how today’s government policies and spending reach deep into the wallets of the many for the benefit of the wealthy few.

Johnston cuts through the official version of events and shows how, under the guise of deregulation, a whole new set of regulations quietly went into effect—regulations that thwart competition, depress wages, and reward misconduct. From how George W. Bush got rich off a tax increase to a $100 million taxpayer gift to Warren Buffett, Johnston puts a face on all of the dirty little tricks that business and government pull. A lot of people appear to be getting free lunches—but of course there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and someone (you, the taxpayer) is picking up the bill.

Johnston’s many revelations include:

How we ended up with the most expensive yet inefficient health-care system in the world
How homeowners’ title insurance became a costly, deceitful, yet almost invisible oligopoly
How our government gives hidden subsidies for posh golf courses
How Paris Hilton’s grandfather schemed to retake the family fortune from a charity for poor children
How the Yankees and Mets owners will collect more than $1.3 billion in public funds
In these instances and many more, Free Lunch shows how the lobbyists and lawyers representing the most powerful 0.1% of Americans manipulated our government at the expense of the other 99.9%. With his extraordinary reporting, vivid stories, and sharp analysis, Johnston reveals the forces that shape our everyday economic lives—and shows us how we can finally make things better.

Buy it here cheaper than I got it for: Amazon.com: David Cay Johnston: Books

[quote=mlurp;20697]Just out and worth reading is IMHO a book by B.Y. Times writer David Cay Johnston. The title is FREE LUNCH. I'm not sure if I mentioned it or not here.

Read this from: TaxProf Blog: David Cay Johnston's New Book, Free Lunch

I seriously want to read that book. I have way too much stuff on this truck, though, and too much in storage. I'm going to try to
prioritize some things soon.

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Consumption is indeed important in a free economy: particularly the freedom of consumers to buy their goods in unhampered markets. However, key to long-term economic growth is investment (savings), which is the opposite of consumption. Public policies that promote consumption — such as low interest rates — do so at the expense of savings. Less savings means less investments; an economy that does not save or invest will consume all of its resources and eventually end up bankrupt.-David Saied

Whew! If I go way way back to that first influence I would see a particular
Bible. A New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs and the words to some old hymns. It was very worn from reading and that fact enlightened my emotions to the tenderness of its owner. A good big man who wore a white shirt with the sleeves always rolled a quarter of the way; shaved with a straight razor and had a tattoo of a ship on his chest. My uncle.
Tom Sawyer. Profiles in Courage (children's abridged), Old Yeller, Little House in the Big Woods, Teseract [alternate title 'A wrinkle in Time']

I read a lot of biographies and encyclopedias as a child
collections of Greek Myths, poetry, and short stories. I loved old books. I read an 1897 school book (literature) from cover to cover. In it were excerpts from Don Quixote, The Devil and Daniel Webster, and long poems and odes.

Teen age years I reread Gone With the Wind and I think I was influenced by that woman (Scarlett) who renovated a farm, built a business, and had children anyway.
The Yearling.
Dickens, Bret Harte (Mark Twain's mentor), Mark Twain, Jack London (who wrote about the south seas as well as the northern climbs)- who really did work his way to his destination on a Chinese ship.
I used to like to read a lot of plays.

The Parsifal Mosaic by Robert Ludlum helped me to understand the socialism vs. the Czar thing. A Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserables (still my favorite), The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Tacitus' Germanicus and Agricola.
I love the popular authors John Grisham and Stephan King -master of characterization- who I think is underrated due to his genre of choice.
But Non fiction is still my favorite.

__________________
Consumption is indeed important in a free economy: particularly the freedom of consumers to buy their goods in unhampered markets. However, key to long-term economic growth is investment (savings), which is the opposite of consumption. Public policies that promote consumption — such as low interest rates — do so at the expense of savings. Less savings means less investments; an economy that does not save or invest will consume all of its resources and eventually end up bankrupt.-David Saied

The single most significant book I read was probably The Prince by Machaivelli. I took so much away from that book in terms of how to relate to others when I am either in authority or as a suboordinate. Something about Machaivelli's philosophy just resonated with me and I have always had a copy of it in my office at work and on the shelf at home.

Other influential books in no particular order were:

Sun Tzu's The Art of War
Candide
La Pucelle d' Orleans
La Chanson d' Roland (I idolized Archbishop Turpin)
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lebensruckblick
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Untimely Meditations
Mein Kampf (if anything else to get insight into what instigates evil)
The Voice of Silence
Liber 777
To Ride a Silver Broomstick
Drawing Down the Moon
Summa Theologica
Summa Contra Gentiles


I know its a lot but what can I say? I was an English major. LOL

You slogged it all the way through Nietzche? I tried reading that one when I was a starving student, and used to tote it around with me when I made my bi-weekly visits to the plasma clinics to earn 7 bucks a pop selling off my body fluids. For some reason, about the only time it made sense to me was when the blood was being sucked out of my veins and I was getting a bit lightheaded. I can still remember one particularly lucid momemt approaching an epiphany when the whole ubermensch thing clicked, but then I looked around me, saw all the skid row bums also selling plasma, noticed the plastic tube dangling from my arm and realized if I were one, the universe most certainly had quite the ironic sense of humor.



.

Narcissus and Goldmund -- Hesse
Thousand Cranes -- Kawabata
Pan -- Hamsun
Painted Bird -- Kosinski
A Canticle for Leibowitz -- Miller

Has anyone ever seen a movie that did as well as the book?
I can't recall a single movie that did not disappoint me if I had read the book.

__________________
"Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively and without self delusion---In the long run these are the only people that count."Robert Heinlein

Gone With the Wind was exactly like the book and since MM even thought of Clark Gable for Rhett, what I saw in my mind was pretty much what I saw on the screen.
The Green Mile comes close, but you cannot reproduce the effect if you had read it in the original serial version, which I had. Also some feelings and characters in the nursing home were different in the movie.
A book that could have been a great movie was James Michener's "Texas".
I don't know why but they totally changed the story for the movie.

__________________
Consumption is indeed important in a free economy: particularly the freedom of consumers to buy their goods in unhampered markets. However, key to long-term economic growth is investment (savings), which is the opposite of consumption. Public policies that promote consumption — such as low interest rates — do so at the expense of savings. Less savings means less investments; an economy that does not save or invest will consume all of its resources and eventually end up bankrupt.-David Saied

The Bible for sure was my first remembrance of reading. And some of your list. Then the interruption during my vacation (based upon the lie of the Gulf of Ton-kin events) to S.E. Asia, at the publics expense! (see any trend here)
and J.R.R. Tolkien, now reality and fact. I want to get back to enjoyment of what years I have left. But feel like Ventura and Johnston America's vioce isn't heard.

Never even heard of any? Guess I missed a few. lol