Author: Stephen Smith Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 0199683697 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 153
Book Description
Tax revenues pay for many public services, including roads, health care, and education. However, it has become a contentious political issue of public debate. In this volume, Stephen Smith explains its history and its main principles; arguing that we'd all benefit from an understanding of the role of taxation in society.
Author: Stephen Smith Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191506621 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 153
Book Description
Taxation is crucial to the functioning of the modern state. Tax revenues pay for public services - roads, the courts, defence, welfare assistance to the poor and elderly, and in many countries much of health care and education too. More than one third of national income in the industrialized (OECD) countries is on average taken in taxation. Taxes affect individuals in many ways. Taxes paid on income and spending directly reduce taxpayer disposable income, taxpayers face the hassle of tax returns and making payments, and they may be anxious about the possibility of investigation and enforcement action. People also adapt their activities in various ways to reduce the impact of taxation - putting money into tax-free savings accounts, or making shopping trips to other countries where taxes are lower. Taxation is therefore central to politics and public debate. Politicians that make reckless campaign promises about taxation then have to live with the uncomfortable consequences if elected. Businesses lobby for tax breaks that they claim will create jobs and prosperity. In this Very Short Introduction Stephen Smith shows how taxes have real effects on citizens and the economy that tax policy-makers have to balance. Although tax policy will always be a highly political issue, he argues that public decisions about taxation would be improved by a better understanding of the role of taxation, and of the nature and effects of different taxes. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Author: Stephen Smith Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199583587 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 153
Book Description
Environmental economics can be controversial, but it is also central to some key policy issues facing governments and society today, including industrial pollution, global warming, and waste/recycling. Stephen Smith looks at how economic activity affects the environment in which we live, and how environmental policies can most effectively be used.
Author: Christopher J. Berry Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0191087289 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 144
Book Description
In 1776 Adam Smith (1723-90) wrote The Wealth of Nations , a book so foundational it has led to him being called the 'father of economics'. Today he is associated with the promotion of self-interest, a defence of greed and a criticism of any governmental 'interference' in market transactions which, if left to the 'invisible hand', will produce prosperity and liberty. Yet if Smith is actually read these associations are more a caricature than a faithful portrait. In this Very Short Introduction, Christopher Berry offers a balanced and nuanced view of this seminal thinker, embedding his fierce defence of free trade, competition, and assault on special interests in contemporary European history, politics, and philosophy. As Berry explores, Smith was far more than an economist. His book The Theory of Moral Sentiment, offered a complex account of ethics in the context of human social behaviour. His scope as a professor at the University of Glasgow, a major centre of the Scottish Enlightenment, was extensive. Beyond courses in philosophy and jurisprudence he also gave classes covering history, literature, and language. In addition to his two major works he also wrote a pioneering study of the history of astronomy as an illustration of the motivations that drive humans to seek answers to questions. He produced, again derived from his Glasgow classroom, an analysis of the development of grammar and language. As Christopher Berry shows, Adam Smith was no narrow thinker, but rather one who produced not only one of the greatest books in the history of social science, but also a wide-ranging body of work that remains significant today. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Author: Christopher Nobes Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191507288 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 144
Book Description
If you read the 'business pages' of a newspaper or if you listen to the financial news on the television or radio, you will often hear terms such as 'liability', 'balance sheet' or 'earnings'. These terms turn up in non-financial contexts as well: 'he was more of a liability than an asset'. If you invest in shares, have a building society account, or sit on a committee of the property company which owns your apartment block, you will receive financial statements every year. If you are a manager in a company, a hospital or a school, you will see accounting information often. This Very Short Introduction provides a guide to understanding and using accounting information. Christopher Nobes explains the main areas of accounting work, from bookkeeping and financial reporting to auditing and management accounting. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Author: Walter Nugent Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199745854 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 162
Book Description
After decades of conservative dominance, the election of Barack Obama may signal the beginning of a new progressive era. But what exactly is progressivism? What role has it played in the political, social, and economic history of America? This very timely Very Short Introduction offers an engaging overview of progressivism in America--its origins, guiding principles, major leaders and major accomplishments. A many-sided reform movement that lasted from the late 1890s until the early 1920s, progressivism emerged as a response to the excesses of the Gilded Age, an era that plunged working Americans into poverty while a new class of ostentatious millionaires built huge mansions and flaunted their wealth. As capitalism ran unchecked and more and more economic power was concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, a sense of social crisis was pervasive. Progressive national leaders like William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Robert M. La Follette, and Woodrow Wilson, as well as muckraking journalists like Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, and social workers like Jane Addams and Lillian Wald answered the growing call for change. They fought for worker's compensation, child labor laws, minimum wage and maximum hours legislation; they enacted anti-trust laws, improved living conditions in urban slums, instituted the graduated income tax, won women the right to vote, and laid the groundwork for Roosevelt's New Deal. Nugent shows that the progressives--with the glaring exception of race relations--shared a common conviction that society should be fair to all its members and that governments had a responsibility to see that fairness prevailed. Offering a succinct history of the broad reform movement that upset a stagnant conservative orthodoxy, this Very Short Introduction reveals many parallels, even lessons, highly appropriate to our own time. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
Author: James Fulcher Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191577618 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 160
Book Description
What is capitalism? Is capitalism the same everywhere? Is there an alternative? The word 'capitalism' is one that is heard and used frequently, but what is capitalism really all about, and what does it mean? The book begins by addressing basic issues such as 'what is capital?' before discussing the history and development of capitalism through three detailed and absorbing case studies ranging from the tulipomania of seventeenth-century Holland to the recent Enron crisis in America. Fulcher addresses important present day issues, such as New Labour's relationship with capitalism, the significance of global capitalism, and distinctive national models of capitalism. He also explores whether capital has escaped the nation-state by going global, emphasizing that globalizing processes are not new. He discusses the crisis tendencies of capitalism, such as the Southeast Asian banking crisis, the collapse of the Russian economy, and the 1997- 1998 global financial crisis, and asks whether capitalism is doomed. The book ends by asking whether there is an alternative to capitalism, discussing socialism, communal and cooperative experiments, and the alternatives proposed by environmentalists. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Author: Christopher Harvie Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191606499 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 193
Book Description
First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew's Very Short Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Britain is a sharp but subtle account of remarkable economic and social change and an even more remarkable political stability. Britain in 1789 was overwhelmingly rural, agrarian, multilingual, and almost half Celtic. By 1914, when it faced its greatest test since the defeat of Napoleon, it was largely urban and English. Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew show the forces behind Britain's rise to its imperial zenith, and the continuing tensions within the nations and classes of the 'union state'. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Author: John Gillingham Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks ISBN: 019285402X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 193
Book Description
First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, John Gillingham and Ralph A. Griffiths' Very Short Introduction to Medieval Britain covers the establishment of the Anglo-Norman monarchy in the early Middle Ages, through to England's failure to dominate the British Isles and France in the later Middle Ages. Out of the turbulence came stronger senses of identity in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Yet this was an age, too, of growing definition of Englishness and of a distinctive English cultural tradition. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Author: Mike Rapport Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191642517 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 168
Book Description
The Napoleonic Wars have an important place in the history of Europe, leaving their mark on European and world societies in a variety of ways. In many European countries they provided the stimulus for radical social and political change - particularly in Spain, Germany, and Italy - and are frequently viewed in these places as the starting point of their modern histories. In this Very Short Introduction, Mike Rapport provides a brief outline of the wars, introducing the tactics, strategies, and weaponry of the time. Presented in three parts, he considers the origins and course of the wars, the ways and means in which it was fought, and the social and political legacy it has left to the world today. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
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Author: Stephen Smith
Author: Stephen Smith
Author: Stephen Smith
Author: Christopher J. Berry
Author: Christopher Nobes
Author: Walter Nugent
Author: James Fulcher
Author: Christopher Harvie
Author: John Gillingham
Author: Mike Rapport