Sonic branding, guerrilla marketing, celebrity endorsements, customer service excellence and multi-channel advertising are just some of the popular sales techniques that currently promote consumerism in contemporary capitalism. Considerable energy is devoted to encouraging consumers to desire new fashions, to celebrate 'good design', to have feelings for brands and to immerse themselves in sensory experiences, without worrying about the ethics of their practices. Work, Consumption and Capitalism looks at how consumption is produced by focusing on the multiple kinds of work that make consumption possible, from advertising creatives to fashion designers, from self-service checkouts to the hippest barista in the coolest coffee shop. The text encourages students to consider the place of consumerism in global capitalism to develop their own answers to the question: How is consumption made possible? This wide-ranging study of the relations between work, consumption and capitalism draws on interdisciplinary research in cultural and economic sociology, history, marketing studies and cultural studies. With research tasks and discussion questions at the end of each chapter and case studies throughout, it stands as an accessible introduction for students of sociology, business and management, media and communication, cultural policy and cultural studies. Listen to a podcast about the book.

Describes factors that will lead to the collapse of Medicare and gives recommendations for preserving the program's future. Examines major problems of financing, Congress' penchant for expanding the scope of Medicare without committing additional revenues, and the growing elderly population. Recommends trashing the current generational transfer method of financing in favor of a system that requires each age cohort to insure itself against retirement medical expenses. Rettenmaier is research scientist, and Saving is director, at the Private Enterprise Research Center at Texas AandM University. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Moral Hazard and Benefits Consumption Capital in Program Overlap reviews and extends the analysis of moral hazard response in two empirical directions: 1) how insurance changes in one program affects employee participation in other programs at a point in time (inter-program moral hazard), and 2) how the consumption of program benefits now tends to affect employees behavior over time (benefits consumption capital). The authors focus principally on workers compensation and programs that overlap with potential workers compensation coverage to keep institutional issues to a manageable level. This will not only include employer-provided health/health care insurance, short and long term disability insurance, and Federal benefits under the social security disability program, but also Federal benefits paid under unemployment insurance.

This book is part of a series which makes available to English-speaking audiences the work of the individual Chinese economists who were the architects of China’s economic reform. The series provides an inside view of China’s economic reform, revealing the thinking of the reformers themselves, unlike many other books on China’s economic reform which are written by outside observers. Ma Hong (1920-2007) was one of the leading advocates for China’s market-oriented reforms, one of the earliest scholars to adopt the concept of "a socialist market economy". Politically active from the 1930s, when he campaigned against the Japanese occupation, he held many important posts, notably President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in the 1980s. He was particularly influential in the field of industrial economics, putting to use his own experiences of managing industrial enterprises, and a strong advocate of the need for China’s economic development to be stable. The book is published in association with China Development Research Foundation, one of the leading economic and social think tanks in China, where many of the theoretical foundations and policy details of economic reform were formulated.

Contains over 200 entries on key concepts and theorists of cultural studies.

This Manual clarifies the conceptual issues concerning stocks and flows of fixed capital and provides practical guidelines for estimation. The Manual also deals with the definition and measurement of "capital services" which measure the contribution of capital assets into the production process.

Notwithstanding its ruthless dynamics, the capitalist economy has the flaw of deficient employment-generating spending. This leads to unemployment of non-owners, individual suffering, social unrest and it undermines military strength. To deal with these issues, states use prosthetic policies, artificial transfers to the productive economy and to non-owners. But the funding of such prosthetic policies - through violent wealth appropriation abroad, protectionism, war, domestic expropriation and taxation, debt and money creation - is caught in dilemmas, while politicians are caught between non-solutions. According to Gerhard H. Wächter, the history of capitalist society is largely the history of this dilemmatic brotherhood.

This volume brings together original and timely writings by internationally renowned scholars that reflect on the current trajectories of global capitalism and, in the light of these, consider likely, possible or desirable futures. It offers theory-informed writing that contextualizes empirical research on current world-historic events and trends with an eye towards realizing a future of human, social and economic betterment.

The main theme of this book is that, within contemporary capitalist societies a materialist outlook informed by science has triumphed creating the lack of a spiritual dimension to give meaning and purpose to the activities that are necessary for a capitalist society to function effectively. Capitalist societies are in trouble and need to be restructured to provide for the material needs of all the people who work within the system, not just the one percent, but because of the lack of a spiritual connection with each other and with nature this is not likely to happen. It has been said that society and the organizations within treat one another as objects to be manipulated in the interests of promoting economic growth and treat nature as an object to be exploited for the same purpose. This way of treating each other, and nature, is consistent with the way a capitalist system has worked in the past and was supposed to enable it to function efficiently to provide a fulfilling and enriched life for all its adherents through growth of the economy. However, as capitalist societies have become dysfunctional they will need a different kind of orientation to continue in existence. Restructuring Capitalism: Materialism and Spiritualism in Business argues that what is needed is a new sense of a spiritualization of the self and its relation to others and to the establishment of a spiritual connection with nature in order for capitalism to be restructured to work for everyone and for the society as a whole.