"Economist Mark Paul considers the history of American rights and freedoms as determinants of American economic well-being. The failed promise of FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society programs to secure positive rights for all Americans (the right to a decent education, a good job, adequate health care, and a greater capacity for economic flourishing) have left the country fractured by inequality and stifled in social mobility. Paul traces this shift...

From San Francisco to Shanghai, many of the world's most innovative places are highly unequal, with the benefits going to a small few. Rather than simply asking how we can create more high-tech cities and nations, Innovation for the Masses focuses on what we can learn from places that foster innovation while also delivering the benefits more widely and equally. In this book, economist Neil Lee draws on case studies of Taiwan, Sweden, Austria, and...