(Part 2) Top products from r/AskSocialScience

Describing the best form of taxation involves a combination of economics and values. The economics asks "how does the policy change the way people behave?" which is the positive side of the question. The value side of things asks "is that consequence something we want?" which is the normative side of the question.

The economic, or positive side of things is completely game for social science, and is the subject of a great deal of research for different tax systems. The normative stuff we talk about sometimes, but we try to be very cautious about separating values from predictions and only say a policy is definitely a bad idea when we're pretty sure society views the consequences of the policy as unacceptable.

From a positive side, I don't think the arguments that are made to support the Flat Tax hold too much water. I don't know of any strong evidence that it would induce a great deal of growth. But I also don't know of strong proof that it doesn't. So positive economics maybe doesn't have too much to say here. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, and point me towards a paper or two (I'm talking about research on the Flat Tax specifically, not just the ETI literature)).

From a normative angle, it comes down to the following question: your policy will probably make the rich better off (they'll have lower tax liabilities) and the poor worse off (they'll have higher tax liabilities). The rich might be more productive and this could mean more income for everyone. Is it worth it to you? Given that the research on the responses of the rich finds that they've been pretty small in the past, I think the flat tax is a bad idea. But there's some values there that have nothing to do with social science.

On the other hand, simplification of the tax code in a way that approximately maintains the progressivity of the system would be a welcome change. Taxes are way too complicated, and a large literature on salience suggests that you could make people better off by making their choices easier to understand. (Incidentally, salience is right in the middle of my research.) Some of the arguments around the flat tax take this route, and this is something I agree with. Even though I don't think the flat tax specifically is a good idea at all.

A further complication is that sometimes when people say the flat tax they mean/don't mean a Negative Income Tax. I think that an NIT is not entirely a bad idea if you're going to do a flat tax, because it would allow you to make sure the system is still progressive. What I've written above mostly applies to the flat tax without a NIT built in.

If you're interested in hearing the full debate, instead of what your professor (who, by the way, isn't representatives of economists who study tax) thinks, I would recommend this book.

Edited for citations and typos. There's probably still some typos. Oh well.

Both Friedman and Bernanke have good books on this subject.

http://www.amazon.com/Contraction-1929-1933-Princeton-Classic-Editions/dp/0691137943/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

http://www.amazon.com/Essays-Great-Depression-Ben-Bernanke/dp/0691118205/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421083324&sr=1-1&keywords=bernanke+depression

Bernanke and Friedman are in basic agreement on the Federal Reserve being the cause of the depression. Bernanke is famous for having said: "Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again." I should add that although Friedman is sometimes seen as a free-market hack, his work on monetary theory and the great depression is respected by economists of all political stripes.

Modern central bankers now know to increase the money supply during a recession. This is necessary to prevent deflation because the effective amount of money circulating in the economy is increased by lending. Lending decreases during a recession, so if the central bank does not increase "base money", then the effective amount of money will decrease in the recession. A fall in the money supply can cause problems, particularly for banks if the duration of their assets and liabilities differ (as is almost always the case) (fyi, the duration of and asset or liabilities is basically when it pays out. Mortgages have a long duration because mortgage holders will be baying back their debts over decades. Demand deposits have a short duration -- consumers can withdraw their deposits on a day's notice to take them to another bank or take them home. If the interest rate goes up, then consumers can withdraw their deposits to get a bigger return on them, but banks cannot call their mortgages. Thus, banks are typically hurt when interest rates go up. Furthermore, if enough people start withdrawing their deposits, the bank can run out of cash -- even if their mortgages are good and they'd be able to pay back their depositors if given enough time. This can result in a bank run. If a lot of people withdraw their deposits, then the bank will go bankrupt and the other depositors could be ruined. Thus, lots of depositors may withdraw their deposits in anticipation that others will, causing a bank failure that would not have happened otherwise. Banks failing and being close to failure will reduce the supply of credit to various enterprises, which directly reduces output (this is the link between the "real economy" and the financial economy. In a market economy, the financial sector plays a crucial role in determining to which enterprises capital is allocated. Banks can do a good job identifying where capital is most productive, but during a liquidity crises they will fail to extend this credit -- they know the project is good but they can't give the money without going bankrupt).

At the start of the great depression, the US Federal reserve decreased the money supply rather than increasing it, transforming what would probably have been a sharp but brief recession (as the United States had experience regularly throughout its history) into the great depression. Indeed, the effective money supply decreased by over a third early in the great depression.

There were a couple of reasons for this, but part of it came from a power struggle between the New York Fed and the Washington DC fed. In the 1800's and early 1900's, big financiers like J.P.Morgan played the role of the federal reserve by generously extending financing during contractions to avert catastrophe. After the panic of 1907 (where J.P. Morgan assembled a coalition of other bankers to extend credit to banks during the liquidity crisis), many bankers urged the creation of a government body to play the role that J.P. Morgan had played in the past, thinking something like "we only avoided catastrophe because J.P.Morgan saved the day - what if someone like J.P. Morgan is not around for the next crisis? We need an official body to play this role". This resulted in the Federal reserve board.

The Federal reserve board is a fairly decentralized system. The D.C. fed is responsible for controlling money supply. But the New York Fed has always been better connected with the banks and more proactive in extending credit during liquidity crises. When the federal reserve boards were founded, Benjamin Strong was appointed the first governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and continued the practice of providing strong support of the banks during liquidity crises (exe. extending emergency credit).

However, the D.C. fed wanted to centralize power, and reflexively opposed the actions of the New York Fed as a means to acquire this power. Benjamin Strong was an effective leader and was able to resist the encroachment of the D.C. fed. Unfortunately, he died in 1928 on the eve of the stock market crash. Thus, when the crash happened, the D.C. fed was able to assert its authority unopposed and prevent the New York Fed from extending credit to distressed banks at the outset of the crises.

In addition, many banks around the world at this time were trying to strengthen their currencies (the dollar is strong if it can buy relatively more euros, for example). One way to accomplish this is to raise interest rates, because money from foreign countries will rush in to buy the higher-interest rate assets, thus bidding up the price of the dollar. If many central banks in different countries do this at once, the result is no change in the strength of the currencies but large increases in the interest rate in all countries. Many countries were caught up in this game of competing for a strong currency, with the US and France at the forefront (France also had a terrible great depression). Unfortunately, the Fed increases interest rates by buying up bonds, so the Fed was actually reducing the money supply at the outset of the great depression, which is the exact opposite of what should be done.

As for other countries, the UK did not tighten monetary policy after the initial recession like the United States did. They had a relatively brief and less severe recession.

Canada also did not tighten monetary policy. In addition, Canada had fewer, larger banks, whereas the United States had an abundance of small banks. Small banks are less diversified and are more likely to go under during a credit crunch. This is why not many (actually, i don't think any) of the banks in Canada went under. But something like a third of all banks in the United States went bankrupt in the early phases of the great depression. The reason the United States had many small banks was because there were regulations preventing banks from growing very large. I can't remember the details of these regulations, but I believe they prevented banks from operating in multiple states.

TLDR
the great depression probably would have been a minor recession except for the fact that a recently founded federal agency led by naive and power-hungry leadership both failed to extend credit to banks during a liquidity crisis (as banking giants like J.P. Morgan had done in the past) and actively reduced the money supply in pursuit of a strong dollar. In addition, regulations limiting the size of banks made the US financial system more vulnerable to financial shocks.

It sounds like I am blaming government and saying that the Fed should not exist. That is not the case. The Fed can be beneficial if it is run correctly, and the current leadership is much more knowledgeable about how the macro economy works than the leadership was in the past. Criticizing bad regulation is not the same as criticizing regulation. In any case, the Great Depression probably would not have happened if either the Fed didn't exist or the Fed had been properly managed.

“How much power does the media have?” Sounds like a question of measurement, but that’s an oversimplification. This is a question that’s been asked by many social scientists for literally decades, and the research into newer forms of media is ongoing. It’s far too vast a literature to describe in a Reddit comment. I am literally getting a PhD in this and I will never be able to read it all.

But, in short, the media does have an effect of some size on almost everyone because almost everyone consumes media. Most do so for both entertainment and information, and that then influences our attitudes and beliefs, the way we think about social reality (what the society we are in is like even though we will never meet even 1% of the people in it, what our position is in that society and how it relates to other people or groups), which in turn influences our judgements/decisions and behavior choices. There are effects for both entertainment and informational media. It may be different effects for different people or groups, depending on your personality and social identity (or rather, identities). It may be different sizes of effects depending on your personal style of information processing and volume of information, personal or information consumption circumstances, and other forms of information you consume and have access to and use, like interpersonal conversations or direct experience. But effects exist in some size for most people a significant amount of the time.

Media is just a systematic way of distributing or consuming information and stories, usually such that it doesn’t require an in-person transfer anymore. Much of the power of media derives from the power of information and the power of stories. Information and stories existed before media in general and mass media in particular. If you think you are influenced by and use information, then you can be influenced by media.

One common trope used by such researchers is that media do not successfully tell you what to think, but DOES succeed in telling you what to think ABOUT. (This isn’t quite true...sometimes the media can successfully tell you what to think, but it’s much more difficult because people aren’t passive consumers, any more than they are of religion or things told to them by their parents or friends.) Know that trope how “Don’t think of an elephant” doesn’t work because you have to think of the concept of an elephant in the process of consuming the words? And now you are thinking about elephants, positively or hatefully or with boredom but you are still thinking about them. Media effects and media power is more like that.

That said, media effects do not exist in a vacuum and you don’t consume media in a vacuum. They are enhanced or contradicted by your family, your friends and peers, your coworkers and industry, and other elements of your social world in a cycle. Would you say your parents had no effect on the way you think about things and the decisions you make and the way you behave? No. Would you say they have an absolute effect such that you are exactly what they made you and what they intended? Also no. Even if you went against the grain, what they did influenced you specifically enough to reject it. Parenting is powerful, but it’s not determinate. Same for media.

Don’t think of media as brainwashing or copy/paste editing. Thing of it more like the flow of a river you are swimming in. It pulls and pushes you in a particular direction and influences where you end up, but it’s not the only element of the equation in the journey nor the destination. You aren’t totally powerless in the river but you also aren’t in total control, and how much you can influence where you end up compared to an Olympic swimmer compared to a young child or some other person varies.

If you want to know what kinds of effects exist and have been demonstrated, the search term you are looking for is “media effects” or “media impact” and you can look in media psychology, communication, political communication, political science, social psychology and sociology academic disciplines for books and studies.

If you want a place to start, my favorite overview book is “Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research” by Bryant and Oliver. The 3rd edition is here: https://www.amazon.com/Media-Effects-Advances-Theory-Research/dp/0805864504
but you can get a free sample intro on the Kindle version to get an overview of the state of the research at the beginning, and either rent it or search for individual chapters online based on your interest, some of which have been posted for free fair use purposes by their authors. I like agenda setting, priming, framing, and cultivation theory, but there are many more.

Hope that helps.

I have some solid copy pasta on this, and am happy to go into more detail on the particulars:

> There is no student loan bubble:

> 1. A bubble is a term with a specific meaning - "Bubbles refer to asset prices that exceed an asset's fundamental value because current owners believe they can resell the asset at an even higher price. ". There is no mechanism for which this can work in the education market.
> 2. The last 30 years have been characterized by a huge increase in the college wage premium. In 1979, a college educated worker made 35% more than an HS graduate on average, by 1999, they would be making 80% more. The Race Between Education and Technology is a great overview of this. A college education is still a really good investment. This isn't because of selection effects - see The Causau Effect of Education on Earnings.
> 3. Virtually no one pays market price for a college education. The financial aid process allows universities to practice almost-perfect price discrimination. They can effectively charge a different price for every student, so that the market just follows the demand curve up until their maximum tuition level.
> 4. The is definitely is a sheepskin effect - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)#A_basic_job-market_signalling_model - for college diplomas. But this is extremely well understood (Spence shared the economics Nobel with Akerlof for signalling theory). I think that separating bright, talented and hard working 18 year olds from bright, talented and lazy 18 year olds is a non-trivial process.
> 5. Tons of articles imply that you don't need higher education, because you can take classes online. If this was the case, why did the university lecture have survived the invention of the printing press? Books reduced the cost to the diffusion of knowledge far more than the internet did, without ending the university system. This implies that there is something else going on to me.

Beyond intermediate texts, my classes ended up just reading papers from econ journals. You may want to pick up an econometrics text, get familiar with the methods, then read papers (here is a list of the 100 most cited).

I wrote my opinions on econometric textbooks I've used for another reddit comment, so I just pasted it in below. If you get into it, I'd recommend reading a less rigorous book straight through, then using a more rigorous text as reference or to do the practice stuff.

Less Mathematically Rigorous

• Kennedy - survey of modeling issues without the math. More about how to think about modeling rather than how do it. Easy to read, I liked it
  
  
• Angrist - similar to Kennedy, covers the why & how econometrics answers questions, very little math. Each chapter starts with a hitchhikers guide to the galaxy quote, which is fun. Just as good as Kennedy
  
  
• Long - this book is more about just "doing stuff" and presenting results, absolutely non-technical, but also dodges the heavy thinking in Angrist & Kennedy so I wasn't a big fan
  
  
• King - covers the thinking of Angrist & content of Maddala. It is more accessible but wordier, so give it a go if Kennedy or Angrist are too much. It is aimed at Poli Sci rather than econ.
  
  Middle of the Road
  
  
• Gujarati - I used this for a class. It wasn't hard to follow, but it mostly taught methodology and the how/why/when/what, and I didn't like that - a little too "push button" and slow moving.
  
  
• Woodlridge - a bit more rigorous than Gujarati, but it was more interesting and was clearer about motivations from the standpoint of interesting problems
  
  
• Cameron & Trivedi - I liked the few chapters I read, the math is there, but the methodology isn't driven by the math. I ddin't get too far into it
  
  More Mathematically Rigorous
  
  
• Greene - lots of math, so much it was distracting for me, but probably good for people who really want to learn the methodology
  
  
• Wooldridge - similar to Greene, you need a solid understanding before diving into this book. Some of the chapters are impenetrable
  
  
• Maddala - this book is best for probit/logit/tobit models and is somewhat technical but dated. My best econometrics teacher loved it

I haven't read any of his books but I have read many of his op-eds in NYT and my guilty pleasure is watching economics documentaries because they make me angry, Inequality for All is one of my favorite examples of nonsense. Generally he falls in the same trap as non-economist commentators from both sides in that he misunderstands & misrepresents economics, hold very strange views with regards to economic history and generally has a pretty significant Dunning–Kruger on the subject (or all the fields this seems to occur most frequently with economics, some of the ideas are sufficiently accessible and some pieces of data can seem meaningful when they are not) .

A short list of some significant issues I have had with him in the past;

• He asserts that the great depression was caused by falling labor share (higher profits & lower wages) which is simply wrong, consensus almost entirely supports that which Friedman posited in Monetary History of the US; a speculative bubble cause a financial recession and tightening of monetary policy after the crash caused the depression. Also labor share actually rose significantly through the 20's.
  
• He also asserts that recessions in general are caused by falling labor share, he shows a cyclic correlative effect for profits as proof of this (ignoring that its expected that profits would by cyclic) entirely ignoring that the last three (possibly five) recessions occurred during a period where labor share has been virtually unchanged. For the record the only cause of recessions is shocks, there is no magic reason why they occur or mechanism that would allow us to prevent them; we smooth the cycle with monetary policy but that's the extent of our control.
  
• He uses that absurd graph showing absolute corporate profits vs hourly wages which EPI originated constantly, ignoring that its entirely excluding salaried workers, it comparing real & nominal figures and that it uses self-reported income instead of payroll (under reporting bias). There has been no divergence between productivity and income.
  
• Bizarrely he seems to have a high-school level of understanding of labor economics, he doesn't understand the mechanism by which wages are set nor the mechanisms by which they rise. Similarly he also makes some pretty absurd remarks regarding the economic effects of increasing labor share (such as forcing businesses to raise wages during a recession). Similar problems with how he regards unionization as a silver bullet for an assorted list of ailments.
  
• He doesn't understand the significance of credit markets in cycle management, he outright claims that the ability of businesses to access credit during recessionary periods has no effect on the severity of recessions. Many economists, myself included, would assert that monetary policy is our most important tool for managing recessions, a smaller number (also including me) would assert that its the only effective tool in advanced economies. There is a huge open question regarding the efficacy of fiscal stimulus in advanced economies, its also notable that the number of economists who believe congress could design a reasonable stimulus plan is nearly half of those who believe fiscal stimulus is useful.
  
• Many of his ideas are sound when simply stated in short form but go loopy in the details. Increasing EITC would be a very good thing indeed, removing the taper not so much. Universal healthcare would be a very good thing indeed, single-payer insurance not so much. The problem with education is efficacy not resources. etc

Dear llordlloyd,

I am not an expert in taxation, but there is theory of optimal taxation called Ramsay taxation that to minimize tax distortion and inefficiencies, the tax rate has to be *inversely proportional" with its elasticity. The idea here is that higher tax rate lowers incentive to work. But if a person's effort on a particular occupation is inelastic, a high tax rate is efficient because it only reduces work effort by a small amount, while an occupation in which its work effort is sensitive to a higher tax rate, then a smaller tax rate should be implemented because you don't want to drastically reduce the amount of work effort.

I wish I could tell you more about taxation but Joel Slemrod's Taxing Ourselves is a good layman's book on the subject of taxation.

Depending on the flavor of macro, this could be a very non-macro question. If you were comfortable reading Debreu, I would tackle a good graduate micro text, such as Jehle Reny. It is shorter and better explained than Mas-Colell. But if you liked Debreu, then you are probalby ready for Mas-Colell. Reading the footnotes in either is a good indication of newer developments.

Actually, the development of private property rights is strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly associated with improvement of quality of life for the poor. I have yet to see any data suggesting there is any credible alternative to the market if your interest is a healthy and wealthy society.

On inequality I think Piketty and Piketty and Saez are probably about right, but there isn't that much variation across societies where "ownership of assets" varies. I'm prepared to argue that North Korea might stand as the world's most unequal society however (perhaps asymptotically so?), even though we lack for real data on the subject.

If your interest is in reducing inequality, you should probably be thinking more about taxing the stuff that the rich earn rather than eliminating the social construct of the rich owning stuff.

If you have the motivation and discipline to stick with it, working through a good Principles (introductory) textbook would probably be your best option. You can get used old editions off Amazon for about $10. I use Mankiw when I teach, but Krugman and other options are good too.

There are some decent free online courses out there:

• MR University
  
• Stanford
  
• MIT (This one is probably a bit much for most people to handle)
  
  If you want a mass-market book, start with The Undercover Economist Strikes Back: How to Run--or Ruin--an Economy. Even if you go the textbook option, it's probably worth supplementing with this one.

I'm glad you've become interested in such a fascinating topic. However, it's pretty expansive, so here are some links to books and topics in terms of broad, global, and more specific studies related to the issue of income equality:

Broad Topic/Global:

• Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
  
  
• The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffrey Sachs. This is more of a look into global poverty, but has elements of income equality between countries tied into it.
  
  
  In the US/more specific:
  
  
• Inequality: Growing Apart is a short article by The Economist on the topic of growing income inequality in the US
  
  
• The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph Stiglitz
  
  
• Income Inequality in the United States: 1913-1998 an empirical study by Thomas Piketty and Emanuel Saez
  
  This is just a list of the more well-known, discussed, and publicized works on the broader subject of income inequality and poverty. There is a plethora of information on this topic from different perspectives and analyses (e.g. political economy, neoclassical, marxist, etc...), as well as in different countries and time periods, so while you're reading remember to take the context of how it is being written and who is writing it into consideration. Hopefully this list gets you started though!
  
  

Laffont and Martimort have a book that is probably a good fit. http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7311.html
It is more geared towards walking you through some more common models. I remember the math being relatively light and explained fairly pedantically.

Alternatively, I am working through one by Vohra right now that it quite good but pretty mathematically dense.
http://www.amazon.com/Mechanism-Design-Programming-Econometric-Monographs/dp/0521179467

I also remember the mechanism design chapters in Reny and Jehle's textbook were well presented too.
http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Microeconomic-Theory-Geoffrey-Jehle/dp/0273731912/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395102676&sr=1-1&keywords=reny+and+jehle

How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes is a really good primer for macroeconomics and will set you on the right path.

Economics in One Lesson is a great book that will give you a solid theoretical foundation and perspective.

I also recommend anything by Thomas Sowell, such as Basic Economics or Applied Economics.

There's an entire discipline in social science (communication) devoted to answering questions like this, and you're kind of asking to have summarized most of the findings of that discipline, which is a tall order.

I'll start by pointing you to two good overviews of the subfield of media effects, which seems to be what you're getting at.

Jennings & Oliver's Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, Third Edition

https://www.amazon.com/Media-Effects-Advances-Theory-Research/dp/0805864504/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527168732&sr=8-1&keywords=media+effects

Nabi & Oliver's The SAGE Handbook of Media Processes and Effects

https://www.amazon.com/SAGE-Handbook-Media-Processes-Effects/dp/1412959969/ref=sr_1_38?ie=UTF8&qid=1527168732&sr=8-38&keywords=media+effects

>The shift in family is causing the suburbs to decline in population.

How is that a bad thing?

> The race and ethnic makeup in America is changing significantly

America has always taken in lots of immigrants. In fact, the native-born share of the population was about the same in 1900 and 2000.

>Student loan debt has destroyed college education

This is completely, absolutely, not true. For the average student, college is not only a great investment, but becoming even more so over time. In 1974, an average college grad made 32% more than a high school grad, in 1999, the difference had risen to 80% (lots in this book, also thanks to jambarama for this nice post which I've borrowed from). Also, here is a good review of attempts to isolate the causal effect of education on earnings. In short, for most people, overwhelming evidence indicates that college is a great inverstment.

>Religion is less popular than ever

Again, how is this a bad thing? Many European countries, especially, are much less religious than the US (example), and they seem to be doing just fine.

>is the American Dream dead?

I don't see what any of these things have to do with the American Dream, or even capitalism.

>What do social scientists think?

I think this narrative is a bunch of fear mongering...

If you're interested in reading about how party systems work in principle and practice, I would recommend the book Patterns of Democracy by Arend Lijphart. You can get it for only eight bucks on Amazon.

Pikkety is articulate and speaks in a way that a novice can understand and I do think you should read what he has to say. That said, his works also fit a very common narrative that is frequently reinforced here on reddit. Therefore, for an alternate perspective, I would also like to recommend Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. He is also very adept at breaking down complex topics in a way that can be understood.

Integrald's list is awesome. I would also add-

Governing the Market by Robert Wade

And, as someone in the legal field myself, I also must throw in a plug for The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander - I think understanding the criminal justice system can do a lot to help illuminate some of the dynamics of U.S. inner city poverty. Also, the Wire.

Arend Lijphart is probably the biggest name in political science when it comes to constitutional design. He outlines two dimensions which democracies can be centralized or decentralized. Check out his seminal book Patterns of Democracy.

As for your second question, I would look into political histories that cover the progressive period in American history. This is where you start to get reforms like the primary, initiatives, referenda, recall, and the like.

For a different take on the subject, check out The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison.

Yes. Your answer can be found in the pop book "Why Nations Fail" (https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227) or the academic work of its authors. Short answer is that incentives matter, and markets provide great incentives.

NB: Neoliberal has no meaning in economics and is essentially a pejorative for anyone who does not align perfectly with the far left. We would refer to these policies as market liberalization, where liberal is used in the classical sense.

These two books will save you a lot of time and effort trying to piece together economic thinking yourself:

Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life by David Friedman

The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life by Steve Landsburg (used copies available for $4)

If you read one (or both) of those, even Econ topics that weren't addressed at all in them should make a lot more sense. Most of Econ is in applying a framework of thought to a problem. Once you get that down, most of the rest is actually fun.

The comment I see is invoking the failure of dirigisme in Brazil. There is a point to be made about the shortcomings of dependency theory as formulated by Cardoso & Faletto and Gunder-Frank... to the extent that Import Substitution Industrialization did not (on its own) move Southern-Cone countries up the international value production chain. It should be noted that Wallerstein's formulation of world systems analysis and contributions to development theory and macrosociology go far beyond that of unequal trade. With regard to the question of unequal trade and comparative advantage one ought to go right back to Marx' Capital and Smith's Wealth of Nations: the terms of trade in the market are completely commensurate - there is no such thing as exploitation or unequal exchange at the point of exchange. This is not Wallerstein's argument. Wallerstein performs an analysis of the political economy of production across value chains. His argument is that the lower on the value chain a country is located, the less the labor of its workers is valued, which is born out in the comparison of wages of skilled vs. unskilled labor. This, in turn, determines the relative benefit a country will reap in dealings with others. With regard to the effectiveness of this sort of analysis as applied to economic development, consider the works of Robert Wade and Alice Amsden. They argue that state policies aimed at moving a country's economic base up the international value chain have been crucial in the successes of East Asian Economies. Wade and Amsden are not specifically world systems theorists, but their work helps to reinforce some assumptions in the approach. As for general arguments against World Systems Analysis, you would have to be more specific, as it is a holistic approach to social science.

Great American City by Richard Sampson

Examines neighborhood effects in Chicago, focussing on the most segregated neighborhoods. Develops Sampson's hypotheses of the effects of collective efficacy. Generally influenced by Chicago school of urban studies.

More historically interesting, start of a more or less contested branch of theory, Social disorganization theory.
Shaw, Clifford R. and McKay, Henry D. Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969

If you want more of an individual-centered "light" read (and haven't read it already),
Code of the street by Elijah Anderson

[Atack and Passell] (http://www.amazon.com/New-Economic-View-American-History/dp/0393963152) have a chapter on it in their book if you can get a copy of it. The chapter isn't the long, but it might help.

Yes for Varian, no for Freakonomics. For pop economics that actually has economic content, try the Undercover Economist

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Theory-Monetary-Institutions-Lawrence-White/dp/0631212140

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Monetary-1867-1960-National-Economic-Publications/dp/0691003548/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1I2H70WSYRZA8&keywords=a+monetary+history+of+the+united+states&qid=1555601092&s=books&sprefix=a+monetary%2Cstripbooks%2C140&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Federal-Reserve-1913-1951-v/dp/0226520005/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_3?keywords=a+history+of+the+federal+reserve+meltzer&qid=1555601148&s=books&sr=1-3-fkmrnull

MMT: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0230368891

This one will cover all the bases:

Modern Money Theory: A Primer on Macroeconomics for Sovereign Monetary Systems

I recommend taking a look at Zombie Economics by Quiggin. He gives some reasons why privatization might not work as well as advocates suggest, and some examples where privatization failed.

As a follow-up to Why Nations Fail I'd recommend The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto. He argues capitalism hasn't actually reached the poor in developing countries. They haven't had access to capital markets, titles, deeds, etc and it disincentivizes capital or labor improvements. If they could easily prove ownership over their assets they could leverage them to invest in improving their productivity (A poor family using their house as collateral to send their kids to school for example). Right now many families don't even have deeds over the houses they live in.

To maintain a prisoner class of society.

The section in your main link (Sharkey et al.) on individual poverty covers most of the primary ideas behind general crime motivations / lack of inhibition. It does not cover violence specifically as much. To supplement that, I would recommend Elijah Anderson's The Code of the Street as an entry point to the extensive literature on the role of violence and the threat of violence in communities of concentrated disadvantage (i.e. "the ghetto"). To that, add the deep literature on aversion to contacting the police in poor communities of color---and the resulting reliance on violence and other informal methods for solving disputes---and you have a pretty clear recipe for high violence.