{"product_id":"the-pricing-of-progress-economic-indicators-and-the-capitalization-of-american-life-9780674976283","title":"The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life","description":"\u003cp\u003eHow did Americans come to quantify their society's progress and well-being in units of money? In today's GDP-run world, prices are the standard measure of not only our goods and commodities but our environment, our communities, our nation, even our self-worth. \u003ci\u003eThe Pricing of Progress \u003c\/i\u003etraces the long history of how and why we moderns adopted the monetizing values and valuations of capitalism as an indicator of human prosperity while losing sight of earlier social and moral metrics that did not put a price on everyday life. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eEli Cook roots the rise of economic indicators in the emergence of modern capitalism and the contested history of English enclosure, Caribbean slavery, American industrialization, economic thought, and corporate power. He explores how the maximization of market production became the chief objective of American economic and social policy. We see how distinctly capitalist quantification techniques used to manage or invest in railroad corporations, textile factories, real estate holdings, or cotton plantations escaped the confines of the business world and seeped into every nook and cranny of society. As economic elites quantified the nation as a for-profit, capitalized investment, the progress of its inhabitants, free or enslaved, came to be valued according to their moneymaking abilities. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eToday as in the nineteenth century, political struggles rage over who gets to determine the statistical yardsticks used to gauge the \"health\" of our economy and nation. \u003ci\u003eThe Pricing of Progress \u003c\/i\u003ehelps us grasp the limits and dangers of entrusting economic indicators to measure social welfare and moral goals.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eCook, Eli:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - Eli Cook is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Haifa.","brand":"Harvard University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50460687401234,"sku":"9780674976283","price":33.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_98c8e0ec-28a1-49b1-98fe-da1b4b5cee0b.jpg?v=1730045261","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-pricing-of-progress-economic-indicators-and-the-capitalization-of-american-life-9780674976283","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}