Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works--and How It Fails | Yanis Varoufakis

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

In Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, activist Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance minister and the author of the international bestseller Adults in the Room, pens a series of letters to his young daughter, educating her about the business, politics, and corruption of world economics.

Yanis Varoufakis has appeared before heads of nations, assemblies of experts, and countless students around the world. Now, he faces his most important―and difficult―audience yet. Using clear language and vivid examples, Varoufakis offers a series of letters to his young daughter about the economy: how it operates, where it came from, how it benefits some while impoverishing others. Taking bankers and politicians to task, he explains the historical origins of inequality among and within nations, questions the pervasive notion that everything has its price, and shows why economic instability is a chronic risk. Finally, he discusses the inability of market-driven policies to address the rapidly declining health of the planet his daughter’s generation stands to inherit.

Throughout, Varoufakis wears his expertise lightly. He writes as a parent whose aim is to instruct his daughter on the fundamental questions of our age―and through that knowledge, to equip her against the failures and obfuscations of our current system and point the way toward a more democratic alternative.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Best Book of 2018, Business & Leadership

"Charming and utterly fascinating . . . It's a sharp analysis mixed with philosophical rumination told in a breezy mix of family anecdotes, Greek myth, world history and a surprisingly deep dive into the hidden meanings embedded in Star Trek and The Matrix . . . It's a book for everyone. Varoufakis dispenses with technical jargon, and when he does use it, he goes to great lengths to clearly define what he's talking about." ―Mark Haskell Smith, The Los Angeles Times

"Varoufakis has used his considerable talents . . . to demystify complex financial concepts designed to elude us . . . 'Ensuring that everyone is allowed to talk authoritatively about the economy is a prerequisite for a good society and a precondition for an authentic democracy' [he writes]. If this is his goal, then Varoufakis has more than achieved it . . . He clearly and patiently helps readers come to an understanding of just how much power global corporate finance―and the supranational institutions that serve it―wields over our lives . . . If anyone can figure out a way to put a chicken in every pot and a bottle of bubbly on every table, it's Yanis Varoufakis." ―Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, The Nation

"Varoufakis [promises] to explain economics in a language that everyone can understand, in place of the jargon- infested pseudo-scientific language of mainstream economics....Varoufakis comes up with a vivid comparison between money supply and the market in cigarettes in a German prisoner-of-war camp to explain inflation, deflation and interest rates, in terms any teenager – or adult – will understand . . . Varoufakis does equip his readers with the beginnings of a new language, and punctures myth after myth" ― Anna Minton, The Guardian

About the Author

Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece and the co-founder of an international grassroots movement, DiEM25, campaigning for the revival of democracy in Europe. He is the author of And the Weak Suffer What They Must? and The Global Minotaur. After many years teaching in the United States, Britain, and Australia, he is currently professor of economics at the University of Athens.