Common Sense, The Investor’s Guide to Equality, Opportunity, and Growth

The United States is supposed to offer economic opportunity to everyone. It shouldn't take a worldwide pandemic and nationwide protests to bring economic and racial inequality to the forefront of problems we desperately need to solve. But now that the opportunity is here, what should we do? How can we create more equality, opportunity, and growth for everyone? Not someday, but what can government and the private sector do right now to disrupt a status quo that almost everyone wants to change?In Common Sense, the New York Times best-selling author Joel Greenblatt offers an investor's perspective on building an economy that truly works for everyone. With dry wit and engaging storytelling, he makes a lively and provocative case for disruptive new approachessome drawn from personal experience, some from the outside looking in. How can leading corporations immediately disrupt our education establishment while creating high-paying job opportunities for those...

The United States is supposed to offer economic opportunity to everyone. So why are so many people left out in the cold? Globalization and technological change have ravaged the workforce. Hostile immigration policies actually keep Americans from getting jobs. Our education system is deeply unequal, denying opportunity to millions right from the start. Still, we can’t seem to break from the status quo. In Common Sense, the New York Times best-selling author Joel Greenblatt offers an investor’s perspective on building an economy that truly works for everyone. With dry and self-deprecating wit, he makes a lively and provocative case for disruptive new approaches–some drawn from personal experience, some from the outside looking in. How do we ensure that all children have an opportunity for a good education? Does getting a college degree have to be a requirement for getting a good job? If we subsidize banks, how do we ensure that the risks and rewards are distributed fairly? Greenblatt shows why expanding an already existing program might help more people than raising the minimum wage, how dramatically increasing immigration would be like giving every American a bonus, and the reason Australia might be the best place to learn about saving for retirement. Not everyone will agree with what Greenblatt has to say–but all of us can benefit from the conversations he aims to start.

Joel Greenblatt is the founder of the investment partnership Gotham Capital. He has been a professor on the adjunct faculty of Columbia Business School for over two decades, and he is a cofounder and former chairman of the Success Academy Charter Network. His books include You Can Be a Stock Market Genius (1997), The Little Book That Beats the Market (2006), and The Big Secret for the Small Investor (2011).