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Books on Economics and Society on the Price Writers Podcast Episode 40
17 Plays10 days ago
In this episode of The Price Writers Podcast, Catrin and Jeremy look back at the books that shaped their year. With the holiday season approaching, they share a lively mix of titles spanning statistics, capitalism, consumerism, politics, society, and the stories that reshape how we see money, work and modern life. If you enjoy book recommendations with a blend of economics, society and a touch of storytelling, this one’s for you.
And what about you? What books shaped 2025 for you? Tell us in the comments.
Price Writers transforms pricing professionals into the most respected leaders in insurance.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
I'm not a woman. but I'm not a woman not being a woman.
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Price Writers Podcast with me, Catherine Townsend and Jeremy Keating.
Year's Best Insurance Books
00:00:15
Speaker
Join us as we explore the world of insurance related books offering our insights and recommendations.
00:00:22
Speaker
With the holiday season upon us and the end of year in sight, I thought we'd run down the books that we've read this year. This is going to be a bit of a mixed
Debating 'The Random Factor'
00:00:31
Speaker
bag. They're not all insurance related, but they are ones that we've enjoyed.
00:00:36
Speaker
Kick us off. Jeremy, how did you do? already talked about the books that I read in quarter one of this year yeah in an earlier podcast episode. So do you check that one out. So I'm going to go straight into talking about what I read from quarter two onwards.
00:00:53
Speaker
The first one want to talk about is The Random Factor, which really popular book this year, actually. It's been on the bestseller list and it's topping a lot of people's favorite books for the mail. And it's about statistics, but it's about how life is just so incredibly random and lots of things that you think are mapped out and planned out are actually incredibly random. And it touches on some areas of physics as well. So the author talks about how if you are confronted by a lake that has paths either side of it, at that moment, if you choose to go anti-clockwise or clockwise around that lake, you have effectively split your life off into two different trails of time.
00:01:36
Speaker
And in fact, lots of other times all day long where you make decisions like this and you actually spin yourself off into a completely different world and reality all the time. And that one
Capitalism and Democracy Books
00:01:47
Speaker
moment will entirely affect your life going forward.
00:01:51
Speaker
i don't agree with this premise, I must admit. So I'll go straight in there and say, i didn't really like it because I don't really agree with that premise. He does go back through lots of events in history and say that on like a very minor thing, the entire thing could have spun out a different way. And it probably did in some other alternate reality. And that's the premise of the book.
00:02:14
Speaker
I don't like it. I just don't, even though I'm statistician and I'm interested in physics, I just don't feel the world works like that. I'm not convinced. And in fact, whilst I was reading this book, I was on holiday and I was running around the lake each day and I did have this option. It's why it really stuck with me. I literally did have this option every day.
00:02:35
Speaker
And I do not believe that at that point my life spun off into different directions. I don't believe there's a different reality based on which direction around the lake I went each day.
00:02:47
Speaker
What's your first book that you'd like to talk about, Katrin? Well, I kind of went for a bit of a topic this year and one of the topics I really wanted to understand more this year was about capitalism and try to understand a bit more if there's an alternative to capitalism, why capitalism doesn't seem to be working for the vast majority of people right now, but also Why now? Why is it now that people are struggling with the idea of capitalism and um why not some other point in history? So I've got few books that all spin off that theme. So the first is The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism by Martin Wilf.
00:03:31
Speaker
I heard Martin speak at a conference earlier this year and he was so interesting. He was the editor of the Financial Times for a really long time. And this really got me thinking about the link between our politics and capitalism. So his premise in this book is when democracy fails, capitalism fails. When capitalism fails, democracy fails.
00:03:52
Speaker
So that in itself is really interesting. It was a bit of a slow read. In that there are some sections where he's listing off quite a lot of statistics or lists of countries where things have occurred, but the concepts in the book are really quite powerful. And he doesn't offer a political opinion as much as an overall diagnosis and a few nonpartisan
Bernie Sanders' Capitalism Critique
00:04:20
Speaker
solutions. So that's a really, really good one. Okay.
00:04:24
Speaker
I also read Money, the Story of Humanity by David McWilliams. And this was a big book last Christmas. It's about the story of money and with it, the story of capitalism from metal coinage to the complicated financial instruments that ultimately have led to a lot of leverage today.
00:04:43
Speaker
So again, a long read, but quite an interesting journey through time. And in particular, he talks about the change from the gold standard in America and i how that has really changed the world in modern history.
00:05:02
Speaker
ah at the start of the 70s, Richard Nixon took them off of the gold standard. that right? It was a little earlier than that. So some people believed that The Wizard of Oz was a book that was all about that debate about the move from the gold standard. ah I was thinking about the change to fiat money at the start of the 70s. You would have read all of this in your books. Yeah, a really interesting journey through time. i actually read three books on a similar subject this year.
00:05:31
Speaker
Exciting, tell me about this. Yeah, okay. I read It's Okay to be Angry About Capitalism by Bernie Sanders. So I thought this was great, actually. I really liked it. It is very US focused because of course Bernie Sanders is US, s but I think there's a lot that one can take away from it to other countries as well.
00:05:51
Speaker
Bernie Sanders is actually really popular in the US and I do think if he'd run for president, he might well have been in with a very good shot of winning. He does go through quite structured, lots of ways we could change society for the better.
00:06:05
Speaker
Lots of ways that we could actually collect reasonable taxation off of everyone fairly, including the wealthy. And also ways that we can bring back more community spirit, particularly in workplaces. And that's something that really has declined, particularly in my lifetime, actually. really But the idea of people working together in communities and joining working groups to actually help each other in their communities is a great idea. So there's lots of really good ideas in here.
00:06:34
Speaker
I read that book last year and I i thought it was really good. i did really enjoy it. I don't agree with everything he said. And I do think some of it goes into being a little bit he said, she said about the politics behind it. But I did really enjoy some of his Again, the diagnosis and the ideas of ways that we can quite radically change our society.
Consumerism and Its Alternatives
00:06:59
Speaker
And it's nice to hear that vision instead of tinkering around the edges in a very marginal way sometimes.
00:07:07
Speaker
I do agree with you. I think it's good that there are lots of actual quite trailblazing ideas in there and things to try. Like a lot of books by politicians, it does tend to leave you feeling like they feel every single step of the way they might made the correct choice and everyone else around them messed it up for them.
00:07:25
Speaker
And yeah, there is quite a bit of rumour milling and stuff that you wouldn't actually be able to prove or people will say it's different Pats Tower, but anyway, it works there. Yeah, I read one book by a politician this year, which was Politics on the Edge by Rory Stewart.
00:07:39
Speaker
And I definitely came away from that thinking, of wo that's ah potentially quite revisionist. It definitely cast him in a very, very positive light, of course. and Yeah, yeah.
00:07:52
Speaker
Definitely how Rory remembers it, but it was interesting. And what I liked about it is again, this diagnosis of actually there's something really quite fundamental that's broken about our society now. This is almost the reason why things that used to work in the past no longer work. And I think that that is one thing that I've been really keen to explore this year throughout my reading.
00:08:14
Speaker
Yeah, I really like Rory Stewart as a person. I've read that book as well last year. And I... I didn't know that. Really, last year. your son.
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah, i read it last year. I think I talked about it on my rundown of books, I'm not expecting you to have memorized every single one. i do agree with you though. He again comes across as I made the right decision every step of the way and the forces of everyone else with their like terrible ideas is why everything went wrong.
00:08:45
Speaker
and it's a, yeah, it's a bit, though he does admit to have quite a few personal gaffes actually. He doesn't really admit to any policy mistakes. ever in the whole time he was in government slightly hard to believe And then I read a few books on consumerism rather than capitalism itself. So I read Retail Therapy, Why the Retail Industry is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It.
00:09:12
Speaker
And I also read Less by Patrick Grant. So he's the guy from The Great British Sewing Bee. And that book, again, it was pretty long, but his ideas around reusing, reducing that clothing, in particular, it's not just clothes, but predominantly in that area.
00:09:29
Speaker
And i think that's really interesting because for so long, capitalism has been so equated to consumerism. ah Particularly in Patrick's book, he really explores what would happen to the economy if we consumed less. Is it possible to have a capitalist society that's still...
00:09:50
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has an economy that grows and works for people if we consume less. And I think most of the time we're told that the answer is no You know, if we stop consuming, then the world will fall apart.
The Need for Decluttering
00:10:01
Speaker
But actually he presents a vision that appears to work and it's all about consuming less frequently but more thoughtfully and I actually really like that because it gave me a lot of hope that there's another way instead of just having to continually buy in order to prop up this economy that really a lot of people don't benefit from and so I love that book I read a book called Less Is More, which on a very similar theme to less. So again, the idea being that in fact we could consume less and actually have better lives.
00:10:38
Speaker
And I find it quite interesting. I find the actual word capitalism has kind of changed meaning during my lifetime. I think it used to be the idea that we tie up money into useful things that will generate a return or at least not degrade our wealth over time.
00:10:55
Speaker
Whereas a lot of consumerism is the opposite of that. It's the production of useless things that are a waste of capital and a waste of money. And you do wonder in some ways how much that does drive our inflation, how much it drives the fact that people are having to shop more nearly to own things.
00:11:14
Speaker
There is an example in the book that goes into the quality of clothes and how over a century they have degraded in quality. So although they're cheaper, you actually have to buy many more clothes. So there was a time in the thirties, you might buy a very expensive coat that lasts many years.
00:11:33
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Whereas now you'd likely to buy a coat that might last a year. So although the one from the past possibly cost five times more, you might well have got 10 times as much life out ah of it.
00:11:45
Speaker
And our inflation numbers don't really reflect that. So on paper, we think that all of our goods are getting cheaper and therefore we're all a lot better off and we're all producing so much more.
00:11:56
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But ultimately if it's useless, that's the opposite of capitalism. It's just wasting our resources. The reason this idea about consumerism, this constant consumerism really resonates with me is that two years ago, i started on a decluttering mission for my home and my own life.
00:12:16
Speaker
So I really was quite ruthless, kind of maybe sparked a little bit by Marie Kondo, but I ended up using some slightly different methods to hers. To reduce the amount of stuff in my house, I feel like so many other people, particularly women, you feel like you're trying to manage this home as well as obviously working and kids and all all the other things you've got going on.
00:12:37
Speaker
There was just so much stuff in it. And I was just finding it really tricky, you know. Even things like putting the laundry away was a massive task because there was no space in the drawer and I was trying to cram everything in all the time.
00:12:50
Speaker
I'd go to put the groceries away and like, well you know, all of these expired cans, so many cans of tinned pineapple. I don't even need tinned pineapple, which would be filling up my cupboards. And so I really went through a quite a strict decluttering phase and my home feels a lot better for it. And maybe we can talk about this in the future. It's not related to insurance, but it's really changed how I think about processes and particularly how I use my own time
Unpaid Work and Economic Impact
00:13:18
Speaker
and space. It definitely taps into kind of my operational research. Can I make this more efficient mindset?
00:13:26
Speaker
So I did that decluttering and and actually now I just have to kind of maintain that. But one thing that I'm always really conscious of now is that I'm not buying as much as I used to because getting rid of it is such a pain.
00:13:37
Speaker
Yeah. But I was saying this to a friend last year and she was like, yeah, but if you don't buy it, then like if we all did what you did, then the economy would crash. And I was like, oh, is that true?
00:13:47
Speaker
You know, his I hadn't ever think about it. But yeah, i really like Patrick Grant's book in particular because it does actually give you a clear and clearly viable alternative. You know, it's not just about how much we buy, but also what we buy. And and he's got a really clear vision.
00:14:05
Speaker
that shows that you can consume less, but still in a way that supports economy and doesn't watch the whole world burn. So i really like that. And then the final book that I want to talk about kind of on this topic of money and society is Inheritocracy by Dr. Eliza Philby.
00:14:23
Speaker
And this book is all about the bank of mum and dad, partially... So it's less about inheritance as I would see it, which is someone has died. And it's more about if people are still alive, but distributing their estate to others while they're alive. So it's particularly the bank of mum and dad, but it's also non-financial giving, allowing adults to stay in your house while they save up for a home deposit. Yeah.
00:14:53
Speaker
Or perhaps it's helping out looking after grandchildren, for example. So there's a lot of examples of parental help and support, both financial and in terms of time.
00:15:05
Speaker
I think it's interesting when people have started a business and they were able to live with their parents whilst they did, because that just isn't an option for a lot of people. Quite a few of the stories of the great entrepreneurs who had been incredibly successful, they quite often had this start in life that sounds quite minor to a lot of people. It's like, oh, well, you know, they just live with their parents. They didn't have to pay for anything for a couple of years whilst they were starting their business.
00:15:30
Speaker
There's a huge sway of people that that's just not an option for. And they're not any less hardworking. They just can't have like no expenses for a couple of years. Yeah. And she talks about how it's not just the amount of money that's given that is such a big determiner of outcome, but it's also the timing. So receiving money from your parents once they've died, maybe you'd be in your 60s or something.
00:15:57
Speaker
receiving the same amount of money in your 60s is a lot less helpful than receiving it in your 20s when you actually want to buy a house because then you'll save on rent, etc. Her research generally is is really interesting. She's quite active on LinkedIn as well. So she posts lots of interest interesting blog posts about this all the time.
00:16:15
Speaker
I really did enjoy the book. It's kind of a mixture between research and anecdotes from her own past. Again, I didn't agree with everything in that book, but I really liked the idea that it's not just about the amount, but it's about the timing.
00:16:31
Speaker
And she says some really interesting things about who receives that money and how it generally affects our society and always This is quite actuarial, not not necessarily insurance pricing, but quite actuarial in terms of with this great demographic shift that we're going to experience over the next 20 years as our baby boomer generation starts to pass away, that there could be a great wealth transfer.
00:16:58
Speaker
Who is that going to and how is that going to reshape society? So almost social lens on on something that is always thought of as quite a personal, yeah. Yeah, I think it's really interesting the help that people receive and people that receive that help often don't realize other people don't receive that help because it's quite hard to know kind of how other people live.
00:17:23
Speaker
So what seems quite normal to some people actually is beyond the dreams of other people. And then you multiply that by 10, 15, 20 years into the future and people's wealth will have diverged very substantially. Yeah, she's got a great graph on that. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see the graph now. we've Really, really interesting.
00:17:45
Speaker
and My last one on this topic, is I read deficit, which is about how mostly women do a lot of work that doesn't appear in the GDP figures, but actually is very substantially required to keep society running.
00:18:01
Speaker
So mostly it talks about unpaid care work. But there's also a lot of housework and just generally bringing up children that is in no way reflected. But if it wasn't done, society wouldn't function. i wouldn't recommend the book though. There's two things wrong with it for me. The first is that it's written in the very academic style.
00:18:24
Speaker
So I didn't find it very engaging. And the second one that it's fairly long for the premise and it just didn't really come across to me as having enough debt to warrant such a long book.
00:18:37
Speaker
I think it's one of those things that probably people listening to this podcast, if they're working, they've got homes, they've got children, they've got families, probably resonates with them quite a lot.
00:18:48
Speaker
And I know I've thought this in my career in the past that if I go out to work, I'm taxed on the income. From that, I then have to pay childcare, which obviously the people who receive it as a salary, they'll be taxed on that.
00:19:03
Speaker
And then I might, because I'm working full time, I might buy things like cook meals or something like that, more more pre-prepared meals, which not only has a high cost, but also there'll the people who make that tax on their income.
00:19:20
Speaker
And you can see that quite quickly that money is much more beneficial for the government, I suppose, the tax collector.
00:19:32
Speaker
Whereas if I just didn't work and I did those things by myself, I cooked my own meals, I looked after my own children all day, every day. Quite a lot of that additional consumption suddenly disappears. Disappears, I say in inverted commas, I suppose, because obviously I'm still doing the same thing, obviously. Still feeding my children, I'm still looking after them. It's just the person who does it really matters.
Power, Women, and Marginalization
00:19:56
Speaker
And I think this kind of links in into the idea and maybe the difference between consumerism and a functioning society. Sounds like that book kind of highlights that maybe from a slightly different angle.
00:20:09
Speaker
It does. And it also talks about how a lot of social provisions such as childcare may actually be described as a burden for the state. Often we think of it as, oh there's high taxes and all this social provision and so on.
00:20:27
Speaker
But actually, if the government is not doing that, people are having to do it, that work still exists. People are having to do it unpaid and you run into exactly the problems you just described. So actually we ought to consider them a net benefit to society, not a drain on society.
00:20:47
Speaker
That's really interesting. o I read a book about women in society by Victoria Dutchman Smith called Hags. So kind of slight different spin. It's all about the role of middle-aged women in society. i didn't agree with all of it, but I did really appreciate some of her ideas on why are we sometimes seem to relegate middle-aged women to witches. and We call them things that are derogatory, but based on their power or what they say. So it's very similar to the idea of indef Defense of Witches, which is a book I read a couple of years ago.
00:21:23
Speaker
Why are middle-aged women in particular very... Maligned. Yeah, why are they maligned? Why do they in particular receive quite a lot of vitriol from social media, etc? I think I'd probably want to revisit it in a couple of years' time, and potentially, just to see if a little bit more resonates with me. I don't quite fall into the category I've had yet. Is it how women are demonised, like middle-aged women are demonised, in fact?
00:21:53
Speaker
Yeah, so she talks a bit about, for example, Mary Beard, who receives so much vitriol for how she looks, how she's too outspoken, how she's too bossy, or there's so many horrid words we use specifically for women.
00:22:09
Speaker
But also it's about how women have internalized this misogyny as well. So young women often don't listen to middle-aged women because they're like, oh, well, I'll never turn into you type things like you will. So, yeah, it's...
00:22:24
Speaker
so yeah it's it Quite interesting, it does talk a little bit about the intergenerational conflict that women have. as And she talks a lot about nursery rhymes and how that in itself perpetuates these things, like the evil stepmother, the wicked witch.
00:22:39
Speaker
These are all women who are shown as being aging compared to the youthful beauty of Snow White or Cinderella or whoever it is. And she does highlight that we use this...
00:22:53
Speaker
Aged or aging woman as kind of a bogey I say bogey man seems like the wrong gender Yeah But you know what mean There's a kind of a totem on which lots of negative views of women are hung And not lots of negative things in society are hung as well There's a lot of nursery rhymes and fairy tales that demonize women actually isn't there Like Hansel and Gretel There isn't really a male equivalent it's there There'd be the hero in the story or the father of the hero Yeah, you think about wizards in stories it's like Merlin, oh, he's a wise old person, but the witch is, oh, she's bad and it's not seen as wisdom. Often the middle-aged man will be led astray by the new wife and things like that. so Yeah, you've got to hate this middle-aged woman, apparently. Apparently so. Yeah, and say thought yeah say so it's an interesting book.
00:23:42
Speaker
I also read Minority Rule by Ash Sakaar, which again is slightly more societal and talking about that contrary to some newspapers, the minority don't actually rule. But why do we think they do? Or why does the media portray it as they do? Okay.
00:23:59
Speaker
Similar in this idea on who we demonize. I guess that's maybe the theme of this section. It's like, who do we as a society demonize or think negative things about? And why is that?
00:24:12
Speaker
And I read David Baddiel's book, Jews Don't Count. And this is so interesting. I read it in two days. It's quite a short little book, but it's so well written. It's funny in parts. It's sad and shocking in parts.
00:24:27
Speaker
And it really made me think about the dual nature of how we talk about different groups of people. And this relates both to Jewish people, but also about some minorities generally, like women, for example, that they, women, we say they need to be protected, but equally we hear people say that women are too powerful and there are too many women CEOs and is that tokenism and are they qualified and all of this and it's like well are are we too powerful are we not powerful enough not sure and David Viddy also the very similar thing with Jewish people really fascinating read and I'm not Jewish but it
00:25:06
Speaker
I found it really thought provoking. He actually says that antisemitism that's out and out is is quite straightforward to deal with. Oh, I see. But it's more about the insidious antisemitism. It's the fact that Jewish people are both all powerful, but also seem to be scrounging on society. So it's about this duality that we can't seem to quite reconcile. Like i say, small aspects of this apply to women as well. But as you'd imagine with David the deal It's equally funny and touching and hard-hitting. Feels like it's often that simultaneous nature of sort of too powerful, too rich, too wealthy and also taking more from society than they give back.
00:25:49
Speaker
It's definitely how people talk about women, isn't it? It's a really interesting duality that he explores so so well. And also hags by Victoria Dutchman s Smith explores really well this duality of are middle-aged women too powerful or not powerful enough? Are they totally irrelevant and we can ignore them?
00:26:07
Speaker
Or are they secretly, are they the wicked witches and the queens of the world who are actually got hoarding all the power? So of that that really interests me this year. well yeah I read Women in the Picture,
Environmental Racism and Liability
00:26:18
Speaker
which probably has similar themes to actually. And in this one, it's how often art has not been produced by women, how women have been marginalized when it comes to the production of art, but are very often the subjects of art and how they are often quite problematic in the way that they're portrayed in art.
00:26:39
Speaker
and how it would feel as I'm not a woman, but how it would feel to actually see some of these depictions in our galleries or sculptures on the street that actually depict quite degrading treatment of women.
00:26:54
Speaker
And it really made me think a lot more about art and the history of art and the gender politics that comes with art as well. So I do recommend it for people that are interested in art and interested in gender politics.
00:27:10
Speaker
Again, you see the duality coming out there as well, don't you? You know, a lot of arts I'm just trying to think of pictures of women And i feel like they tend to split in either Madonna type complex You know, yeah very pure, beautiful, young Definitely with blonde hair can tell I was never to pick to be Mary, can't you? And then the school nativity Still slightly bitter about it, no um Or they fit into that maybe Jezebel category of or Medusa. I'm trying to think of other artworks that show women as being, like you said, a kind of tempting other people or a problem. So yeah, it feels like art as well has maybe that same lens.
00:27:54
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely think that is the case. Also read How to Own the Room. So it's a book on public speaking. It's specifically aimed at public speaking if you're a woman. now I appreciate I'm not a woman, but i do find books on public speaking a really good thing to read. It's something I do quite often.
00:28:12
Speaker
And actually i wanted to read what advice would be given to a woman on how to improve public speaking. I didn't particularly feel it was only useful for one gender actually. almost like people speak in the same way. thought that It pretty much is. There isn't really a difference is how, is what I would say. I found useful advice from it despite not being a woman.
00:28:39
Speaker
Well, one book that I did think maybe be touched a little bit more on insurance-ish themes that I read this year was called A Terrible Thing to Waste, Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind.
00:28:52
Speaker
And if you have followed the stories of Love Canal or environmental liability stories where big companies and in some cases the state has dumped sewage or problematic dangerous material into areas that this book shows are predominantly populated by minorities, whether it's Native Americans or African Americans.
00:29:21
Speaker
And in fact, they did linear regression. They say in the book, they did linear regression, which I love. But they said that the outcome of that couldn't just be attributable to poverty. So it wasn't just because these areas were poor. And in some cases, the areas were actually fairly middle class.
00:29:37
Speaker
Of course, not that it's socially acceptable to dump nuclear waste or lead in poorer areas either. But that historically has been given as a reason it's cheaper land, etc.
00:29:50
Speaker
But she's actually shown that it's not just about income or poverty. there is Race does have a statistically significant parameter in that model.
00:30:00
Speaker
So there is something about it being an African-American or Native American or Hispanic area. So this book was really interesting and it it got me thinking a bit more about potential liability claims, latent claims coming out of some of these areas.
Conclusion and Future Episodes
00:30:19
Speaker
that might unfold or not you never really know obviously but I thought that was interesting and probably the most insurance relevant book I've read this year that we haven't already talked about on our podcast okay quick editor's note this video is getting way longer than I intended so I'm going to split it here and make a part two covering history fiction and some other miscellaneous books stay tuned it's coming soon
00:30:48
Speaker
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