So, I've held off from sticking my nose out too far into the conversations being held on this blog which I contribute to. However, I feel like people should really continue to invest some time into learning more about the economy and why things work the way they do.
A great book that I read, titled Economics in One Lesson, gives some straight forward examples of why so much of the current economic though of our general population is based in fallacy. The gist of the book can be broken down into one sentence: The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.
I seriously recommend that everyone take a look at it. It's a genuinely straightforward read with examples and it covers things such as inflation, subsidies, and loans/banking. It's only a hundred small pages or so, and can actually be read online at:
http://jim.com/econ/contents.html
3 comments:
Of course, you must be careful because he may be guilty of exactly what he accuses everyone else of. I think it's disingenuous to suggest that someone like Milton Friedman is lying just because you disagree with that person.
I did enjoy what I read though as he is fairly concise. (Even where he is wrong.)
Besides saying that Milton Friedman is lying, where else is he wrong? I am curious.
I've only read a half dozen pages so far. The only thing I have read in any detail so far is his discussion of inflation (Chap 24).
Quote:
"The cruder apostles of “social credit” may seem ridiculous; but there are an indefinite number of schools of only slightly more sophisticated inflationists who have “scientific” plans to issue just enough additional money or credit to fill some alleged chronic or periodic deficiency, or gap, which they calculate in some other way."
Now, the part that bothers me the most here is that like he says of charlatans, he's not telling the whole story. You see, anti-inflationists like to talk about the "Gold Standard". The problem is that this is an inflationary standard. [It's the only reason it doesn't crash is that it is the policy favored by slight inflationists. (With the caveat that it wastes an actual consumable resource in coinage. Perhaps it would be more obvious if we talked of an oil standard for money.)] Since the amount of gold has never been fixed and couldn't be, gold is an expanding money supply. If he had said that and advocated this position I wouldn't have minded at all. Instead he tries to group people who want minimalistic inflationary policy with people who want to carry paper bags full of money to buy bread.
Real non-inflationary systems of libertarian theory have a lot of problems and instead of addressing the problems he just says anyone who disagrees with me is only slightly more sophisticated then crude.
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