Monday, October 5, 2009

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Economics by Tom Gorman

So this is one of the things I was reading that dampened my previously uplifted mood. But not much. It was happily pretty technical although I did make a few notes of philosophical argument. Umm, something about the fact that our whole economic system is hitched to the principal of scarcity which I believe doesn't exist. With our current technology and knowledge and resources, there is so enough food and shelter for everyone on Earth. "And, tragically, we don't know how to overcome poverty, hunger, crime, and other evils rooted in economic reality." My pink sticky says, "Can but won't." I believe he actually makes the claim in there somewhere about real wages having risen, which is an utter fallacy. When adjusted for inflation, wages stagnated after the 70's and have begun falling. I made a note reminding myself to do some further research on communism and why it is hitched to dictatorships. Hence the name "communist dictatorship." Why do these automatically go together and is there an alternative? When discussing the "invisible hand" at work in supply and demand, he makes a passing mention of the amount of waste produced which I noted gives lie to the notion of scarcity driving the train. Anyway, by the end I mentally gave up just like I did with my nutrition studies. Too much of anything is bad, don't get bogged down in details and find balance in the big picture.

2 comments:

  1. Hi,

    can i borrow this book? maybe something useful for my students here.
    thanks
    daud.andre@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. I borrowed it from the library =)

    ReplyDelete